System Change Not Climate Change!

CAPITALISM OR SOCIALISM

Climate change is possibly the greatest existential crisis facing humanity today. Capitalism has led us to the edge of the precipice, and avoiding the end of civilization means direct opposition to capitalism. Today’s planetary ecological crisis is due to the increasing scale of the capitalist world economy. It is connected to the nature and logic of capitalism, understood as a system directed at the accumulation of capital. Capitalism is a grow-or-die system. If accumulation declines, the result is economic crisis.  For capitalism, accumulation of capital is everything, the Earth and its inhabitants nothing. If value is created by the exploitation of labour, this nonetheless requires constant expropriation from nature which is considered a free gift to capital. In its narrow pursuit of profits, the capitalist system points inexorably to environmental destruction on a planetary scale. We need a massive shift to solar and wind and other alternatives, but the fossil-fuel economy and the goal of capital accumulation stand in the way. 

The answer of the system is to boost accumulation and expand markets. To speak of the need for a steady-state economy as a solution, immediately raises the doubts in people’s minds of the end of progress. However, we should be careful not to identify capitalist economic growth with human advancement as a whole. New technology is indispensable in addressing global problems when not aimed almost exclusively at promoting profits. Rational development and application of technology necessitates a transformation of our social relations. The big mistake is to fall for crude techno-fix solutions such as geo-engineering, viewing it as a magic solution to all problems yet continuing unchanged our social relations. The fact is that a simple technological fix would make it possible for capitalist business-as-usual, to carry on into the abyss. What is required is the creation of a massive global movement toward socialism that goes against the logic of the system: igniting a revolution. The biggest challenge humanity has ever faced is to carry out the socialist reconstitution of society at large.

There is a strong belief that changes in consumer habits can bring about good things for the environment and result in social and economic change. However, individuals in our society do not possess sovereignty as consumers and do not direct or dictate what happens in the economy and within society. There exists a sense that all the problems of the environment are due to consumers themselves but buying green and behaving green does not mean the market will turn green. The capitalist economy rests upon ownership and control of the means of production by a minority of capitalists, not with the consumer.  What is consumed depends largely on what is produced. Over a trillion dollars are spent per year in the US alone on marketing with the object of getting people to buy things they neither need nor want. Gaining control over production is essential if we are to avoid the tendency toward environmental devastation. Anyways, individual’s contribution to the environmental damage is minimal. If all the household waste in the United States going into municipal landfills were eliminated this would only take care of about a small portion, maybe as little as 3 percent, of the total solid waste generated in the economy, the rest is commercial wastage.

Why the Left needs socialism

The definition of socialism accepted by the Socialist Party is “the collective ownership of all the means of production and distribution.”  Socialism leaves consumption, i.e., the selection and the enjoyment of the means of life to the free will and the taste of the individuals. Socialism was impossible in former centuries. The modern development of the means of production — manufacturing in the present large scale — has now made socialism possible and necessary. Our present system divides society into two classes, the “have all” and the “have nothing” class, and that it is the great mass of the people that do all the useful work who belong to the “have nothing” class.  Socialists are class conscious. This does not mean that we must hate every capitalist individually, that some should be picked out or particular repulsion while the economic power and political encroachment of others should be silently submitted to. It means that while we understand that every individual capitalist is the result of the present system as much as the wage worker, we still must fight the capitalists as a class, because the producers cannot reasonably expect anything but exploitation from the exploiters as a class. Socialists do not propose to run away from the capitalists; they intend to stay right in the battle. Socialists will fight open and aboveboard everywhere and fight all capitalist parties alike. They cannot and will not assist capitalist politicians of one colour and offer support for another of a different colour.

The new social system at which we aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed out by a system of regimentation. What we seek is the rational collective organisation of the planet’s resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every citizen.

Our present society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic recession, in which the average person’s normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialised economy in which our natural resources and principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated by the people. The present order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed when private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort. The Socialist Party aims to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a society in which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine democratic self-management based upon economic equality will be possible, restoring to the community its natural resources.

The Socialist Party will not rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and established the socialist cooperative commonwealth. We are well aware that socialism is a term little understood by the world at large, and that it is everywhere a target for denunciation by the media of the plutocracy. When analysed it means a more equitable distributions of the products of labour; cooperation instead of competition; common ownership of land and all the means of production and distribution. It proclaims the coming of the cooperative commonwealth to take the place of wage slavery. The present economic system is not only a failure, but a colossal crime. It robs, it degrades, it starves; it is a foul blot upon the face of our civilisation; it promises only an increase of the horrors which the world deplores. There is no hope for our fellow-workers except by the path mapped out by socialists, the advocates of the cooperative commonwealth. In socialism, private ownership, the exchange economy (and barter) being at an end, money would lose the functions which it possessed under capitalism and would be abolished as will the wages system. Humanity will then be emancipated from the horrible thralldom which a soulless moneyed oligarchy has forced upon it.

We, organised in the Socialist Party, declare that to the working class belongs the future and through the ballot box, abolish the capitalist system of ownership with its accompanying class rule and class oppression, and establish in its place socialism — an industrial democracy — wherein all the land and the tools of production shall be the common property of the whole people, to be operated by the whole people for the production of goods and services for use and not for profit. We ask our fellow-workers to organise with us to end the domination of private property— with its poverty-breeding system of unplanned production — and substitute in its place the socialist co-operative commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his or her faculties, multiplied by all the modern technological wonders of the modern world.

More Positivity Needed. The Case For Socialism.

The most significant thing about the Ontario municipal elections was the low turn-out of voters. 

Toronto did quite well with 41 per cent. Misssissauga had 27 per cent and London 39. 

Some had thought it would be higher there because London became Canada's first city to have first, second and third choice candidates, but it made no difference. 

Some Toronto wards with large working-class populations polled as low as 32 to 27 per cent; all of which suggests many have given up hoping for any improvement in their lives from those they elect.

 As positive as this is it would be even more positive if their despair would lead them to study the case for Socialism. 

For socialism, 

Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC

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As The Brits Say “Good Luck Mate”

October 22 was municipal Election Day in Ontario. The results brought few surprises, Oh yes !, silly me, everyone elected is pledged to administrate capitalism. 

The main media focus was on Toronto, in view of Premier Ford’s cutting the wards down from 44 to 25. John Tory was re-elected as Mayor with 63.5 per cent of the vote.

 So arch-tory Tory will now have problems getting a majority to push his bills through as some councilors don't see eye to eye with him and some are wild cards.

 Furthermore, Toronto has major problems with crime, lack of affordable housing, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, a very high cost of living and traffic congestion, in fact, the normal problems of major metropolitan areas under the lovely economic system we live under. 

All this Mr. Tory faces; as the Brits would say, ''Good Luck Mate''.

For socialism, 
Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC.

Each for all and all for each

Socialism is the hope of the whole of humanity for the workers cannot liberate themselves without emancipating the whole of mankind. It is impossible to contemplate the horrors of capitalism and remain immune unless, indeed, one is emotionally dead to every sentiment of humanity.

We are ready to conquer capitalism by making use of our political liberty and by taking possession of the public power, so that we may put an end to the present barbarous class exploitation  by the abolition of capitalism and turning all of the land, and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution, into the property of all people as a collective body, and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production, and social disorder — a commonwealth which, although it will not make every man and women equal physically or mentally, will give to every worker the free exercise and the full benefit of his and her faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of civilisation and ultimately inaugurate the universal brotherhood of mankind.

A class-free socialist commonwealth cannot be attained without the overthrow of the rule of capitalism. It is an illusion that it can be built up alongside and within capitalist society.  There can be very little gained by socialists trying to administer the capitalists’ political machinery; that this machinery is especially adapted to fit the necessity of the ruling class. A socialist official is powerless to do more than the machine permits, and the machine permits practically nothing. If socialism is simply going to be another system of exploitation it can easily graft on the old tree, as has its predecessors. But if it is to usher forth the triumph of a new era, the final capture, and overthrow of the master class and the establishment of an entirely new principle in production.

What the working class may gain under capitalism at one point, they lose at another; and that as the struggle goes on it will become more and more bitter, and the general distress and subjugation of the workers more and more acute; and that this process must go on until the workers learn the lesson that the source of their trouble is inherent in the wage system and that the remedy is not in placing patches on this system but to its final overthrow and the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth.

To accomplish this aim is the historic mission of the working class and one of the most effective tools at the command of the workers in the struggle against their class enemy, is socialist party,  a party not the work one man but a mass movement that has  grown out of the needs of the class whose interests it represents. The party that can speak in the name of labour is a socialist party.  However, many of you think that those of us in the  Socialist Party are impractical visionaries with strange notions in our heads and thus a waste of time. When we explain our ideas you dismiss it as mere theory yet are willing to accept others theories such as that immigration is the cause of your problems, that over-population is the root of what ails the world. You unquestioningly take such theories as veritable truths. Compromise and reforms will never destroy wage-slavery.  Through socialism alone will this be accomplished and it is the duty of every worker to align with the Socialist Party.  Link arms, fellow workers, with your brothers and sisters of other lands for there can be no grander reward than when there is no longer a master, no longer a slave.

Under capitalism, with its wage slavery, the worker and his family are nominally free; but, as we have seen, the land, the tools and all the product of his labour belong to the employing class. The workers are at liberty to change their individual masters, if they can, that is all. There is a continuous class war between wage slaves and the capitalist class, with its parasites. So long as wages are paid by one class to another class, so long will men and women remain slaves to the employing class. Wage slaves have ceased to be at the mercy of individual employers, but they cannot emancipate themselves from slavery to the employing class until they themselves cease to compete with one another for wages. “Free and Independent Workers” sell their labour power, which is the only commodity they possess, to the capitalists who own or control all the means of producing wealth, including the tools, raw material, land, and money.

Under the machine-method of production, the workers are controlled by their tools, instead of being in control of them. Under the capitalist system of production for exchange, the producers themselves have no control over their own products. Commodities, social goods, are produced, not directly for social purposes, but indirectly, in order to create a profit for the capitalists. If capitalists are unable for any reason to produce goods profitably, the wage-earners cease to be employed, though there may be a vast quantity of useful goods glutting the warehouses on the one hand, and millions of people who are anxious to have them on the other.

Rent, profit, and interest are all provided by the workers. All three are the component parts of the labour value embodied in saleable commodities by the labour power of the workers, over and above the actual wages paid to the employee, and the cost of raw materials, incidental materials, etc., needed by the capitalist for the conduct of his business. The wages paid by the employers to their hands represent the customary standard of living of the skilled or unskilled workers employed. These wages are, on the average, returned in saleable values to the capitalist in a portion of the working day, or week, for which the worker has sold his labour power to the capitalist. The goods produced during the rest of the time the wage-earner works for the capitalist are the result of this extra and unpaid labour, furnished by the worker to the capitalist. It is the modern industrial expression of the corvée, enforced, not by the whip, but by pecuniary necessity and individual hunger. This is the surplus value, out of which all the classes who do not directly produce are paid their share, the parasites. Wages paid in money seem to workers to come to them from above, instead of being only the value of a portion of the goods they themselves produce, paid to them in the form of money. They owe this blunder to their own condition of servitude. Workers have advanced their labour power to the capitalist before they are paid their wages for its use. Capitalists, as a class, run no risks whatever; the unfortunate in the competitive struggle for gain are simply wiped out by their competitors, who benefit by their downfall. Shareholders in capitalist companies rarely or never render any service to the company, or the community, as shareholders. In the vast majority of cases, they have never visited the enterprises from which they draw their dividends.

 Production for profit and exchange by wage labour assumes the existence of large numbers of people who are divorced from the land and possess no property of their own. The only way to solve the growing antagonism between the two great classes of modern society is, by substituting co-operation for competition, in all branches of production and distribution. This involves a social revolution, peaceful or forcible. Wage-earners are thrown out of employment, not because they are clamouring for impossible wages, still less because they are unwilling to work, but because the employing class itself cannot produce at a loss.

Where freedom of speech, freedom of combination, together with political freedom and voting power, have been secured, the use of the political weapon in the first instance is by far the best course, and in the long run the most effective. This arises for several reasons:

(a) The wage-earners who, being too ignorant of the real interests of their class or insufficiently organised, will not go to the ballot-box to vote for their champions, certainly will never go to the barricades to fight for them effectively;

(b) If they win on the political field they are in a very much stronger position to enter upon actual civil war, and are ready to take over the machinery of government for the benefit of the whole community;

(c) Direct action, by means of successive strikes or a general strike of all the workers, would only disorganise the whole of the existing machinery of production and distribution which they desire to secure for themselves and the whole community. Even when the workers have succeeded in paralysing industry, they must co-ordinate by political means so created through some style of General Assembly.

Also, in any organised effort outside the political arena, the growing ill-feeling of all not immediately concerned in the strike when starvation set in, might lead to a military dictatorship of some duration, if only to secure renewed peace and daily sustenance for the majority. The inclination of the great majority of wage-earners has been to use political action in the interest of their class, with the object of obtaining direct control over the industrial forces. This means that, wherever the wage-earning class is sufficiently organised and disciplined, they should refrain from the use the dangerous weapon of the general strike. With political action, for which our forebears fought for and which we have secured there is far less danger of armed conflict. It cannot be doubted that if direct action such as a general strike took so wide a sweep as is contemplated, implying the cessation of work in every sphere of manufacture and transportation, this would almost inevitably lead to civil war. Then there may easily then arise differences between the strikers themselves; for it is by no means certain that men who are too slow and careless to vote for their own class champions would develop a whole-souled eagerness to fight for themselves and their class.

 Privation and shortages is apt to turn even enthusiasts for overthrow into partisans of a military dictatorship. No Government, also, would, or could surrender at once to such an organised stoppage of the whole national life, without a desperate effort, in which all the resources of the coercive State would be used. Is it advisable even to threaten to resort to such desperate tactics, when the alternative of political action is still open? Is it well to risk a defeat, which might be a throwback for a whole generation. The reaction upon failure would be terrible.

The Socialist Party aims at the entire emancipation of the workers from the mastery of the capitalist system via the ballot box, not for the enactment of palliative reforms under capitalism but for the immediate establishment of a co-operative commonwealth, that is, in fact, the emancipation of the whole wage-slave class.

Silly season in Scotland (1989)

From the June 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political scene is really buzzing up in Scotland. The Labourites are in turmoil over the issue of Scottish independence while the Scottish National Party is split because of something called the Constitutional Convention. To add to the fun Militant is up to its old tricks and there is a brand new “socialist" party with the usual stale ideas.

After the last general election when the Tories won only 10 of the 72 seats in Scotland the SNP floated the idea that the anti-Tory forces should join in forming a convention of MP's, councillors, churchmen and trade unionists which would draw up a plan for Scottish self-government within the United Kingdom. This, it was argued, would gain Scotland some protection from unrepresentative Thatcherism.

Preliminary talks in January between the SNP, Labour and the SLD began amicably enough but then the SNP delegation suddenly walked out. They probably felt that, after their Govan by-election victory, the convention no longer had anything to offer them and they should go for outright "Independence Within Europe". This move outraged several prominent SNP members who condemned the leadership for having made a bad error of judgement. The Scots electorate, they said, is so desperate to be rid of Thatcher that they will not forgive the SNP for abandoning the convention.

Isobel Lindsay, a member of the executive, pointed to the immediate drop in SNP support in the opinion polls and added “perhaps even more important . . .  we are alienating Scotland's thinking classes . . .” (Glasgow Herald 7 February 1989). Lindsay is a university lecturer. In the end the walkout was backed by the party’s national council by a big majority but rumblings of discontent continue.

Labour’s Troubles

What about Labour's troubles? The party's neo-nationalist wing, which includes several MP's and leading trade unionists, is openly calling for Labour to lead a Scottish UDI from the United Kingdom should England vote the Tories in again. This revolt forced Neil Kinnock to declare his support for devolution at this year's Scottish Labour Party conference although he didn't even mention it last year, an omission which doubtless had nothing to do with the SNP's low standing in the polls at that time.

Almost obscured by these events is the formation of the Scottish Socialist Party *, the latest breakaway from Labour. The new party has about 100 members and believes that the only way for Scots to get rid of Thatcherism is the creation of an independent “socialist" Scotland. Alex Wood, former Labour leader of Edinburgh District Council, and an SSP leading light, gives us his idea of what socialism means.

  He firmly believes the time is right for a socialist approach to Scottish life, such as public housing, free education and a national health service (Glasgow Herald 12 January 1989).

In case anyone is wondering why Wood bothered to leave the Labour Party he says it was because, among other things. Labour has rejected the socialist transformation of society. Since he also tells us that Labour was never a socialist party anyway then what else did he expect?

The SSP says that it will appeal to disenchanted nationalists and on cue they have been joined by Alan Clayton, a prominent SNP member. He denounced the SNP's withdrawal from the convention as "shameful" and told them the correct policy would have been to stay and fight from within it. Why he didn't stay and fight from within the SNP he didn’t say. The SSP will soon follow into oblivion its predecessor, the Scottish Labour Party, formed by Sillars in 1976 and died in 1980.

Mindless Militants

Meanwhile, Militant's long-running efforts to take over the Labour Party in Scotland have produced results — all of them bad. Their tactic of flooding local Labour parties with recruits and then using them to deselect Labour MP's and councillors who don’t toe the Militant line has hit a snag. Why? Because the Labour Party will not sit back and let this happen. For example, 158 applicants in Pollok have been refused membership and it is Militant members who are getting the push. Three have been expelled in Cumbernauld with more to follow in Livingston and Cathcart. More seriously for them 13 alleged Militant “supporters" in their Pollok stronghold have been suspended and expulsions are a certainty. To rub it in all their candidates for office in Leith were defeated.

These antics make us think of a no-contest between two grossly mismatched boxers. In this corner the Labour heavyweight, and in the other corner the Militant flyweight. No matter how many times the flyweight gets flattened he gets up and comes back for more. He's game but is he wise? Does Militant really think the Labour Party will let them take it over? And what would they do with it if they got it? Do they imagine that significant numbers of Labour voters would vote for Militant policies? Maybe they're just punch-drunk enough to say "yes".

In conclusion, will the present nationalist upsurge in Scotland collapse like the previous one in the 1970's? This is unlikely because of the Thatcher factor. Another Tory victory at the next election along with their continued rejection in Scotland will cause many Labour leaders, activists and supporters to decide that full independence is the only hope. Margaret Thatcher is a better propaganda weapon for the SNP than North Sea oil ever was.

Vic Vanni

* The Scottish Socialist Party mentioned in the article are not to be confused with the current Scottish Socialist Party which was formed by Scottish Socialist Alliance (Tommy Sheridan's Scottish Militant Labour and others) in 1998.

Intervention USA (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In these days of the enterprise culture, government involvement in industry, commerce, banking and other economic activities is not the flavour of the month. Market forces are in and intervention, or so we are told, is out.

Indeed it would appear that this is true, for all over the world, in Britain, France, Australia and elsewhere, governments have been getting rid of much of what is called “the public sector”. In fact, nationalisation, the main form of government involvement in a nation’s economic activity and once seen as a device which would solve all of capitalism’s economic and social problems, is more or less a dead duck.

So obvious is this even to politicians of “the left” that the Labour Party here doesn’t intend to re-nationalise all the Tory sell-offs of the last decade, while in the so-called communist countries private enterprise is being encouraged to compete with ailing state enterprise.

From deregulation…

However, even in such times as these, governments still have to step in and intervene when they think that the interest of the national capitalist class is in danger. For example, in the United States, the very heartland of non-intervention, there has been the growing problem of the Savings and Loans banks. These S and Ls are the rough equivalent of Britain’s building societies and hundreds of them have gone bust while hundreds more are insolvent. Their losses were $6.8 billion in 1987 and $3.8 billion in the first quarter of 1988, although depositors are covered by a government insurance agency.

How did this happen? Just as nationalisation was once seen as the great cure-all, nowadays it is “deregulation” which fills the bill. This means that enterprises in an industry no longer have to conform to laid-down government regulations but are freer to operate as they see fit. This, it is claimed, will produce a capitalism without its attendant problems, will provide greater all-round prosperity, and so on.

Thus the S and Ls were allowed by the Carter administration in 1980 to borrow, not only from small investors for re-lending as mortgages as previously but from the money markets at ever higher rates of interest. This laid them wide open to trouble, which duly arrived when the Reagan administration further deregulated by allowing the now exposed S and Ls to move into high-risk lending for big property deals and other get-rich-quick schemes of which they had no experience. The result was the spate of bankruptcies and insolvencies already mentioned.

… to regulation

At present, the insolvent S and Ls keep afloat by continuing to borrow at high interest rates and their debts are estimated to be increasing by $35 million a day. Sooner or later the government will have to foot the ever-mounting bill. The implications of this are serious for American capitalism. How can it ever tackle its massive budget deficit of $150 billion while it throws away billions at this rate? More seriously, many American banks have collapsed in recent years (almost 200 in 1987 alone) and the additional collapse of hundreds more S and Ls could trigger a disastrous loss of public confidence in the entire American banking system. The Administration has therefore intervened to try to stop the rot.

Bush and his financial advisers have come up with a plan calling for a one hundred billion dollar issue of new bonds to bail out the S and Ls. The interest on the bonds is to be paid to the government by the S and Ls and the other banks through higher premiums for Federal insurance of all bank deposits. Critics of the plan say it breaks Bush’s election promise of “no new taxes” as “the taxpayer”, in the form of the banks’ customers, will have the extra premium passed onto them through higher bank charges. But this will not necessarily happen because the customers may refuse to pay up, in which case the banks and S and Ls will have to bear the extra cost themselves.

This rescue package also calls for a leaner and fitter S and L industry to be taken over and run by another government agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and amounts to back-door nationalisation. So whatever their ideological preferences any government will make use of intervention, even despised nationalisation, when it suits “the national interest”.

All of this reinforces the Socialist Party’s view that whether government use less intervention or more, they are helpless in avoiding capitalism’s pitfalls.

Vic Vanni

Capitalism - the last of the slave systems

Socialism will be the birth of a money-free society based on common ownership and democratic control of the world's resources, i.e. a non-market economy. The old sign-posts toward such a world are gone now and new ones point in a different direction. The left-wing policies, programmes and platforms bewilder the uninitiated. Grand system change has been reduced to  “bread-and-butter struggles”, with various “isms” clashing with one another.

Under the capitalist system, the constant striving for profits from investments always brings real wages down. Unless the workers engage in collective struggle to maintain their living standards they and their families would starve, and a type of class struggle, trade union struggle, develops spontaneously among the workers. This economic struggle is allowed for by the capitalist system, and is even necessary for its continuation, for how else can the workers, whom the capitalist needs to exploit, how else can they survive? The working class learn how to organise to fight collectively, and discover on whose side the police and the courts are. Trade unionism is the collective struggle of the workers against their employers for better terms in the sale of their labour power, for better conditions of life and labour. But any economic benefits gained are temporary and in the long run illusory. The struggle of the working class is not only for better terms for the sale of labour power, but also for the abolition of the social system which compels the propertyless to sell themselves to the rich. Capitalism means the degradation of vast numbers of men and women who exist under its social system. So natural and inevitable has the squalor and suffering of millions of human beings seemed that it has all been taken for granted. Capitalism is showing itself to be not only injurious to the vast majority of individuals, but a definite obstacle to the advance of mankind.

The class war in the field of economics is growing more apparent with each new dawn where a higher standard of life and more leisure is the war-cry on the one side, as against greater production and higher profit on the other.

The Socialist Party does not intend to win over our fellow-workers by sloganising. We don’t need mere malcontents,we need thinkers with a vision of the kind of world that is possible. We hold that true gains can only be had by the clarity of ideas. Our strategy is to have a vision about where we should be going and how to get there. We need to make clear the distinction between our role in the destruction of the system and our role in the reconstruction of a new system.  One weakness has been that we have paid less attention to reconstruction. The Socialist Party must encourage all struggles against oppression and exploitation, everywhere raising the class question, to promote an awareness of the truth that the only permanent solution is a socialist revolution. It is through the co­operative commonwealth of all, that women and men can attain a higher communal life and secure social happiness secured for all citizens. 

The Socialist Party is striving for a complete social revolution, in which ownership, control, and management by the capitalist class are set aside in favour of the common ownership, democratic control, and management by the whole population, all of whom shall contribute their quota to the general social service. It is impossible to stop short of complete socialisation – that is to say, of all the great means and instruments of production and distribution. This, in turn, must inevitably lead on to the equitable sharing of products among all members of the community - the co-operative commonwealth. Since there is no difficulty whatever in creating wealth far in excess of our requirements, by the scientific organisation and application of the light labour of all to the satisfaction of our social needs,  the  motto, “From each according to ability, to each according to needs,” ceases to be Utopian and becomes a reality. The problems of society, so far as they relate to daily life and sustenance, will then no longer be affected in any way by money values, but labour will be devoted to this or that branch of production in proportion to the desires of the community. Work that, after all, possible amelioration, remains dangerous or difficult will be shared by all of the community who are fit, instead of being relegated to a class. The standard of life for each and all will be far higher than anything ever yet attained.  A new ethic inevitably arises since nearly all the crimes are property crimes. Remove the incentive and the crimes will vanish. A new world will open up before humanity with the disappearance of over-work and anxiety.

The essence of revolutionary strategy is to spell out who is for us and who is against us.  We are under no illusion about the prospects for a socialist awakening being imminent in the next year or two. On the other hand, there are changes in peoples' lives which endow socialism with a fundamental reality and relevance that was not always been the case. We aim at a new society – the socialist commonwealth. Our goal is a new social system based on common ownership of our resources and industry, cooperation, production for use and genuine democracy. Only socialism can turn the boundless potential of working people and resources to the creation of a world free from tyranny, greed, poverty, and exploitation. Workers are their pawns in a global game of mergers, shutdowns, and relocations and we have been robbed of the very power to determine our own future. Under capitalism, labour is a commodity. Workers are used as replaceable parts, extensions of machines—as long as they provide dividends. Employers use their power of ownership to devastate the lives of workers through layoffs, shutdowns, and neglect of health and safety. Unions, despite their courageous efforts, have encountered difficulties eliminating even the worst abuses of the bosses power. Massive world-wide misery is the legacy of profiteering corporations that are incapable of turning their technology and organisation to the needs of people.  They have distorted the economic development of the world so fundamentally, wasting the resources, for instance, that could eliminate hunger in the world yet the world waits in need of the goods technology could produce. Profits dictate the course of humanity.

The socialist option is the only alternative. Capitalism has failed, and so have all efforts to reform it. That failure puts a campaign for the socialist alternative on the immediate agenda. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society.  The Socialist Party invite all workers to join us to eradicate a social system based on exploitation, discrimination, poverty, and war. The capitalist system must be replaced by world socialism. That is the burning issue of our time, the only hope of humanity.

This world is our world

In the welter of initials, we should not be misled into thinking that the SPGB, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, is just another left-wing group. Its goal is a class-free society and rejects all reformist and opportunist methods of struggle. It takes the political and economic education of the workers seriously.

As Marxists, the Socialist Party maintains that our society is divided into classes based on groups of people standing in the same relationship to the means of production. Under the capitalist mode of production the principal classes in society are the capitalist class and the working class. Their historically-determined production relations form the basis, the economic structure of capitalist society. The capitalist class owns the means of production, the workers work for this class for wages; having no means of production of their own, they are forced to sell their labour power for what they can get. They are thus an exploited class. 

As Marxists, we hold that the interests of these classes are antagonistic and irreconcilable and that a constant struggle goes on between them over the division of the wealth that. society produces.  The exploiting class,  the capitalists of today, have their economic basis in the private ownership of the means of production. It is this ownership which determines the distribution of social wealth; the exploiters are rich, the exploited are poor.

 As Marxists, we view the ability of the present ruling class, the capitalists, to maintain their power is due to their control the government and use it in their own interests against the rest of society. No one can understand the main political questions of our time without an understanding of the state, and of its connection with classes and class struggle. The government protects the capitalist class by protecting the source of its economic strength, private property. It uses its control of government to write down its will and call it law. It uses its control of government to enforce its will, the law. The law is the voice of the ruling class.

So the basic premise of the Socialist Party is that we live in a class society.  Our aim is to abolish exploitation and therefore to abolish classes. Socialism is a system based on global solidarity and cooperation. If the people ran society, providing a decent life – housing, health care, education and so on – would be no problem. If instead of the idea that society should be run to maximise business profits society was run collectively and democratically by workers, it’s clear the economy would be vastly more productive than it is today. At present the processes of government by which the capitalist class rules is called the democratic form of government. Democracy literally means “rule of the people”. Since the capitalist class is a small minority but the majority of people support the present system and therefore the capitalist class controls the government only as long as the majority of the voters permit them to. The right to vote for the propertyless was one of a number of concessions which a confident capitalist class made during an earlier period. Nevertheless, the essence of the state is that it is an instrument for the oppression of one class by another.

Capitalism inevitably produces exploitation and poverty, war, national oppression, the oppression of women, poisonous pollution, environmental destruction and waste of human and natural resources, none of which can be consistently eliminated without the socialist transformation of society.  But how can the apologists for the status quo claim that capitalism promotes innovation when the majority of the world’s population are condemned to a life of mind and body destroying toil?  The idea that the 1% gained all their wealth through hard work or an “entrepreneurial spirit” is rubbish. They gained it from exploiting the labour of workers. If workers ran society, all that vast wealth could be used to improve society. Socialism is an economic system in which society’s resources are controlled democratically by the people.

Most people who call themselves socialists are still dominated by the idea that socialism is about expanding the sphere of activity of the state. For them, the key criterion of socialism is the nationalisation of property. The more militant their socialism, they assume, the more they must favour state property. A distinguishing mark of the Labour Left is its advocacy of some sort of nationalisation.  Judgements about the ‘socialist’ character of various regimes are based on the degree of state ownership. A travesty of ideas appears passes for socialism today because  Marx and Engels did not identify socialism with nationalisation of property. Like them, the Socialist Party's attitude to the state is one of unremitting hostility. Far from wishing to epand the State's activities, we seek to do away with it, in its entirety.  Those who oppose class exploitation must, necessarily, oppose the state. This is not simply because the state supports exploitation, but because it is itself directly a form of exploitation. The main task of all governments is the suppression and exploitation of the toiling masses. Socialists who wish to maintain the existing state are simply not serious. Like Engels, the Socialist Party looks forward to the time when the state will end its life ‘in the Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe’. What an appealing vision.

Socialism abolishes the chaos of capitalist production and social organisation; it does away with the dog-eat-dog competition of capitalism, the breeder of poverty, racism and war. Socialism marks the birth of an era of prosperity for the workers. Under capitalism, wealth piles up in the hands of the parasitic owners of the industries, while the actual producers live at barely subsistence level. There will be no artificial limits placed upon production by the need to sell in a flooded market but production will be carried on for the benefit of all the people. There cannot possibly be “exploited” when there is no ruling, owning class, no class to get a rake-off from the worker’s production.

For a New World

Capitalism is a system that can never work in the interest of the wage and salary earning majority. Certainly, in its periods of expansion, workers can expect rising wages (even if this is offset by having to work more and more intensively) but such periods of expansion are only one side of the coin. Capitalism does not, and cannot, expand in a smooth and continuous way; its growth pattern is one of fits and starts, of alternating periods of expansion and contraction (booms and slumps). The other side of a period of expansion and rising wages is the period of contraction and falling wages which inevitably follows it. Since trade unions exist to try to defend workers’ wages and conditions, it is only natural that the trade unions should have tried to resist governments intention to reduce real wages.

 Wages—real wages, that is, what they can buy—tend to fall in a recession because the increased unemployment or in modern times, underemployment, such as zero-hour contracts in the gig economy and increasing part-time work turns labour market conditions more in favour of employers. Supply of labour power comes to exceed demand so, as always happens in such circumstances, its price (wages and salaries) tends to fall. Workers can, by trade union organisation and action, slow down this tendency but they can’t reverse or even halt it. Thus in Britain over the past few years trade unions have been forced to settle for “increases” below the level of inflation and the rise of the cost of living. Trade unions should resist such a blatant, frontal attack on their members living standards. However, they should have no illusions. Under capitalism, even in times of expan­sion and boom, the cards are stacked in favour of the employers who are in the dominant bargaining position because they own the means of wealth production. In these circumstances, the most that unions can achieve is to slow down the fall in real wages, to limit the damage. One thing, however, is clear: if workers sit back and do nothing they may well lose more than if they stand up and strike.

Society today is characterised by a growing awareness of the widening gap between rich and poor. Outrage at the massive salaries and share option schemes awarded to those who run various industries has become commonplace. The question of CEO pay and bonuses has not only enraged thousands of people – it has also exposed how the market is rigged to deliver huge pay increases for those at the top and how governments have failed to curb those boardroom excesses.  The issue of CEO pay has exposed the existence of huge wealth in society, which exists independently of the policies of any particular government. The extent of the personal wealth of the rich is unimaginable to most people.

 The people who own the wealth in society are not, however, just a collection of individuals – they form a ruling class - the capitalists. Capitalism is a system which is constantly evolving. In the early 19th century an individual capitalist, or family group, would own a business. Modern corporations have broken the link between capital and its individual owner. Control of capitalism has outgrown the limitations of individual ownership and become institutionalised. Complex hierarchies of management are a product of these changes. The structure of management is parallel to that of production – management functions are carried out by workers, controlled by supervisors (senior management) and CEOs proper.

People know that capitalism is no good but few can see a way forward to a better type of society.  It is essential to generate interest in the idea of socialism. To achieve this aim we are spreading knowledge of the revolutionary outlook of Marxism among the working class. It is through political action that we reach out to people with our socialist message that socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. This was how Marx and Engels defined socialism. To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation of mines, railways, steel, etc. is not socialism, nor does this constitutes the socialist sector of a mixed economy. Such nationalisation is simply state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. Nor is the “Welfare State” socialist. “Welfare”, in capitalist terms, is to improve the efficiency of that state as a profit-maker, is not socialism but another form of state capitalism. It can be an improvement on capitalism with no welfare, just as a 40-hour week is an improvement on a 60-hour week. But it is not socialism. (A “Welfare State” also inevitably turns into the "Means Test State".) We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humankind.  It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in living standards with more poor people now in the world than ever before, starts murderous imperialist wars to steal the resources of less developed countries and causes the growing devastation of our natural environment.  Either we get rid of this outmoded and increasingly decrepit system or it will devastate humanity.  The hour is late and urgent action is necessary.

The only viable way forward to achieve socialism, a class-free and state-free society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural environment.  To create socialism it is necessary to overthrow the rule of capitalism and this can be done only through a social revolution.  The working class depose the capitalist ruling class and establish socialism and the reconstruction of society. There are many unanswered questions concerning the correct road toward No one set of ideas, including our own have resolved the problem of a lack of class consciousness among our fellow-workers. But many of the Socialist Party's ideas form the basis of the solution needed in the development of a class-free society. The source of men and women’s oppression lies in the private ownership of the means of production. The capitalist system is the enemy of men and women, and it is only through a socialist revolution and the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and the building of socialism, that the exploitation of the working class can disappear. The complete emancipation of humanity is only possible in a classless society – socialism. It is principally the task of men and women to take their fate into their own hands since their liberation can only be won through their own efforts.

For all the weaknesses of the working class, and of the socialist movement, there is the element of realism to socialism that is absent in what its critics say. Take the learned men of academia who speak so disdainfully of socialism’s past and contemptuously of its future, telling us that  Socialism is irrelevant! It is utopian!"  But politics is concerned with alternatives so what do they have to propose instead? In nine out of ten cases, it boils down to what we now have: an administration run by the alternating corrupt pro-capitalist parties, more utopian, absurd and irrelevant as even a beginning of a solution to the world's problems.

Workers are wage slaves!

Many people are worried about the welfare state–and so they should be. Governments around the world are cutting back on social spending because the capitalist class can no longer afford to pay for it at its previous levels. In times of economic difficulty, welfare spending is always the first element of state expenditure for governments to look to reduce. The reality for many of the working class who are unemployed, disabled, or a single parent (in other words, a huge swathe of the population) it is difficult for them to sleep easy in their beds. This is indeed a class issue. For the capitalists and their mouthpieces try to divide us – employed against unemployed, the fit against the sick. A united class struggle within capitalism but against it is our only answer.

The fact that a privileged few can make decisions in secret that affect the lives of thousands gives the lie to the notion of democracy under capitalism. There is a name for the sort of system where a privileged few can decide what information is fit for public consumption. It is, effectively, a dictatorship. Science and technology present itself to many in present-day society as a hostile force to be opposed, when it could so easily be turned to the task of satisfying human needs? These conflicting calls for secrecy and openness can reflect the conflicts of interest between different sections of the capitalist class, as well as between the capitalist and working classes. But technology and the products of our own hands do not just appear as a hostile force. Under capitalism, they are in fact a hostile force. Modern farming technology provides us with the means to feed the world. Forget the hypocritical cant of the politicians when they tell us that things are changing. Everything will stay the same until we organise to change it. When our own food system threatens to destroy us and appears to us as a force beyond our control, then there is a danger of doubting the ability of our thinking to distinguish the truth. In a period of social declines, such as that we are now in, men and women are faced with two options: accept that there is no way out and resign themselves to their fate, or confront reality and fight to change it. We in the Socialist Party have taken the latter course of action. As members of the working class aiming to come to a materialist understanding of the society we live in so that we can begin to change it, we look forward to the day when our “crackpot” position is vindicated.

A vote for the lesser evil is a vote against the greater evil. But it is also a vote for the system of lesser evil politics that basically gives voters no say in policy, handing all power over to Party pundits. For lesser evil voting to remain legitimate, there has to be a difference between the two parties. It’s in the interest of both parties to show a difference from the other because then someone who is politically inclined will choose the option they like best. If they were the same, why would anybody vote for either of them?

Workers, it matters not to you under whose rule you are, nor whether empires rise or fall or what dynasties may topple and “democracies” arise, because if wage-slavery continues, these changes leave your position absolutely unaltered as a class! To abolish poverty and unemployment, wage-slavery and war, and a thousand evils of the capitalist system is within your power. It is you alone who can affect your emancipation. Organise to capture the powers of government and completely control the destiny of your class - the wealth-producers of the world. Your only enemy is the international capitalist class. You alone can achieve the greatest purpose the mind of man has evolved—International Socialism! Under that system alone can come about the brotherhood of man, liberty, comfort, and peace for all. Hail the “socialist commonwealth of the World." So long, therefore, as capitalism survives must we endure class warfare. Socialisation of the means and instruments of production and distribution in the interest of the whole people is the only possible solution. When the workers become educated enough to realise the possibilities behind our proposals, the doom of capitalism will most assuredly be at hand.

The stupendous crime of the international capitalists will come fully home to their victims when they find that all their sacrifices have left them simply where they were, facing the old familiar evils. Capitalist politics and politicians prosperously reeking in their treachery will be ripe for utter discredit. Our day will come—our harvest will be ready for the garnering The place, therefore, of all those who are with us in mind, more now than ever before, is in our party. Let us have every ounce of our strength organised for the coming struggle. The working class will gather understanding from history, ancient and modern, and not be led astray by sentimental talk about the rich and the poor being of one mind and one spirit. Beware of men who talk about reconciliation between the working class and the master class. That is impossible. The only firm ground upon which the working class can successfully stand is the full recognition of the class war and the determination to fight on to the end—the social revolution; the inauguration of socialism.

We in the Socialist Party are often told by those to whom we expound our political and economic principles and beliefs: "Yes, no doubt socialism would be a very fine thing if it could only be brought about, but it cannot—it is only a beautiful dream." We accept such statements as a challenge from all those who hold those ideas.

The vast majority of the people in every capitalist country in the world belong to a class who have to work for their living. But a proportionately very small class are free from such necessity. Why? Simply because they can obtain all they need without work—from the labour of the workers. These fortunate individuals who are not under the necessity of working for their living amass wealth in ever-increasing accumulation. In contradistinction the position of the wealth producers generally does not improve, in fact, it tends to become worse. Each year finds them, in spite of wise expenditure, frugality, temperance, and all the enforced wisdom of economic stress, no better off.  they live and die in poverty after a toiling existence of a beast of burden. They are looked upon by the owning and ruling capitalist class simply as wealth producers, to be exploited in every sphere of labour. Their very lives are owned and controlled by this small but extremely powerful and dominant group of non-producers whom we call the capitalist class. They possess the land and all the means and instruments of wealth production, distribution, and exchange. Not only that—they sit in the “seats of the mighty," completely control the making of the laws—which, of course, are always enacted to conserve their own class interests—and thus economically and politically are, in every sense of the word, the Master Class. The masses have to live, and having nothing to operate in their own interests, owning no means of production, possessing only their power to labour, they are compelled to sell that labour-power to those who possess the means through which alone it can be productively used. So they must work under the terms and conditions dictated by their masters.

 Financiers, share-holders, industrialists, all who live on the labour of others, exist on the wealth they themselves have no share in producing. The consequence is this system of wage slavery produces a host of social evils of the most appalling type, such as unemployment, sweating, prostitution, poverty, starvation, disease, and untimely death.

Consider all the marvelous technological production that exist to-day—means that enable the wealth of all kinds to be produced in prolific abundance—have been made by and are operated by the workers. Yet we continue to see the damning indictment of the present system daily— hunger in the midst of plenty; overwork for those who starve, ennui through unbroken idleness for those who possess the world; unemployment side by side with sweating; abundant opportunities for all-round development for the favoured class, and deprivation of access to all that life should give them for the workers, whose lives are compulsorily wasted by the all-compelling exigencies of a vicious system. All the channels of knowledge, the wisdom of the ages, the finest triumphs of man in the domain of art, literature, music, and science should by right be available to them, for it is they who produce the material foundation from which all these spring.

 The wealth stolen from them has been the means of their enslavement. The capital which is used against them to produce wealth and also yet more capital they alone produced. Now they are slaves of the machine. They are poor because they are continually robbed; they are continually robbed because this social system, founded upon their robbery, continues to exist. They are only sellers of their labour-power, enriching others at their own expense, forever sacrificing their own desires, interests, aye, existence, that the exploiters may exploit them, and the plutocrat continue to plunder them! 

We claim that we are the only political party who show the workers that they hold the key of their emancipation in their own hands, that they alone can set themselves free. The present system will be its own undoing. The rich as a class grow richer, the poor ever poorer. and so capital is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, making ever more uneven the ratio between the exploited and the exploiters. As capital wields greater power the conflict of class interests grows ever stronger, and labour consolidates its forces and the struggle becomes more class-conscious and bitter. Now it will be seen that this system automatically produces it own opponents—the proletariat or propertyless working class—and also the incentive for the latter to wrest from the capitalists the power to exploit and oppress.

Now here is the crux of the whole question: how are the master class to be stripped of their terrible and oppressive power? Other things being equal, the men who succeed best in accomplishing their purpose are those who know exactly what they want to do and how best to do it. First of all, then, the victims of the present social system must find the answer to the question, how are they to emancipate themselves from their servile position?

Clearly, since that position arises from the private ownership of the means of production, the first thing that emerges is that such private ownership must go. The only alternative to the private ownership of the means of production by the few possible to-day, with the present stage of development of those means, is social ownership—ownership by the whole community. With the means and instruments for the production and distribution of wealth owned and controlled by the whole community there can be no other object in operating them but to produce wealth FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE COMMUNITY. The means of living belonging to the whole of the people, none is outside their ownership, nor, on the other hand, can any person have ownership in these things as an individual, but only as a cell in the social body.

As a consequence of this, the whole social fabric must reshape itself. The only means of productively applying it belonging to the community, labour-power must come under communal control. No person can purchase it because, in the first place, he or she has no means of exploiting it, in the second place, no worker would desire to sell his or her labour-power to another since we have the opportunity of exercising it through the communal means, and thirdly, since the whole of the wealth produced under such a system belongs to the community, there is no exchange within the community, and therefore money— the means of exchange—loses its function and its value, and becomes useless for the purchase of labour-power or anything else. The sale of labour-power for wages, then, must disappear with the abolition of private property in the instruments of labour. The whole wages system, in fact, must collapse with the change in the property condition, and a new set of relations must arise between social units, in which the relations of master and man can find no place. The class division, by which the people of every country are divided into exploiters and exploited, employers and employed, masters and slaves, rich and poor, according as they are propertied or propertyless, must vanish with the rest, giving place to a unified community of workers, socially equal because equal possessors in the economic basis of society—the means and instruments of producing the social wealth.

How can the workers accomplish this splendid end? We claim that the fundamental means to achieve this is to capture the political machine. Capture and control that, and we capture and control the governing machinery of the State. The armed forces of the oppressing class will then no longer be a menace to the workers, but an instrument for their emancipation. The whole of the people will be ruled by the will of the people. Democracy will have become a reality at last.

Wealth will be produced for the use and enjoyment of ALL by the marvelous modern means of production, and with the minimum of effort. Thus abundance of opportunity for all-around culture and development will be accessible to all. Art will have an undreamed of renaissance. Science will no longer be a slave to death-dealing purposes, but put to living, helpful uses for humanity.

Socialism is inevitable. Capitalist, exploitation forces the workers on the road toward it, and is itself a mighty means of education. But nevertheless, the need is imperative upon all who desire socialism, to do all that they can to educate their fellow workers and to awaken in them a like desire.