We Need Real Socialism

The Socialist Party insists that the workers must win political power and capture the State machine to obtain supremacy over the capitalist class. The property-owning class can only "command” the economic conditions by being in political control. Their economic interests unite the capitalists into political parties to control the governing machine so that their economic interests can be defended. Hence the fierce competition to win a majority of the working-class voters to maintain capitalist control. The capitalists are combined through the political government in order to hold the proletariat in subjection. Anarchist politics ignores the enormous power of the State machine to suppress revolts. It ignores, too, the lack of resources of the workers when on strike or "locked out.” Revolutionary Syndicalism/Industrial Unionism cannot establish socialism, for it organises the workers by industry and divides the workers up into industrial sections, each concerned with its own industry. The Socialist Party hold that the workers must first of all realise their common interests and unite into a class organisation as socialists struggling for political control. The forms of the workers' economic organisation under capitalism will reflect the growing class understanding and Socialist ideas of the workers. The Socialist Party rejects “workers’ management” as a solution to workers’ problems. We insist on the abolition of wages. We say that tinkering with administrative forms is of no use. Buying and selling must be abolished. The wage packet—the permission to live—must be abolished.

Wherever one turns, one discovers disappointment with the Labour Party at its manifest failure of to make an impression upon the various evils of the worker’s life. Some supporters of the Labour Party appear to consider that their leaders’ failure is personal; that it is due to not having the right men in office. It is plain, however, to anyone understanding the above facts, that no shuffling of ministers in the Government can accomplish any vital change. Any attempt to interfere with the normal operations of capitalism could only introduce chaos and intensify the very evils of which the workers complain, thus bewildering their supporters and producing an even more rapid reaction than that at present in progress. Economic laws cannot be set aside by the emotional rhetoric of orators, however sincere they may be. The only logical alternative to capitalism to-day is socialism, and as the majority of Labour Party supporters are not socialists, they will not support any fundamental attack upon capitalism. The present leaders of the Labour Party are astute enough and experienced enough to realise this, and they possess sufficient control over the party’s wire-pulling machinery to hold the left-wingers in effective check. Reformers plan to re-arrange the wages system. They imagine that slavery can be operated in the interests of slaves! They are wasting their time.

At present the majority of the workers lack the necessary knowledge to organise for socialism. Only economic development coupled with intelligent propaganda can teach them. In the meantime, all the efforts of calculating schemers and well-meaning blunderers can only bring them disappointment, disillusion and despair. The Socialist Party has said this for over a century, and it is prepared, if necessary, to go on repeating it. Day by day the truth of our contention is being confirmed. The bitter fruits of compromise are apathy. The attempts of reformers to gloss over and patch up the class-struggle have failed. For ourselves, however, not having based any hopes in the Labour Party, we find no cause for despair. The need for our existence becomes plainer than ever. Out of a realisation that compromise is futile will grow the conviction that the socialist policy of unswerving determination to end capitalism by attacking unceasingly its political props is the only fertile one. The failure of Labour is but the echo of the failure of Conservatives.  It is capitalism which fails to permit the workers to enjoy the fruits of their work. The interests of the workers demand a social change, a change from the private ownership of the means of living to the common ownership thereof. To that end we summon those workers whose blinkers are falling from their eyes to organise for the capture of the powers of government in order to achieve their emancipation. Capitalism is a society of unrelenting insecurity and poverty. The lot of all workers under capitalism. Their day to day struggles will be more frequent and intense, and the outcome a continuing vista of repetitive struggle over the same issues—work and wages.

Men and women will never be free from exploitation and oppression until all work is voluntary and access to all goods and services is free. Socialism means a world-wide society, democratically controlled, without profits, wages or money. This is a practical proposition now. All attempts to solve such problems as war, poverty, hunger, alienated and degrading toil, inside a society based on wages and profits are sure to fail. We, alone of all political organisations, use the slogan “Abolition of the wages system!”

It is true that the capitalists, like all ruling classes, live in great luxury and possess immense power. But it is a mistake to think that the workers are poor because the capitalists consume so much. On the contrary, the wealth actually consumed personally by capitalists is an insignificant (and diminishing) fraction of total wealth produced. Taking the consumption of the capitalists and sharing it out amongst the workers would result in a rise for us all of only a few shillings a week. It is a fact that our masters live off the fat of the land, but if they starved we should still be slaves. Socialists are not primarily concerned, like moralists of “fair play,” to indict the caviar and yachts of the super-rich, but rather the misdirection of production: the subordination of consumption to accumulation and the immensity of organized waste and destruction.

The wages system is the universal badge of class servitude and exploitation. When the class system of capitalism is scrapped, the wages systems will go with it. Poverty and insecurity are inherent in this capitalist society. Wages only represent enough wealth, on average, to keep workers in working order and to provide replacements when they wear out. Capitalism necessarily degrades both workers and capitalists in a thousand different ways. But this degradation presses harder upon the workers whose whole lives are spent as appendages to someone else's pursuit of profits, mere extensions to the productive resources of another class. They are harried and driven, deceived and deluded by more refined methods and to a greater degree of intensity than any exploited class in history. They are divided and subdivided and taught to take up the spurious ideology of their masters as their own. All wars in the modem world are predatory—fought by workers who own no means of production, to enable the victorious sections of the capitalist class to re-divide the plunder. Workers clearly have no stake in such a set-up.

The life of the working class is spent in struggles to maintain a meagre level of existence at the mercy of blind economic forces they as yet can only understand vaguely, if at all. Leisure becomes a respite between work shifts and work becomes a drudge to be regarded as a necessary evil, instead of an essential means of self-expression through social creativity. As much as workers hate employment and have little interest in what they do, they live in fear of unemployment and develop neuroses of resentment against “outsiders" or “foreigners” who are seen as a threat to “their” jobs. They fill half the hospital beds with cases of nervous and mental disorders which arise from the pressures to which capitalism subjects them. Yet, epithets such as "agitator" and “trouble-maker" are commonly applied to anyone who seeks change.

With the advent of socialism, goods and services of all kinds will be produced solely for use. Social products will no longer be exchanged, but will be freely available, because the means of production will belong to society as a whole. There will be no means of exchange or any other barrier between people and the things they need. The pattern of conduct that follows from common ownership will be a harmonious one; just as that arising from class ownership is antagonistic. Human dignity will again be able to assert itself, free from exploitation. The conditions which cause war and poverty will disappear. People will willingly co-operate because they will be conscious of their involvement in society and will be in control of their environment. The fact is that in order for socialism to be established, a majority of the world’s workers must understand and desire it. From the basis of this understanding, new, truly human relationships will arise in place of the crude cash nexus.

Taking Socialism Seriously

We need to hold to a vision of the future we want to see and work to make it a reality. It’s been a tough for those of us in the Socialist Party trying to overthrow capitalism but that doesn’t mean we should give up—in fact that would be among the worst things we could do. What stands in the way of socialism are attitudes of despair and despondency. And the business of the Socialist Party politics is, among other things, to change those attitudes. The Socialist Party holds the socialist future in our hearts and minds so that it can give us the perseverance to keep up the struggle. We resist capitalism not because we are guaranteed success but because it is right. Our compass should have socialism as its destination. We need to keep this end in mind so not to lose our way. An important part of our task today is to recover socialist theory from distortions.

Socialism aims at giving meaning to the life and work of people, enabling their freedom and their creativity to flourish. Socialism is not state ownership or government planning or even a rise in living standards. Socialist society implies the organisation by people themselves of every aspect of their social life, seeking to build the world without oppression and exploitation.  The purpose of socialist revolution is instead to provide today’s society with a form of organisation that corresponds to the material possibilities open to us. Today's world has all the objective material capacities to put an end to capitalist exploitation and all the forms of oppression that it perpetuates. This is the basic and primary reason for working for socialism.

The Socialist Party is often asked to lay out in detail our idea of what socialism will be like. A detailed blueprint is possible only where we have, in advance, comprehensive knowledge of all relevant facts. We do not possess such comprehensive information about the future which is not laid out according to a prearranged pattern, but is itself modified by our actions.  The most we can do or need to do, therefore, is to offer a general rough sketch. We learn about the details filling in the gaps provided by the rough sketch as we go along. If we are reasonably sure of the main outlines, we go ahead and find out what happens, adjusting ourselves flexibly to experience.

 Yet there are many elements to the socialist ideal— “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”; the disappearance of the State; the breaking down of the barrier between intellectual and physical labor; “society of the free and equal” In order for the society to be just and equitable, it must embody socialist principles. We need to make a fundamental change in society. SOCIALISM MEANS EXPANDING DEMOCRACY NOT ONLY IN THE POLITICAL SENSE BUT IN AN ECONOMIC SENSE. The socialist idea of a free and equal cooperative commonwealth is a practical one under an economy of abundance. A world without money, and without any kind of substitute for a monetary exchange, would not be a world of chaos, as some might suppose as the alarmists would have us believe. A world without money be like? I think it would be a world without poverty and hunger and unemployment; without economic misery and without fear for the future. It would be a world where men and women could choose their particular vocation and might work at the thing for which is best suited. It would be a world where everyone might be well and comfortable, fed and housed.

The Socialist Party counter the illusion that there can be world peace, explaining that there could be no lasting solution on the basis of capitalism. The form of the conflict could be changed, there could be interludes brought about by war weariness and exhaustion, above all the development of the class struggle could cut across nationalism and sectarianism for a period of time. But, so long as capitalism remained, the underlying problem and with it the basis for ongoing conflict would remain also.

This is our opportunity

“To escape its wretched lot, the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The two first are drink and the church, the third is the social revolution.” -  Bakunin (‘God, and the State,’ 1871)

The Socialist Party proposes great changes in the way our world is organised and run.  The idea of the impossibility of life without the market still predominates. Scouring the world for profits, capitalism has expanded into virtually every corner of the planet and created a global economy with an international division of labour. The capitalists have reaped unprecedented profits yet it is unable to solve the problem of growing poverty. As long as capitalism lasts only a few superficial cosmetic changes can be made in it. No matter that we remain a tiny minority. No matter that we face defeat. The more we proclaim the fundamentals of socialism, the more fertile the soil in the future. We, in the Socialist Party, seek the co-operative commonwealth, in which there shall be neither master nor servant, where people are not shackled and gagged by the system under which they work. 

Instead of the market choosing what to produce and when and how to distribute it, the Socialist Party say society should have rational planning. However, we decline to get lost in describing the fine details. What is the future of mankind? That is for mankind to decide, not the Socialist Party. Presently we are incapable of foretelling all the conditions of how this future will be like. Those who demand intricate blueprints of socialism are either political foes or sceptics. They insist upon a blueprint not to fill in any gap within it but highlight a weakness to undermine the idea. But we are able to depict socialism with broad brush strokes to indicate necessary components and signpost its direction. There is not much more to arranging socialism than there is to a happy family household. Socialism is the rational distribution of the necessaries of life according to need. A person’s needs are food, shelter, clothing, education, health care, and entertainment and leisure.  We cannot precisely define needs but socialism is bound to produce different longings and needs and we are confident that those can be furnished by ever more innovative technology

A community would get together in some presumably democratic way (no one way fits all) to organise the coordination among the individual production units.  So, the planning mechanism is where people would get together, exchange views and opinions, agree on a plan. That planning be done at a world level, at the regional level, at the local level, depending on circumstances. Obviously, if the planning is mostly local, and there has to be some coordination among the localities, then how much of that coordination is needed depends on the division of labour and the supply of materials. The more it does for itself, the less coordination needed but we are not talking about autarky. There will have to be cooperation among worker self-managed enterprises.

This age of plenty for all, an era of shared abundance for all has already been technically possible for several decades. Why wait any longer to usher in an age of peace and prosperity. Socialism will bring together the planning of production to meet human need, the development of science and technology, and the free access to goods. There is no obstacle to society being run on the socialist principle: ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.’

 Our rulers are absolutely united on what they must do as a class to protect themselves from any challenge to the system of private property and to their privilege and power. There is a manipulation of people’s thinking,  the age old tactic of “divide and conquer,” with the intent being to isolate one section of society in order to control the rest.  The ruling class’ tactics is to disarm and divide the working class. The ruling class uses every question to assert alliances along national and colour lines, inciting bigotry and xenophobia particularly among native born. The ruling class is waging a vicious, relentless campaign for the hearts and minds of the people. It emphasizes “me, me, me, and to hell with everyone else." The Socialist Party is engaged in a war of ideas to win the hearts and minds of fellow-workers.  

People are confused. They don’t know where to throw a blow or who to blame for their poverty and misery. The ruling class understands that as long as the mass of people lack a vision and remain confused about who is their friend and who is their foe, it can maintain its supremacy. Mankind's future must not be decided by those in power, the financiers, the industrialists, and the politicians. It must be decided by working people who must organise and speak out with one voice.  We demand life inside socialism before death under capitalism overtakes us all. The struggle for socialism has become the fight for the very existence of mankind.

The Socialist Party cause is a vision of humanity creating a new world, a world free of exploitation and strife. No force on Earth can stop workers from taking what rightfully belongs to them. No force can prevent working people from coalescing into one unified workers movement but it cannot progress without a goal. That aspiration is a world free forever from want, from race and national hatred and from sexual oppression and human exploitation, where the ever-expanding material and cultural needs of the people are satisfied by an ever-expanding technology that has freed humanity from toil. Today, the level of the means of production makes realising this cause possible. The Socialist Party aim is one of prosperity and social harmony. In 1904 we formed our organisation to accomplish this end. With little hope of a decent future, the working class will always present a threat to the capitalists. However, a movement of sorts is taking shape. The movement consists of the social activity of millions of people to reorganise society to be ecologically sustainable.

Workers have to live in a class society and their wills are restricted by the limitations imposed by the State; nevertheless, within their own organisations they can aspire to community of democracy and a socialist commonwealth.  The Socialist Party is part of the movement of independent working-class education world-wide. Without interest, knowledge, and will, nothing can be done. With them, all difficulties will vanish. For as Goethe once said, “You need only blow upon your hands.”

The future is up to all workers

The Socialist Party is a political party, which means that its concern is the struggle of the working class as a whole. We stand for socialism: a new system in which the people own and control the economy. Capitalism is an outlived system whose lifeblood is profit and exploitation, whether or not represented as the “welfare state” and whether or not its government is administered by liberals or self-styled “socialists.” Capitalism perpetuates poverty, unemployment, racism, and war. Socialism will only be gained by waging the working-class struggle. Socialism means the ending of exploitation of man by man, a society without class antagonisms, in which the people themselves control their means of life and use them for their own happiness. 

The spirit of our time is revolutionary and growing more so every day. The capitalist system is doomed. The signs of change confront us upon every hand. For countless ages the world has been a vast battlefield and the struggle for existence a perpetual conflict. In this struggle which has appealed to the basest and not to the best in man the cunning few have triumphed and now have the masses at their mercy. The Socialist Party is the only party that stands against the present system and for the rule of the people; the only party that boldly avows itself the party of the working class and its purpose the overthrow of wage-slavery. So long as the present system of capitalism prevails and the few are allowed to own the World's resources and industries, the toilers will be struggling in the hell of poverty as they are today. The Socialist Party is absolutely the only party which faces conditions as they are and declares unhesitatingly that it has a definite plan for ending these conditions. The Socialist Party is the party of the exploited workers. Private property and competition have had their day. The Socialist Party stands for social ownership and co-operation. The one is capitalism; the other socialism. The one industrial despotism, the other industrial democracy. The Socialist Party demands the overthrow of the wages system. The workers who have made the world and who support the world, are preparing to take possession of the world. This is what the Socialist Party stands for in this campaign. We demand the means of production in the name of the workers and the control of society in the name of the people. We demand the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery and the surrender of the capitalist class. We demand the equal rights of all the people regardless of sex, race, color, or nationality.  We demand complete control of industry by the workers; we demand all the wealth they produce for their own enjoyment, and we demand the Earth for all the people. The point about socialism is that it would replace a hierarchical, bureaucratic and undemocratic society – capitalism – with a genuine democracy in which the working people controlled their own representatives. The self-emancipation of the working class through their own struggle and the democratic society which follows such emancipation are at the heart of socialism. 

The attitude of the Sociaalist Party is clear and definite. It claims that the wealth of society is created by the workers. It claims that the workers must commonly own and control all the processes of wealth production. In a word, the Socialist Party strives to build socialism. We carry this struggle on to the political field in order to challenge the power which the present ruling class wields through its domination of the State which it wins at the ballot box. By its victory at the ballot box, and its consequent political domination, the capitalists are able to repress labour.

We are convinced that the present political State, with most of its attendant institutions, must be abolished. The  State is not and cannot be a true democracy. It is not elected according to the needs of the community. It is elected because the wealthiest section of society can suppress all facts through its power over the press. By its money the capitalists can buy up the media to create false election issues. The electorate is not asked to vote upon facts but only upon such topics as the media representing capital, puts before the workers. But we cannot build socialism and leave political control in the hands of the ruling class. We have seen what power the conquest of the State gives to the capitalists in its struggle with Labour. It is through its political strength that the capitalists can deprive us of every shred of civil rights the loss of which makes the peaceful agitation for the revolution impossible. Capitalists if necessary will resort to the use ofcoercive methods and even  the armed forces. The control of these forces flow directly from capitalist control of the State which it secures at the ballot box. Therefore, in order to achieve a peaceful revolution, the working class must capture the powers of the State at the ballot box and prevent the capitalist class from suppressing workers. This destructive function is the revolutionary role of political action. But this destructive political function is necessary in order that the industrial constructive element in the revolution builing socialism may not be thwarted.

The Labour Party has no message for the working class and no method whereby the workers may destroy capitalism and construct socialism. The Socialist Party alone puts forward such a position as a revolutionary political organisation that believes in revolutionary political action.  We urge our fellow-workers to use their votes to capture political power—not to play at politicians or pose as statesmen, but to use their votes to uproot the political State. To think that Parliament can be used as the means of permanently improving the conditions of Labour, by passing a series of acts, is to believe in parliamentarism. The Socialist Party is not a parliamentary party, in that sense. It believes in entering Parliament only as a means of sweeping away all antiquated institutions which stand in the way of the industrial union owning and controlling the means of production. . The social revolution is on now. It is for us to bring it to its consummation. For the first time since the beginning of human history, a great upheaval will have for its aim, not the substitution of one class for another, but the destruction of classes, the inauguration of a universal humanity. But this new social system cannot be created and inspired by a minority. It can only function with the approval of an immense majority of the citizens. It is this majority that will gradually create from capitalistic chaos, the various types of social property, co-operative, communal, and corporative, and it will only demolish the last remains of the capitalist edifice when it has firmly established the foundations of the socialistic order and when the new building is ready to give shelter to mankind. In this enormous task of social construction, the immense majority of the citizens must co-operate. Destined for the benefit of all, it must be prepared and accepted by almost all, practically indeed, by all; because the hour inevitably arrives when the power behind an immense majority discourages the last efforts to resist its will. The great  thing about socialism is precisely that it is not the regime of a minority. It cannot, therefore, and ought not, to be imposed by a minority.

Our future is socialism

Any arrangement which leaves most of us having to sell our labour-power in order to scrape a living is not  socialism.  Policies of state intervention in the economy or commitment to state responsibility for welfare and social services are normally labelled "socialist". These bogus claim blurs the essential differences between capitalism and socialism: wage-labour, commodity production, class struggle — all these characteristics of capitalism, however "reformed" and whatever the extent of state control of the economy, will have no place in a socialist society. The Socialist Party has frequently explained that socialism is very different.

The point is that the capitalist system is not in business to make people happy, to build houses for homeless people to live in, to produce food for hungry people, or to care for the sick, the handicapped the old and the very young. It is in business to make profits to keep accountants and shareholders happy. Any coincidence with socially necessary or desirable activities is just that — a coincidence. The real issue is whether we actually want a society which operates according to an accountant s sense of values or one which operates in terms of satisfying human needs. There is a real conflict in capitalism between what is perceived as profitable, and therefore feasible, and what is known to be necessary, desirable and useful but unprofitable, and therefore impractical. That is why there are homeless, hungry and unemployed people. And that is why socialists detest the capitalist principle which puts profits before people. It is time to end this system and create a better world.

 The only future the capitalist class seeks is one where they make plenty of profits. Or, to be quite precise about it, one where we, the workers, will make plenty of profits, to be handed directly to those who monopolise the resources of the earth. They can only get richer out of the hard work of suckers who are prepared to produce everything and then be thankful for a wage or salary which enables us to buy the cheapest and shoddiest of goods. The contented wage slave is the basic requirement of the contented capitalist. Unless the producers produce the possessors will have nothing to possess. Looking forward to a capitalist future is a bleak prospect. Capitalism's problems do not stay the same. They become worse.  Who can doubt that our future will see more needless human misery. There’s been a lot of bad news about climate change and the future of humanity with many foreboding dark predictions. But as a species we’re smart and creative enough to fix things.  The alternatives are not doomsday scenarios, ignorance and despair. The Socialist Party chooses hope. Let us be visionary. Let’s dream big. Let’s fight for our children and grand children and let’s strive together for their future.

Socialist change does not mean that the workers, like Oliver Twist, should ask for just a little bit more. Nor is it asking for a lot more. It means taking the whole lot. All of the factories, the farms, the offices, the media, the means of transportation, the sources of energy — the entire means and instruments of producing and distributing wealth will become the property of the workers of the world. Who can deny that socialism is the only practical hope facing working men and women in the years ahead? 

Is the socialism too ambitious? No. We need to aspire to great things.  We have an opportunity to join together as never before to form a working class movement to build political power through strategies of solidarity, education and action. The Socialist Party will encourage people to create socialist networks and become politically active so to determine their own destiny. We need solutions that are agreed and coordinated at the worldwide scale, not country by country. Consider civil aviation, a triumph of globally coordinated engineering. In 2017, there were almost 42 million flights without a single fatal passenger jet accident. The civil aviation system works so well because

all countries use aircraft manufactured by a few global companies and share standard operating procedures for navigation, air traffic control, maintenance, and other operations.  Other global systems are similarly coordinated such as the Universal Postal Union, praised by the anarchist Peter Kropotkin. More recently is the World Wide Web, where billions of daily internet activities (also mobile phone calls) are possible because of shared protocols. Both the scale and reliability of these globally connected high-tech systems are astounding, and depend on solutions implemented internationally, not country by country. Our capacity for cooperation definitely offers some hope.

Here We Stand

 Recognising that only through socialism, the common ownership and control of the means of producing wealth, can the people be freed from misery, we declare ourselves a socialist party, and undertake to campaign among the people to win them to the need to establish socialism. The Socialist Party is composed of is organised to educate the working-class into the knowledge of socialist principles and to prepare them to co-operate with the workers of all other races, colours and nationalities in the emancipation of labour.

Capitalism rests upon exploitation in the workplace, whether in a factory, mine, bank, office building, in the home, or online. All capitalist societies are marked by a sharp separation between the few who own and the many who must gain access to what the former have, namely society's productive property: land, resources, tools, equipment, machinery. Failure to do so means misery and even death. To get such access, people must sell the one thing they do own, their capacity to work. The advantage here obviously lies with the owners, that is, with the capitalists. This fundamental inequality gives capital the power to compel (exploit) workers to labour for an amount of time that is greater than that which would be required to produce the necessities of life. Employees are therefore paid a wage that will buy enough for them to live and to reproduce, to purchase their subsistence. However, their day's work produces far more output than what workers need, and this surplus, when sold, is the enterprise’s profits. These are used to buy more means of production, and the process repeats itself indefinitely, allowing for ever greater accumulations of capital. Businesses become larger and more concentrated, and they expand geographically until they encompass the world. Power grows from the points of production to every element within the larger society, from media, schools, and cultural institutions to each level of government. And as capital augments itself, it comes to infiltrate all the nooks and crannies of our lives, including our minds.

Capitalism is also based upon expropriation, which means the taking of something without payment. This occurs prior to and coincident with exploitation. For example, the private ownership of property in the means of production that distinguishes capitalism from earlier economic systems, came into being largely through theft of peasant lands, either by capitalists themselves or in league with governments (the State). Rural farmers, who typically engaged in cooperative labour on lands that were considered common and available to all for grazing animals, gathering firewood and plants, hunting, and fishing, even for cultivation, now found that the common parcels had become private property and what had once been a right to use them was now a crime. The early history of Europe is one of rampant, relentless, and brutal land robbery. Peasants deprived of their means of sustenance often had no choice but to become wage workers, providing a pool of desperate "hand" to be exploited. Profits made from them could then be used to finance the expropriation of more territory in a reciprocal process that enriched capital and impoverished labour. 

Another form of expropriation is that of nature. Capital considers the air, water, and soil to be “free” resources to be used and abused, so long as money can be made. The disharmonies created between society and nature, while existent in previous systems of production, rise to entire new levels with capitalism. The profits accumulated by polluting air, soil, and water allow for great accumulations of capital, always built upon the exploitation of labour, which gives rise to more expropriation of the earth. Nature eventually loses its capacity for regeneration, and this requires an intensification, by chemical and mechanical means, of the expropriation. Nature is stolen by capital, so that labor can be further exploited. In addition, land, water, even air, are made into commodities that can be bought and sold, again creating new arenas for accumulation. The social costs of capital's abuse of nature is typically borne by workers and peasants. They live where air pollution is worst, where the soil has been most degraded. They drink contaminated water. Their workplaces and their hunting and fishing grounds are fouled in multiple ways. When floods, hurricanes, and droughts, caused and exacerbated by capitalist-induced global warming, descend upon humanity, those of us with least will suffer the most.  Production methods that could significantly lower global warming will always be rejected if there are more profitable alternatives.

If we are to successfully combat exploitation and expropriation, we must counter all forms of inequality within the working class. The class struggle cannot be effectively waged unless we also reject racism, sexism, nationalism and ecological ruin which are central to capitalism's rule. These must be rejected root and branch, attacked all at once and all the time. If we want a social system, one in which production is democratically controlled by workers and communities, with meaningful work, with sustainable agriculture, with human-centered technology, with equality in all spheres of life, with true, substantive accountability, with pollution removed from our soil, air, and water then we must look at the world as an interconnected whole.

Socialist Standard No. 1373 January 2019

• Editorial: System change not climate change
  
• Pathfinders: Missionary Positions
  
• Letter: Rose by another name?
  
• The human family
  
• Dear Theresa…
  
• Cooking the Books: Who is Exploited?
  
• Wood for the Trees: Hope
  
• Material World: The military contribution to climate change
  
• Almeria’s Greenhouses: The Dark Side of Agri-Capitalism
  
• Rosa Luxemburg, political democracy and mass action
  
• No longer invisible
  
• After Greece, Italy?
  
• Our Future on Earth
  
• Cooking the Books: ‘Transition period’
  
• Proper Gander: Sold A Pup?
  
• Book Review: ‘The Machine and its Discontents – A Fredy Perlman Anthology’
  
• Book Review: ‘Socialism and Commodity Production’
  
• Book Review: ‘Rupturing the Dialectic – The Struggle Against Work, Money and Financialization’
  
• Pamphlet Review: ‘Sylvia Pankhurst on Socialism’
  
• 50 Years Ago: Rosa Luxemburg and the Collapse of Capitalism
  
• Rear View
  
• Cartoon: Free Lunch
  

PDF Version

A Guid New Year to one and aw'

Another new year has arrived, and with it,  the usual good wishes for health, wealth, and prosperity. There exists a time-honoured illusion that somehow the advent of a new year automatically wipes out the mistakes, horrors and heartbreaks of the last 365 days. A sort of magical aura surrounds the celebrations with the old year depicted as a very old man plodding wearily to his grave, and the new year as a lovable little baby as if a new leaf has been well and truly turned, and the way ahead is clear. What a false idea, but it is one to which most people cling to. And what of the prospects for  2019? The same as for any other year or at any point in any year. It doesn’t take an astrology chart to tell us that capitalism will continue, and its problems with it. For most of us it means a drab and insecure life, and as much as ever the threat of destruction from climate change and war hanging over us like an angry dark cloud. This is the standard condition of capitalism with which we are so familiar.

Our wish for the New Year is that it will open a way to a harmonious life for all men and women by harmonising the economic interests of all men and women. We urge all members of our class to devote their attention in the coming new year to our emancipation from wage-slavery.
Capitalism is a system of society which divides people rather than unites them — capitalist from worker, men from women, blacks from whites, nation from nation. It teaches us competition not co-operation competition for jobs, housing and something that approximates to a bearable standard of living. The division between capitalist and worker is inherent in capitalism — their interests are totally opposed and can never be reconciled. But the divisions between workers are not inherent —they are encouraged by the conditions in which we live and work but could be overcome through a recognition of our common class interests, our mutual inter-dependence and, above all, the need for radical change.

 For your New Year's resolution  we suggest it would be nice to think that people throughout the world are scribbling the words: "I resolve that 2019 will be the year that I will organise democratically with my fellow workers to abolish capitalism and bring about a society in which we can all start to become healthy, happy and wise".

Revolution! Not Reforms!

We are living in terrifying times. Life is becoming more difficult for many. The causes we have struggled for are being pushed back.

It is the aspiration and aim of the Socialist Party that everyone should become socially conscious and effective in the class war against capitalism. Our goal is one for the working class throughout the world and it is the abolition of class-society itself. It is not a pious hope. But meanwhile, let us clarify our ideas and clearly understand our aims. Socialism means production is carried on for the social good, not for the profit of an exploiting class, not whether capitalists can sell it at a profit for themselves but produce for the needs of the people. Socialism thus revolutionizes the aim of production from production for profitable sale to production for social use. In so doing it frees humanity from the narrow limits of the capitalist economy and embarks upon a totally new era of social evolution. Socialism abolishes the chaos of capitalist production. It does away with the dog-eat-dog competition of capitalist industry, breeder of economic crises and war. It sets up instead a planned system of economy in harmony with the worldwide character of modern industry and social relationships. Only with socialism is such a planned economy possible and inevitable. A planned economy is one of the great contributions of socialism to humanity.

Capitalism robs the toilers of a large share of what they produce. It places restrictions on the development of the productive forces themselves. Under capitalism, science is a slave to the class interests of the bourgeoisie. Socialism will abolish the class division of society and it will abolish all forces of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other but will represent a united commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energies to the development and strengthening of its own collective might. Socialist society will be State-free. With private property in industry and land abolished (but, of course, not in articles of personal use), with exploitation of the toilers ended, and with the capitalist class finally defeated and all classes liquidated, there will then be no further need for the State, which in its essence, is an organ of class repression. The State in the words of Engels, “wither away” and be replaced by a scientific technical “administration of things.” The guiding principle will be: “From each according to ability, to each according to needs.” That is, the distribution of life necessities—food, clothing, shelter, education, etc.—will be free, without let or hindrance. Socialist production, carried out upon the most efficient basis and freed from the drains of capitalist exploiters, will provide such an abundance of necessary commodities that there will be plenty for all with a minimum of effort. There will then be no need for pinch-penny rationing.

The Socialist Party stands for the abolition of every form of domination and oppression. We call for common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, for a guarantee to a fair share of society's product, in accordance with individual needs. we pursue the socialist transformation of society, focusing on production for need, not profit. The Socialist Party works to build world socialism in which everyone will be able to freely visit and to live wherever they choose. 

Without a vision of a better world and the organisation that goes with it, even mass protests of ordinary working people in response to injustice will likely go nowhere.  The Socialist Party offers a socialist vision of creating a society that serves the well-being of humanity and nature alike.  The dire consequences of this system are everywhere apparent. The workers are oppressed and deprived of much that makes for physical and mental well-being. Year by year poverty destroy more lives than all the militaries in the world. To preserve their privilege and power is the most vital interest of the possessing class, while it is the most vital interest of the working class to resist oppression, improve its position. Hence there exists a conflict of interests, a class war which can know neither truce nor compromise  so long as the few own and control the economic life of the many. For the masses of the people there is but an opportunity to work hard for  a bare living, which is not prosperity, but slavery. If men and women were free to labour to satisfy their desires there could be neither poverty nor involuntary unemployment. But men and women are not free to labour to satisfy their desires. The working population can labour only  when the capitalist class who own the industries believe they can market their  product at a profit. The needs of millions are subordinated to the greed of a few. Their greed come first—the people's needs, if at all, afterwards. The Socialist Party feels there are a great many flaws with the capitalist system resulting in human suffering. Under capitalism, the few own our industries.  The many do the work.  The wage earners and farmers are compelled to give a large part of the product of their labor to the few.  The many in the factories, mines, shops, offices and on the farms obtain but a scanty income and are able to buy back only a part of the goods that can be produced in such abundance by our mass industries.
The socialist movement owes its birth and growth to that economic development or world process which is rapidly separating a working or producing class from a possessing or capitalist class. The class that produces nothing possesses labor’s fruits, and the opportunities and enjoyments these fruits afford, while the class that does the world’s real work has increasing economic uncertainty, and physical and intellectual misery as its portion. Between the two classes, there can be no possible compromise or identity of interests. A society based upon this class division carries in itself the seeds of its own destruction. Such a society is founded in fundamental injustice. There can be no possible basis for social peace, for individual freedom, for mental and moral harmony, except in the conscious and complete triumph of the working class as the only class that has the right or power to be.

The Socialist Party is to-day the one democratic party of the worker whose object is to remove the cause of class struggles, class antagonisms, and social evils inherent in the capitalist system. The Socialist Party declares that the capitalist system has outgrown its historical function, and has become utterly incapable of meeting the problems now confronting society. We denounce this outgrown system as incompetent and corrupt and the source of unspeakable misery and suffering to the whole working class. We propose to transfer the industries of the world from private ownership and autocratic, cruelly inefficient management to common ownership and democratic control. 

The overwhelming majority of the people are being forced under a yoke of bondage by this soulless industrial despotism. It is this capitalist system that is responsible for the increasing burden of armaments, the poverty, slums, child labor, much of the mental illness, crime and prostitution, and much of the disease that afflicts mankind. Under this system, the working class is exposed to poisonous conditions, to frightful and needless perils to life and limb, preyed upon incessantly for the benefit of the controlling oligarchy of wealth. Under it also, the working class are doomed to ignorance, drudging toil and darkened lives. The Socialist Party declares that sufferance under these conditions is no longer possible, and our Party was founded with the purpose to end them all. We declare them to be the product of the present system in which industry is carried on for private greed, instead of for the welfare of society. We declare, furthermore, that for these evils there will be and can be no remedy and no substantial relief except through socialism where industry will be carried on for the common good.

The Socialist Party is the political expression of the economic interests of the workers. In the face of the economic and political aggressions of the capitalist class, the only reliance left the workers is that of their economic organisations and their political power. By the class conscious use of these, they may resist successfully the capitalist class, break the fetters of wage slavery, and fit themselves for the future society, which is to displace the capitalist system. The Socialist Party appreciates the full significance of class organisation and urges the wage-earners to organise for economic and political action, and we pledge ourselves to support our fellow-workers in their struggles for economic and socal justice. The Socialist Party is the party of revolution.

We, the Socialist Party make our appeal to the people as the only political movement standing for the principles by which the liberty of the individual may become a fact; as the only political organisation that is democratic, and that has for its purpose the democratising of the whole society. Capitalism is the enemy. The private ownership of the means of employment grounds society is economic slavery. Capitalism renders intellectual and political tyranny inevitable.

As a socialist party, we pledge our fidelity to the principles of internationalism, as embodied in the united thought and action of socialists of all the world. The interests of the world’s workers are separated by no national boundaries. The condition of the most exploited and oppressed workers, in the most remote places of the earth, inevitably tends to drag down all the workers of the world to the same level. The tendency of the competitive wage system is to make labour’s lowest condition the measure or rule of its universal condition. Industry and finance are no longer national but international in both organisations and results. The chief significance of national boundaries, and of the so-called patriotisms which the ruling class of each nation is seeking to revive, is the power which these give to capitalism to keep the workers of the world from uniting, and to throw them against each other in the struggles of contending capitalist interests for the control of the yet unexploited markets of the world, or the remaining sources of profit. The socialist movement therefore is a world-movement. It knows of no conflicts between the workers of one nation and the workers of another. It stands for the freedom of the workers of all nations; and, in so standing, it makes for the full freedom of all humanity.

 The Socialist Party came into being with the proposition of deliberately organizing society for the common good of all. Socialism means that all those things upon which the people in common depend shall by the people in common be owned and administered. It means that the tools of employment shall belong to the creators and users; that all production shall be for the direct use of the producers; that the making of goods for profit shall come to an end; that we shall all be workers together, and that opportunities shall be open and equal to all men and women. To that end  the workers may seize every possible advantage that may strengthen them to gain complete control of the powers of government, and thereby the sooner establish the co-operative commonwealth, the Socialist Party pledges itself to watch and work in both the economic and the political struggle for each successive immediate interest of the working class.

We lay upon every Socialist Party candidate elected to office the first duty of striving to procure whatever is for the workers’ most immediate interest, and whatever will lessen the economic and political powers of the capitalist and increase the like powers of the worker. But, in so doing, we are using these remedial measures as means to one great end — the Co-operative Commonwealth. Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to lay hold of the whole system of industry, and thus come into their rightful inheritance. To this end we pledge ourselves, as the party of the working class, to use all political power, as fast as it shall be entrusted to us by our fellow-workers, for their ultimate and complete emancipation.

Never Forget the Class Struggle

“Most people look at the world as it is and ask ‘Why?’. We should look at the world as it could be and ask, ‘Why not?’ ” George Bernard Shaw

What kind of world do we want for the future? We want a world where people live in comfort and security, free from fear of poverty, hunger or conflict. We want a world with a new economic system where peoples of all countries have free access to resources, a system which aims instead at meeting the real needs of the human community in balance with the environment. We can choose the future world that we want. We must join together and work together to create it. In the world, as it could be, people would realise that they can collectively shape the future for a better world. 

Socialism, as it was understood by Marx and Engels, would be the creation of a society that would have no need for repression and oppression because it had overcome economic scarcity. Marx and Engels envisaged a society in which the social productive forces had developed to a point that they would be capable of producing such a surplus of goods and services that the majority of people would no longer have to spend the greater part of their lives in work. The planned allocation of resources and human labour, in such a future society, would also ensure that no one would have to degrade themselves by working for another human being in order to survive. Instead of work being something we all try to avoid, it would gradually be transformed into one of a wide range of creative activities people engage in to make their lives meaningful. They strived for a human society not dominated by exploiters, be they slave-owners or captains of industry. They sought a society in which human beings could enjoy the fullness of life without the need to make others their servants or to be servants of others. Marx and Engels expected that the development of the productive forces under industrial capitalism would for the first time in human history build the material basis for such a fundamental transformation of society. Human progress has until our day relied on the grossest forms of oppression and misery, economic exploitation and repression. These were regrettable but unavoidable features of human history as long as the combined output of human labour, science, the machines and technology were not large enough to provide sufficient food, shelter, recreation, education and necessary luxuries for everyone - economic scarcity.  Today, our productive forces have developed to an extent that nobody need go without what they need for a full human life. Socialism would be a society of free producers, working under a rationally planned economy and no longer made up of buyers and sellers trading goods through the market, but a community of people who turn out products for society at large and receive them for personal consumption from society’s common pool. This vision suggests a society so wealthy, so educated, so cultured that there would be no need or necessity for instruments of direct or indirect coercion. 

When we speak of socialism we are talking about a way of organising society based on the principle of 'from each according to ability, to each according to need', a society based on cooperation, mutual aid, solidarity and meeting human needs. There is no shortage of politicians or political groups claiming to have blueprints for creating a fairer society. However, socialism is not something which can be decreed into being but must be created by workers ourselves. Instead of ownership or control of the means of production - land, factories, offices and so on - being in the hands of private individuals or the state, a socialist society is based on the common ownership and control of those means. And instead of production for exchange and profit, socialism means production-for-use to meet human needs.

Already today, it is us workers who produce everything and run all the services necessary for life. We lay the roads, build the homes, drive the trains, care for the sick, grow the food, design and construct the products, and teach the next generation. Socialism means a money-free society where our activity - and its products - no longer take the form of things to be bought and sold. The principal concern most people hold as to whether a socialist society could is asking if humans really can produce enough for us to survive without the implicit threat of destitution, enforced by the wage system. For most of human history, we have not had money or wage labour, however necessary tasks still got done. In hunter-gatherer societies, for example, which were overwhelmingly peaceful and egalitarian there was no distinction between work and play. Even today, huge amounts of necessary work are done voluntarily for free. 

Many people think that socialism sounds like a good idea but doubt it would work in practice. However, surely, we should first ask if "capitalism works?" as billions live in poverty surrounded by unimaginable wealth, while we head relentlessly towards environmental catastrophe. Our answer is a resounding "no" and we believe there is ample evidence that socialism would function far better than the capitalist system for the majority of people.  Socialism can resolve the major issues we face today, like ecological devastation, freeing us to tackle much more interesting problems. Instead of the need to produce more and accumulate more, we can focus on how to turn our products into quality goods that will be repairable, reusable and recyclable.

With capitalism, there is injustice and exploitation but socialism creates the possibility for a world based on freedom and equality for all. Many of our fellow-workers are puzzled when they find that the Socialist Party claims to be opposed to the Labour Party the left-wing in general, not merely in matters of method, but also in respect of the object to be worked for. This is easy to understand. It arises from the use, by ourselves and by those other parties, of terms and phrases which appear to have a similar meaning.  When a member of the Left speaks of “nationalisation, ” the media will assume that what is meant is socialism, and those on the Left have no interest in correcting the false impression. The Labour Party stands for nationalisation, which is a form of capitalism embodying all of the chief features of the system of society which the Socialist Party works to abolish. It is the practice of many journalists to describe Labour MPs as socialists.

State ownership is capitalism in a new garb. The defect about nationalisation schemes is that they do not so much as touch the fundamental problem of the workers. What is the problem? It is that we live in a world where the means of production and distribution are the private property of the capitalist class. The workers produce everything that is necessary for the sustenance and continuance of society; the capitalist class owns it. The workers receive wages based roughly on what it costs them to live and be efficient and bring up families. The capitalist class keeps the remainder. That is the workers’ problem. That is why they are poor. There lies the cause of unemployment and wars. The solution is that the means of production and distribution should be made the common property of society as a whole. When that has been done there will no longer be a working class, producing wealth but not owning it, and a propertied class owning-wealth but not producing it. That will be socialism. Nationalisation do not solve that problem. They leave the property owners still in possession of their property rights, still able to live at the expense of the producers. The only difference is that they exchange shares in a private company for shares in a public utility company, or for Government securities. The workers are more or less where they were before, getting just enough to exist on, and faced with all the harrowing problems of how to make ends meet. Changing the form of capitalism from private companies to state-controlled concerns is a problem of interest to the capitalist class, the form of whose property is being changed, but it is not a question that is worth the attention of the workers. The next recession will surely be a humdinger! Would it be out of place, fellow-workers, to remind you that this is the wages-system, capitalism; and that socialism is a practicable alternative?

With socialism, there will not be a class of property owners, and a class of non-owners compelled to sell their labour power to an employer in order to live. The wages system will have disappeared for ever. Men and women will produce the articles all need, not for sale and for profit-making, but for the use of all. Socialism seeks to transform societies and persons, bringing them to a higher level of social justice than is possible under capitalist economic system. the limitations of capitalism are becoming ever more obvious, creating greater possibilities for the socialist movement. Socialism is a step toward the development of a democratic, and sustainable worldwide society, based on cooperation and solidarity, rather than domination and exploitation.

Building the Party of the Dispossessed

Today, millions of people await the future with apathy, fear or despair. A deep malaise has taken hold of much of society. We are witnessing an obvious tendency towards the increasing bureaucratisation of society, a managerial world of corporate CEOs, issuing life or death directives. The world we live and struggle in confronts us with a paradox. Conditions exist which should result in a very favourable ground for socialist activity. Yet a real socialist movement does not exist. There is discontent stirring among our fellow-workers, particularly as their living standards fall. Yet at the same time, there is widespread despondency. The media spreads the idea of capitalism is the only alternative.

Even though science and technology have made great advances, bringing new marvels the outcome is the threat of mass unemployment, environmental destruction and the ever-present menace of war. Science and technology have no power independent of the social groups who invented them, apply them, and bend them to their interests as they see them. The key problem is to subject science and technology to conscious social control in the democratically established interests of the great majority of human beings. To free them from submission to special interests, which abuse them regardless of the long-term interests of the human race. For that purpose, the organisation and structure of society itself must be subjected to democratically determined, conscious control.

The mass media broadcast news reports of famine and war around the globe, presenting the idea that there is nothing to be done about it, that the present social system is the only one possible, and what Marx called "a free association of producers" - socialism - is incompatible with human nature. 

The threat to the environment, a direct result of capitalism's uncontrolled expansion, can be answered only by the collective action of humanity as a whole. The activists in the Green movement has done important work in drawing attention to environmental issues yet many avoid the conclusion of often their own logic, how we change the system an change it into what. The real choice today is not "socialism or barbarism", but more ominous "socialism or extinction of humanity."

 New technology is not the enemy, but its perversion by the power of capitalists. Class society implies the systematic manipulation of "public opinion" as an instrument of class rule. The specific interests of the ruling class must be made to appear as the general interest. Capitalism abandons the satisfaction of the material needs of mankind. The fear of unemployment from automation among those who have jobs has weakened the working class and facilitated the worldwide capitalist offensive aimed at increasing the rate of profit through pushing down real wages and cutting social and infrastructural costs. The unions have capitulated before this capitalist offensive, and have accepted austerity policies, no matter how reluctant they have been in doing so. This has disoriented the working class and, made it more difficult for workers to undertake defensive struggles. Increasingly we see workers circumventing the need for action through the unions. This has contributed to the failure of the overall socialist objective, the absence of a conviction of the overthrow of capitalism and the advent of a class-free society without exploitation, oppression, and injustice. We have to face the reality that this is indeed a crisis of the credibility of socialism which must be overcome. The principal task of the Socialist Party is to restore the credibility of socialism in the consciousness of millions of men and women

 We have to reiterate that socialism is:

- no more classes or state, so no more private property.
- no opposition between town and country, humanity is spread harmoniously over the earth's surface.
- disappearance of the division between manual and intellectual labour, a reflection of the class struggle. Social man uses the productive machine to create a social product.
- dissolution of the opposition between private and public life. Social man has nothing to do with politics, since there are no men to be governed. There is the administration of things. 
We must restate that socialism will:
feed the hungry;
clothe the naked;
house the homeless;
provide proper medical care;
offer a dignified decent life to everyone.

Consequently, there are no further antagonisms between social man (a human being) and the species. Humanity has rediscovered its organic unity; no more dualism between leaders and masses. What socialism is all about in the last analysis is for the greatest possible number to decide their own fate in all key sectors of life.  Socialism is a society in which these masses decide their own fate in a free way  with democratically organised self-activity. None of this is dogmatic or utopian. 
 Until a socialist revolution is successful, the most important result of any struggle is the building of working-class self-confidence and organisation. Workers have no confidence whatsoever in the current political parties, left or right.

Means inevitably condition the ends and if we are aiming for a society guided by the working class, only self-emancipatory means would be effective in leading to it. Socialism simply put is post-capitalism, an economy that disallows private property of the means of production and has no social divisions.

The task of the Socialist Party is socialist education and propaganda. Humankind cannot be saved without substituting for this present society a fundamentally different society. You can call it anything you want to, the label makes no difference, but its contents have to be specified, the contents of socialism as it will be accepted by the masses. After the disastrous experiences of the Labour Party and Soviet state capitalism, the image of socialism can only be one of radical emancipation and defence of the environment. Socialism will be accepted only if it is considered emancipatory on a world scale without exception, reunifying socialism with freedom. Whoever commits crimes against human rights under whatever pretext in whatever country should be condemned by socialists. That is the precondition to restoring confidence among the people in the socialist movement. Once that confidence is restored we gain the moral high-ground. We make no predictions about the future. There is no better way to be a decent person in this world than to dedicate your life to the great cause, defending the exploited, the oppressed, the downtrodden, and the despised.