Welcome to the Revolution

Everywhere people are the same in that they seek happiness, desire prosperity and love liberty. Everywhere the rich are the same, i.e., they profit from the common misery to enrich themselves and desire make the people suffer. Capitalism has failed us. We’re overworked, underemployed and powerless. The aim of the Socialist Party is to replace world capitalist economy by a world socialism for it alone can abolish the contradictions of the capitalist system which threaten to destroy humanity. A socialist society will end the class division of society and cease the anarchy in production. It will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will present a world cooperative commonwealth. 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 energy to the development and strengthening of its own evolution. The future of our human civilisation hangs in the balance.

After abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, the world socialism will replace the elemental forces of the world market, competitive and blind processes of social production, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of competition and anarchy in production, devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces.

The abolition of private property and the disappearance of classes will do away with the exploitation of man by man. Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of a class enemy: instead of being merely a means of livelihood it will become a necessity of life: want and economic inequality, the misery of enslaved classes, and a wretched standard of life generally will disappear; the hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed. At the same time, the organs of class domination, and the State in the first place, will disappear also. The State, being the embodiment of class domination, will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire.

Private ownership in the means of production, the selfish lust for profits, the artificial retention of the masses in a state of ignorance, poverty-which retards technical progress in capitalist society, and unproductive expenditures will have no place in a socialist society. The development of the productive forces of world socialism will make it possible to raise the well-being of the whole of humanity and to reduce to a minimum the time devoted to material production and, consequently, will enable culture to flourish as never before in history. This new culture of a humanity that is united for the first time in history, and has abolished all State boundaries, will, unlike capitalist culture, be based upon clear and transparent human relationships. Hence, it will bury forever all mysticism, religion, prejudice and superstition and will give a powerful impetus to the development of all-conquering, scientific knowledge. The most important lesson from the history of capitalism is this: It has sown the seeds of its own destruction.  Capitalism is not eternal but historical. It too shall pass — but only if we make it so. The socialist case is, and always has been, that socialism can come about only through democratic action by a working-class majority, throughout the world. The socialist revolution will be a majority, democratic act—the first social revolution in human history in the interests of the majority.

When it comes down to it there is no real choice between reform and revolution. These are not two alternative ways of reaching the same goal. Certainly people can try to reform capitalism to make it work in the interest of all, but they can never succeed. All their efforts are wasted. The only way forward is social revolution, in the sense of rapidly abolishing present-day society by a political act and establishing a new and different society in its place. Capitalism is an economic system which operates according to economic laws which cannot be changed by human action, and which human beings have to accept and submit to in the same way as they do to natural forces like the weather and the tides. As long as capitalism remains its economic laws will continue to function roughly like the tides. If people decided to end this system, then these forces would cease to operate.

We are talking about people being in charge of the production of the wealth they must have to survive. This is what socialism is about: subjecting production to conscious human control so that it can be directed to the single purpose of turning out goods and services to satisfy human needs. Why should this not be possible? After all, production for use — production to satisfy human needs — is the logical purpose of producing wealth. Production to satisfy human needs is possible, but it requires a fundamental social change to make it a reality. Basically, all that is in and on the earth must become the common property of everyone. In other words, there must no longer be any territorial rights or any private property rights over any part of the globe. The farms, factories, mines and all other places where wealth is produced will not belong to anybody. This means that a section only of society would no longer stand between the rest of society and the means of production. Social classes would cease to exist and all men and women would stand in equal relationship to the means of production as free and equal members of a class-free community.

In a socialist society democratic control will extend to all aspects of social life, including — and in fact in particular — decisions about the production of wealth. This is what production is about: bringing the production and distribution of wealth under conscious human control which, in a class-free community of free and equal men and women, can only be democratic control. Otherwise society would no longer be class-free: access to. and control over, the means of production would then remain in the hands of the minority. This is why democracy and socialism are inseparable. There is no choice about the matter. An undemocratic socialism is a contradiction in terms. Socialism is democratic or it is not socialism. If the means of production are commonly owned and democratically controlled, there is only one end for which they can and will be used: to produce wealth to satisfy the needs, individual and collective, of the class-free community.

When we say production for use we mean production solely for use. In socialism wealth no longer will be produced for sale; buying and selling and all that goes with it, money, prices, wages, profits, banks, and so on — will have no place; they will, in fact, have no sense in socialism. Since the means of production will be commonly owned, it follows that what is produced will also be commonly owned — that is, by the classless community of free men and women who will have produced it. In these circumstances the question of selling what has been produced just would not — could not — arise. For how can what is commonly owned be sold to those who commonly own it?

Since the turn of the century, we have left the Age of Scarcity and entered the Age of Abundance — potential abundance. that is. To the extent that scarcity survives today, as of course it very much does, this is an artificial scarcity maintained by the economic laws of capitalism, and particularly its basic principle of "No Profit, No Production".  The artificial barrier to the production of abundance (that is, the profit motive) will be removed and we shall be able to produce an abundance of the basic things — food, clothing, shelter — which people need to enjoy life. Material wants and poverty can be banished forever. Technologically speaking, there is no reason why any man, woman or child in any part of the world should starve or go without proper shelter. Socialism will allow this technological possibility to be realised, which will no doubt have to be one of the first priorities of socialism when it is established. Let people come and take what they need. Wealth could be produced in such abundance today that there is no need to ration access to it. People will simply take what they need from the stores as and when they need it. Ensuring that these stores are always stocked with what people need will be no problem given the technological possibility of producing in abundance. This will essentially be a question of stock control.

We either have common ownership or some sort of class ownership, private or state. We either have production for use or production for sale. The only way forward is social revolution — not in the sense of insurrections and street-fighting, but of a rapid change in the basis of society. This is what the Socialist Party is working for. But it is not us who are going to establish socialism. We could not do it. No minority can. How could a minority impose upon others a society based on voluntary co-operation and democratic decision-making? This is why all the efforts of the Socialist Party is directed towards helping to spread the idea that there is an alternative to capitalism with its waste and wars, its insecurity and anxiety. Our role is to inform people about this and get people to want to change society and to organise to do this.

Socialism, One World, One People

Socialist Party members can confidently forecast what 2019 has in store for our fellow-workers 

The working class will continue to struggle over their wages and other working conditions; in other words, there will be more industrial disputes. Employers will carry on attempting to hold wages in check and to persuade the working class that any rise they may have should be only a small one, and one related to their increased intensive productivity effort. There will be more tension on the international field—more conflicts and there will be more conferences on how to calm these tensions and how to disarm the combatants.  Very little will come of them. The working class, afflicted by the usual struggle to live, will become dissatisfied with whatever government is in power and may express this discontent by protest marches and demonstrations. This dissatisfaction is an inevitable part of capitalism because the problems which give rise to unrest are also part of the private property system.

The only solution to this calamitous muddle is the establishment of socialism. It is simply not possible for any leader to make glamorous promises about that because the key to socialism is the knowledge of the people who will set it up. In the election campaigns of the capitalist parties, knowledge is an alien word. How many people, among the mass who are mesmerised by the rituals, the pomp and ceremonies will stand out by understanding and supporting socialism? 

As far as the Socialist Party is concerned, capitalism has no acceptable face. Everything about it is unacceptable. Its accumulation for accumulation’s sake. Its exploitation of wage-labour. Its putting of profits before satisfying people’s needs. Is it acceptable that capitalist firms should direct their investment to producing what is the most profitable, while essential human needs are left unmet?

The heart of the socialist idea is self-government in every sphere of life, including production. And the state, in its very, essence, is nothing but a series of massive impediments to that self-rule. The aim of all those who want working class self-emancipation has to be the destruction of the capitalist state. Its existence is incompatible with the development of socialism. Those who want to preserve the existing state machinery in the struggle for socialism are not simply arguing for a different road to socialism; they are arguing against socialism itself. The struggle for socialism is revolutionary. It involves a war between two opposed classes: one against the centuries-old system of state exploitation and oppression, based on the principles of the most complete democracy possible.

The Socialist Party is up against the fact that our fellow-workers has to be convinced that socialism does in fact represent a superior system for the people. Marx’s idea of the eventual withering away of the state is not a pipe-dream, but a realistic if very rough sketch of the future state of human society.  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 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 capitalist class live out of the difference between the value of the goods produced by the workers and the amount paid to the latter as wages. The capitalists are able to do this because they own and control the means of production and distribution and can, in consequence, compel the workers to accept employment on these terms—the alternative being unemployment. It is interesting to consider how these fortunate property-owners came to be in the privileged position which they occupy and to consider what hope members of the working-class have of climbing up beside them. Apart from the rare proverbial rags to riches self-made success story they were rich mainly because their families were rich. We see, therefore, that the way to get rich is to choose your parents wisely, failing which your chance is small. If you are born into the ranks of the privileged class you have an excellent chance of living well and dying with more wealth than your father before you; if you are born a worker you will live hard and die as poor as you began—unless you join with us to get socialism.

The very basis of society today is a struggle between two classes, the capitalist who own all the means of production, and the property-less class who are only allowed to use and operate these means of life when it is in the interest of members of the capitalist class to allow them. It is the historic mission of our class, the property-less class of wage-slaves to make the socialist revolution. It is necessary to make revolution to eliminate the evils of this society and move society forward. It is possible to increasingly raise the consciousness of the mass of workers and others ground down and degraded by this system, to develop and strengthen their revolutionary understanding and sense of organisation as this system. The common interests of the property-less class of wage workers whose historic mission is to abolish private property at its source, the means of production, transcends all national boundaries and differences.

In socialist society, not only will we have free access to the products and services of human production and to life itself, too we’ll get free access to all the human support, kindness, affection and love from all our fellows all year round, instead of for just a mean two weeks.  In free society this behaviour will become the norm in our human world.  Why would you want to pay, when you can have free access?  In addition, we will be free of the drudgery and stressful life that is our everyday experience now, that which we are glad to see the back of for a skimpy two weeks of partying at the end of the year.

The only viable way forward is revolutionary struggle 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 a socialist world, it is necessary to overthrow the rule of capitalism and this can be done only through revolution.  The working class must depose the capitalist ruling class and establish socialism, a system of real, popular democracy that sets about the reconstruction of society. 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 socialist ideas. The class war is won not with guns, but with words, with argument and persuasion. The old motto of class-conscious workers goes beyond the present wage fights, and indeed should be a guiding goal of all socialists: Abolish Wage Slavery.

Remember that ever since capitalism came onto the scene political parties have lied and swindled their way into and out of power. The people who have been tricked have always forgotten the lies and the broken promises and have continued to vote for capitalism. 

Our Revolution

All wealth is created by the labour of the working-class alone which produces wealth by expending their labour upon natural resources. Therefore, it should be owned and controlled by the community. The working-class can abolish classes altogether and bring into being a class-free society, which will democratically own and control the means of life in the interest of the whole community—not in the interest of a class which has ceased to exist.

  The essential thing is that the member of the working-class has to sell his or her labour-power in order to live. Beside this salient fact all else pales into insignificance. The differences of dress, pay, education, habits, work, and so on that are to be observed among those who have to sell their working power in order to live are as nothing compared with the differences which mark them off from the capitalists. No matter how well paid the former is, or how many have to obey commands and has a master. He or she has to render obedience to another, to someone who can inflict the torments of unemployment. Because we have to sell our labour-power, our whole life must be lived within prescribed limits. The release from labour is short and seldom and we have no security of livelihood for there is always the fear that a rival may displace us.  The Socialist Party does not question the need for organisation in industry. What we do question is that capitalist argument that industry is, and must be, directed by capitalists. It is, in the main, already directed by salaried employees, members of the working class. Only in the field of financial operations do we find capitalists themselves normally engaged and even these operations are more and more being performed by paid employees. The capitalist class own and control industry. They do not direct it. Men who boasted how much personal interest they took in the control of their business were pushed aside, crushed or swallowed up by the men who had a finger in hundreds or thousands of different businesses and who took no personal interest in manufacture. Personal control and personal supervision played a good part in the early days of the business, but the time arrived in economic competition when mere personal control, brains and knowledge of an actual industry, no longer decided who was victor in the world of industry.

There is the lesson—ownership of wealth and more wealth is the winning card. Finance buys up the personally-conducted businesses and becomes the ruler of more and more workers. Shall the octopus grow or will the men and women who do the actual work in business and industry learn that they can run society without the parasite—financial or industrial? The Socialist Party has always warned against workers following leaders, even if and when the leaders seemed people of some quality. Workers must do their own thinking. But how much more sensible does our advice appear when it is obvious that the famous names who monopolise the media and make sure that a socialist voice is almost never heard, are such obvious nincompoops. Wake up, ye wage-slaves. You can’t possibly be as blind as the moronic specimens who lead you. There would be no leaders in a socialist society, since leadership implies the blind following by a majority of a minority and under socialism the majority would be politically conscious and mature. The leaders of capitalism will be replaced by the delegates of socialism. Those with a flair for administration might well become the servants of socialism in the work of distributing wealth and organizing services in the interests of the world society.

"Is there enough wealth for all?” is a common question put by anti-socialists. The existence of luxury all round us and the stored-up wealth that cannot find a market to-day is one aspect of the answer. In modern society the ease with which wealth can be produced means lack of work for the worker but only to assure the maintenance of owners’ profits. More wealth could be produced but it does not "pay” the owners to allow that to be done. But what would be the possibilities of wealth production in a society where the workers had access to the raw materials and the machines?

On the introduction of socialism millions of people will be released from currently useless, harmful and degrading jobs to undertake all kinds of useful work of their own choosing. There will be no shortage of labour in the form of interested minds and willing hands liberated from such occupations as the armed and police forces, the armies of insurance and other salesmen, accountants and income-tax workers, to mention just a few, necessary under capitalism. Accountants would no longer have to spend most of their time balancing the books of capitalism’s looting systems. Men and women good at figures would be required to calculate the needs of society and to make sure that the outputs of the various industries were always in good supply everywhere and that all resources were most efficiently used. Architects in socialist society would find their scope infinitely extended, presented with a free and full horizon open to them to produce beautiful and functional buildings to meet the varying wishes and needs of people. Currently a doctor’s calling involves patching up the workers so that they can continue to supply it. Research workers seeking the cure for today’s incurable diseases have to tolerate the painfully slow progress of their efforts because of lack of funds, whilst watching enormous resources being expended in military and space research. In socialism all the achievements of medical science would be devoted to the enjoyment of good health by all. Workers in hotels and restaurants would choose their job because they enjoyed rendering that particular service. There would be no servility nor class distinction about this, no ingratiation, no bitterness caused by “inadequate tipping” and the worker would enjoy the same good living as the diner. Even the most basic contribution to creative work would enrich and alter the lives of so many so radically. One could multiply indefinitely such examples of the fruitful and satisfying work open to men in a sane order of society. Only socialism can offer this

The Socialist Party has a clear view on what socialism is, and how it will be achieved. Socialism will be a society in which all the means by which wealth is produced and distributed will be under the common ownership and democratic control of the whole community. Of necessity, it will be a worldwide system because the means of production and distribution are worldwide. There will be no wage or price system as things will be produced solely for use and not for sale. People will work to the best of their ability and take according to their needs. The nature of socialism shows that it can only be achieved by the conscious and independent action of a clear majority. It is the job of the Socialist Party to help build that majority. We do not deprecate the struggles of workers but we insist that they must understand the class basis of those struggles. Without that consciousness all their efforts will eventually be futile. Once socialists are in the majority, they will have to get hold of the state machinery to prevent it being used against them. Socialist delegates elected to the various assemblies of the capitalist nation-states by a socialist working class would have this control, and would leave any recalcitrant capitalists in a virtually helpless position. The capitalist class only maintain their order with the active support or acquiescence of the workers. Once they lose this and are faced with an organised, uncompromising working class it will be plain to all what they are—a socially useless, parasitic minority living off the backs of the workers.

Organise for Socialism

Workers around the world are stuck in the mire of exploitation, oppression and war. We’re stuck with the prospect of a dire future.  The world desperately needs, not simply a legislative shopping list of palliatives but a vision of radical change, a new sense of revolutionary purpose. It’s old news that large segments of society have become deeply unhappy with what they see as “the establishment,” in the interests of the ruling class. There are good reasons for today’s discontent: decades of promises by political leaders of both the left and right, espousing a host of related reforms which would bring unprecedented prosperity, have gone unfulfilled. While a tiny elite seems to have done very well, large swaths of the population have plunged into a world of vulnerability and insecurity. There is now a gross mistrust in governments and politicians, which means that asking for sacrifices today in exchange for the promise of a better life tomorrow won’t pass muster. And this is especially true of “trickle down” policies: tax cuts for the rich that eventually are supposed to benefit everyone else.

The ills that afflict our society are systemic. The problems of capitalist society are structural and they require deep-going changes. The Socialist Party seeks a system where the “associated producers” would actually run most of their own working lives and there would be free goods and services for all. Capitalism can’t mask the truth anymore. It’s time for change. It’s time for a rallying cry for a vision that virtually transcends status quo thinking. Socialism represents a future without the moneyed interests that think they own it. Let the future it begins to build be one of prosperity and peace for the planet and ourselves.

The most successful social movements are highly organised, not spontaneous upsurges. The working class needs a socialist party. As long as politics exists the party (defined as organisation centred around agreed goals) will be a necessary means of intervening in the collective project of changing society. Politics means a clashing of class interests. The kind of party we need is first and foremost a world party, an   organisation where (to use a rather militaristic metaphor) each      national section is essentially a battalion in a worldwide army fighting the class war. The socialist revolution will be worldwide, hence there must be global organisation to coordinate it. The World Socialist Movement does not tailor our politics in hopes of gaining popularity by vote-catching. Nor does it sacrifice its political principles through united fronts with or reformist parties. The WSM is a party of opposition to the entire capitalist order, one that stays hard and fast to its socialist aims without embracing reformist coalitions as a shortcut to power. This mean rejecting the notion that we can ‘trick’ the working class into taking power by mobilising it to fight for reforms. It is no use blaming the people caught up in the pressures of capitalist competition. We need an economic and social system from which the profit motive has been removed, in which there is no longer national or international competition, in which progress is measured in terms of human welfare. That system is socialism.

Ours is the case for a class-free society, in which production is geared to satisfying human needs, and in which production for sale and the market economy are abolished, is underlined by the fact that modern industry and technology have now been developed to the stage where they could provide an abundance of consumer goods and services for all the people of the world. The problem of production — of how to produce enough for everybody — has been solved. Humanity’s long battle to conquer scarcity has been won. Potential abundance is a reality. The task is to make abundance itself a reality.

This can never be done within a society based on the class ownership of the means of production, where wealth is produced for sale with a view to profit. The only framework within which abundance can be realised is a society where all resources, man-made as well as natural, have become the common heritage of all mankind, under their democratic control. On this basis production can be democratically planned to provide what human beings need. In such a society, the market, wages, profits, buying and selling, and money, would have no place. They would cease to exist. 

Could we really supply enough for everybody to have free access to consumer goods and services? A society of abundance is not an extension of today’s so-called “consumer society”, with its enormous waste of resources. It does not mean people will come to acquire more and more useless and wasteful gadgets. It simply means that people’s material needs, both as individuals and as a community, will be fully satisfied in a rational way. Certainly, the waste of capitalism wastes resources. First, there are the armed forces and armaments. Second, there are all the people, buildings and equipment involved with the market and money economy generally: banking, insurance, government pension and tax departments, salesmen, ticket collectors, accountants, cashiers etc. Indeed, it might be said that under capitalism well over half the population are engaged in such unproductive activities. Third, there is planned obsolescence, the deliberate manufacture of shoddy goods made to break down or wear out after a comparatively short period of time. In a rationally organised society, consumer goods could be made to last; this would mean an immense saving of resources. With the elimination of these three sources of waste that are inherent in capitalism, enough to adequately feed, clothe and house everybody could easily be produced.

Contrary to what is popularly believed and carefully cultivated by the defenders of capitalism, men and women are not inherently greedy; human needs are not limitless. From a material point of view, human beings need a certain amount and variety of food, clothing and shelter; what this is in individual cases can soon be discovered by the individual himself — and would be if there were free access to consumer goods and services. But it may be objected, with free access wouldn’t people take more than they needed? But why should they if they can be certain (as they would, be given the productive power of modern industry and the common ownership of the means of production) that there would always be enough to go around? After all, today when access to water (or at least to the amount of water consumed in any one period) is free, people only use what they need for washing, cooking etc. Similarly, when all consumer goods and services are freely available people could be expected to take only as much food, clothing etc. as they felt they needed. To take any more would be abnormal and pointless.

A society for individuals

WITH WORLD SOCIALISM

A new era has begun to dawn. New and still bigger mega-fortunes are being made. The labour movement has to prepare itself for a further round of bad weather and rough seas. The Socialist Party doesn’t have some hopeful gospel to preach to you. If you’re a realist, and you’re observing the things going on around the world you’re apt to feel some despair. There is vast despondency and desperation. But it’s not that easy to lose hope. Humanity possesses qualities of determination, courage and an extraordinary resoluteness to persevere in the face of adversity. In English we say “hope springs eternal”. In Russian it’s “hope dies last.” We might feel anguish and despair but our evolutionary impulse is for survival. Hope is an unstoppable power. Our hope says we are going to keep on fighting for our goal. It is the fight members of the Socialist Party signed up for. We will never cease fighting for our ideas. We intend to put our broken human society back together but this time just a little differently - without the exploitation and oppression. Capitalism continues to kill us and the only real solution is to end capitalism.

The thing about social movements is that they move. They morph into new forms and evolve into different expressions. It is common for a movement to develop in one part of the world and be adopted by another country. This is even more common in modern times as the economy has become increasingly globalised and the internet has made communication easier. Protests turn into inspiration for others to take up. Socialism will become the movement of movements that unites the many single-issue groups into a force too powerful for the ruling class to defeat, a movement exposing the contradictions in society that cannot be solved by the current economic and political system. Socialism shows the system-wide problems that require both the economic and political systems to change. There are many triggers that are likely to spark mass protests and resistance. Get ready.

Socialism is a worldwide state-free society where money and markets have been abolished and production is collectively planned by all. It is the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, where the segmentation of human beings into classes, nationalities, races and genders has been transcended. Rather than mere worker ownership of factories or state-control of resources, socialist society is one within which “value” as we know it has been abolished and free access to goods has replaced markets and rationing. The previous development of capitalism makes such a society possible. Socialism is universal human emancipation.  Such a society will not emerge not through immediate insurrection or apolitical utopian experiments. It is to be achieved through social revolution on a mass scale. The workers cannot take political power through a putsch or coup nor can it come by an alliance with sections of the capitalist class. The State cannot be gradually evolved into socialism. It is fundamentally representing the interests of the propertied classes, structurally designed to serve the needs of capitalism. Socialism is a society based on the cooperation of all humanity. We promote world revolution as opposed to “socialism in one country” or other national roads to socialism. From this we reject all capitalist wars. Nationalism in all forms stands as an obstacle to revolution. The fight against racism is a fight to unite the working class to defeat capitalism.

The development of capitalism, a system which now dominates the entire planet, brings with it massive toil, suffering and crisis along with revolutions in production. It also creates its own gravedigger – the global working class. By socialism we mean a world where waged labour has been replaced by free associations of producers and all are able to participate in the total benefits of society’s wealth, based on the principle “from each according to their ability, to according to their need”. National boundaries are to be replaced by the free movement of people and the ending of the division of humanity into false communities of the nation. The dominance of markets and money, products of private property, is replaced by humanity taking collective control of production so as to reorient it towards meeting our needs and desires through scientific and democratic planning that transcends the irrationality of the market. It is only the cooperation of society as a whole that can provide the real basis for the individual to achieve their full capacity. We have no interest in turning the world into one giant labour camp with a monolithic culture that crushes the individual. Rather we aim for a new era of human development where the limitations imposed by the weight of class society have been surpassed, where one’s daily life is not structured around the earning of a wage or salary but the desire to better oneself and achieve their full capacity. Socialism is not a technocratic vision to be imposed but is created through the collective activity of working people re-organising society where the State will become more and more useless, eventually fully withering away.

A Vision of the Socialist Future

Sometimes a fellow-worker wonders how he or she is ever going to understand the theory of socialism. You can’t even understand Karl Marx words without a dictionary. At least that’s the way it looks at first. Many find themselves thinking, “Well, this socialism stuff is all right for college graduates but. I only work for a living. How am I going to understand these books on economics and philosophy when I don’t even read the Socialist Standard?” The class struggle bubbles and boils and at first sight it seems to be quite a mystery to understand. Yet it is each and every day of your life and take part in it yourself. Recessions, wage-cuts, strikes, picket lines, and sometimes revolution. No working man or woman should think just because it is called scientific socialism that he or she can’t hope to learn it. The worker can learn the most important elements a thousand times easier than any university-educated boss. It is a study of the everyday things that working people know more about than anybody else: the factory and office, where they spend all their working hours; the machinery, which they become almost a part of; and the products which they, and only they, produce.

 Marx simply showed how capitalism is different from other systems in the past and that capitalism had a beginning and it’s going to have an ending. That the next stage in history is socialism, a system which operates in a different way than capitalism,  directly for the benefit of the people. It produces for use and not for profit. He explained that Mankind have the possibility of running the world to benefit the majority.  He and Engels were educators, eager with their books to teach. There are others in the Socialist Party trying to do the same, explaining the day-to-day class struggle, anxious to be a helper to make the task not such an impossible thing as you first thought. And later when the class struggle heats up, you’re going to step up and tell dozens – maybe hundreds or thousands – of other working people how to turn resistance into revolution. And discover you weren’t so dumb as you believed. The whole idea of socialism is we wouldn’t be producing for profit – for sale on the market. That’s the main thing. We would manage the whole industry ourselves. We’d co-operate with other industries’ workers doing the same thing.

Maybe you think it’s going to be a long, long time before the working people take power and create abundance for all. You explain the case for socialism to your neighbours and work colleagues and they don’t accept the idea. You see, some people hold on to the same old prejudices that are against their own interests. And you wonder how and when all these workers will overthrow their ruling class. How are you ever going to get the working people together because you see the workers divided by religion, race, nationality and gender.  People still go on talking capitalist crap. How are the workers of the world ever going to get together? lt isn’t going to be easy to organize the whole world. We’ve a big job ahead of us. But the main job of uniting the working people is being done by our enemy, the capitalist class. Yes, even though they encourage racism and nationalism they are uniting us. They are uniting us by subjecting us to the same conditions. They are uniting us by making us work together. They are uniting us by giving us all the same lousy wages and squeezing us into a common mould. The people all over the world are suffering the same united misery under their capitalist masters, regardless of what flag these masters fly or colour of skin. We have a common fight against a common enemy and there is the camaraderie of struggle. We share the same desire to smash our shackles. 

The whole capitalist world is a prison for our class and we are beginning to see it, we can’t help but see it. As we see it more and more, unity in the struggle will be forged. For we are shackled with a common chain. And the same key to free us fits all the locks.

The capitalists own everything. We just own our debts and our muscles. We have to give the capitalists our muscles so we can pay our debts. Here’s how it works. Say a knife represents all the plants, machinery, tools – everything we work with that the capitalists own. Suppose this chunk of bread is the earth itself. Pretend for now that you are the whole working class of the world. I’m the capitalist class because I own the knife.

I let you work with this knife and cut that bread. There, you made ten slices. Well, I put those ten slices away in my cupboard and give you a pound. You take the pound, go out and buy five slices of bread. Here’s the five slices. You and your family eat it up tonight. Then tomorrow you come to work and slice some more bread for me.

After this goes on for a while, I acquire a hoard of bread stored up in that cupboard. And it isn’t any use to cut up any more, because it’ll only get moldy. So I tell you to go home, and wait for me to call you back to work. Well, you’re out of work, and you can’t buy any bread, so I have to lower the price. I can’t make much money that way, so I dump a lot of it in the ocean so the price will go up.

Things get tough and strength in your muscles are getting weaker. That looks bad for me because I’ll need you later on. So being the big-hearted person I am,  I give you a half a slice of bread a day for nothing – no money at all. Of course, I say you’re a lazy bum because you won’t work, and it’s your fault that I don’t give you any work. But that generosity makes me feel pretty good. I think of myself as a philanthropist

Finally, I get resume business again. I get you to sharpen up the knife once more. You cut out twenty slices a day instead of ten. To show you how big-hearted I am, I give you one pound and fifty pence a day. And it isn’t my fault if the price of bread has gone up because I am selling more bread in the rest of the world.

In the meantime, my cupboard is once more getting bigger than ever. I lay you off again, take back the knife again and eat my bread while you starve. What can you do about it? WHY DON’T YOU TAKE THAT KNIFE AWAY FROM ME?

No single individual really rules. A CLASS rules. The capitalist class. Like all previous class rule, capitalist rule is the rule of a tiny minority, based on the foundations of scarcity economy. The only way a minority has or can or ever did rule over the majority is by supplementing brute force with deception, lies and legends. What the capitalist sells is the product of our labour. And that’s where they get the money to hire more employees to build more plants. That’s where they get the money to live in palaces and swim in champagne. And all they return to the worker is enough to scrape along on. The chains of wage- slavery are worse than real chains in a way. Your hands work faster and pile up wealth faster for the boss when iron chains are not in the way. Only NEED chains us all. Only cringing poverty before mighty wealth of ONE individual. But it’s a powerful chain – for the BIG BOSS. We don’t all wear the exact same uniform of the chain-gang convict. But it doesn’t take long for dust and hard labour to do its work and make us all look alike – inside and out.

When we take over the industries, our class, THE WORKING CLASS, will rule. Then we’ll have real democracy, workers’ social democracy. We working people will be running things in the interests of our communities and society. There will be no presidents or dictators in our system, for the simple reason that we’ll be constantly getting better leaders to take care of the interests of those who will then PROFIT from the power – the WORKING PEOPLE themselves. When we working people take over production, we’ll have some real rights for the first time in history. The main thing we’ll do is make more than enough for all to live a comfortable life. The fear of want and penury will be gone. We’ll make the work easier by using the many inventions that capitalists buy up and bury. And we’ll encourage far more inventions from people who can hold up their heads for the first time and look their machine and the whole factory over from top to bottom. Instead of us all being one tired-out bunch, drab, grey, and regimented by the power of capital, we’ll BE individuals. Things are going to be different. We’re going to be working for ourselves, not as sweated slaves for a few lousy bucks, but as people working for other working people instead of for profits. Making the things our family and neighbours want – and making them in far greater amounts than the fattest capitalists ever dreamed of.

“Who’s going to do the dirty work under socialism?” is one question that is just thoughtlessly echoing boss-class, people who never have dirtied their hands in their lives.  If we stop to think a second we’d say “Who does the dirty work under capitalism?...THE WHOLE WORKING CLASS.” The only dirty work will be the job of cleansing all the filth the capitalists have left behind – like clearing up the waste from their environmental destruction. Our new society will have no need of pollution or war. It will have every need for strong, healthy, happy human beings and every reason to help them to be so. Our workers’ society will spare no expense to make all jobs safe and clean. With socialism, no one is going to do the dirty work. 

Returning Land To Their Natural State? Not If You Go Bankrupt!

The toxic wastes of the Canadian oil patch in Alberta has been spreading in the boreal forest since bitumen mining began there in the 1960’s. 

The mix of clay, water, toxic acids and leftover bitumen has sprawled into artificial ponds big enough to cover an area twice the size of Vancouver. More than one trillion litres of the gunk called trailings fill these man made waste lakes. It would take five days for the same amount of water to pour over Niagara. The ponds emit methane and other greenhouse gases. They attract and kill migrating birds and are totally inhospitable to aquatic life. No fish and few invertebrates can live in them. 

According to Jodi McNeill, policy analyst for the environmental think tank, Pembina Institute, ”The ponds have grown and grown over the last five decades. If we continue kicking the can down the road we will be leaving a legacy of ten’s of billions in clean up costs to future generations”. 

Oil companies are required to return the lands they develop to their natural state, which is a joke, especially when they go bankrupt, which one did last August leaving 4,000 uncleaned wells and pipelines. The Alberta Energy Regulator has estimated it will cost $130 billion to clean up the mess if they can. It may not be so easy considering leakage from the ponds has got into the surrounding groundwater and the nearby Athabasca River. 

Of one thing you can be sure of – everywhere capitalism sticks its filthy tentacles it destroys life in one way or another.

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

No Capitalist Will Say To A Worker, ”You Are An Idiot For Letting Me Exploit You”.

The arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on Dec.6 sent shock waves through stock markets and around the world. She is the company’s chief financial officer and daughter of its founder Ben Zhengfei.

 The arrest was in response to a request from the US, who want Ms. Meng extradited as part of an investigation of an alleged scheme to use the global banking system to evade US sanctions against Iran. 

Prime Minister Trudeau said that though he had no prior knowledge of the arrest, nevertheless stated it was made by the appropriate authorities. The Chinese got quiet snotty about it and retaliated by arresting two Canadians in China, a diplomat and a businessman, who have no connection with the matter.

 Fearing Ms. Mehg a flight risk she was released on bail, but has to wear an electronic ankle bracelet. 

Whether the lady is guilty or not is hardly the point, which is capitalism is a system based on deceit. No capitalist ever has, or will, say to a worker, ”You are an idiot for letting me exploit you”.

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

The Day of the People has Arrived

 Every worker must be troubled by the reality we face today. Our trade unions appear practically helpless before the offensive of the employers. The potential power of those organisations created to protect our interests appear practically impotent today. Capitalist governments have passed crippling legislation to handicap the labour movement. The simple truth is this: the trade union movement has been disarmed by the profit-greedy billionaires, beguiled by the fiction that the government was the impartial umpire between the classes.

When indeed will the time be ripe for the establishment of socialism? This question the slippery-tongued left-wing intellectual always dodge. We need not wait any longer for their evasions and ambiguities, for their procrastination and delays. We have seen how they postponed, blocked and sabotaged the campaigns for a socialist society, telling our fellow-workers that they are still not ready for such a revolutionary change. But our enemy, the capitalist class, have not waited.  They have politically paralyzed, politically dismembered, politically emasculated organized labour, bound and gagged by ruling class courts. From the capitalists’ point of view, ANY expression of socialist ideas represents a great DANGER. Those who will have courage and wisdom enough to resist them means the continuing life of socialism itself. All of the poverty and greed, bloodshed and suffering on this planet is a part of the capitalist system. And we intend to change it.

The physical and mental labour of our fathers and grandfathers has produced the factories, railroads and other riches that lie around us. But generations upon generations of our remoter ancestors produced the things that made our fathers’ labor more productive too. The tools and technology we have today, the accumulated capital of the past and the rightful heritage of all humanity, these are the things that make our labour so productive. Our brains, too – finer and more subtle instruments than our ancestors had, enable us to work more efficiently, to produce better things. But still, we as laborers have only ourselves to sell – only our labor power. All that we produce – all that we labor to make – belongs to the buyers of our labor power. Our ancestors built up such a tremendous storehouse of tools and knowledge, such a magnificent productive system, that it is impossible for each worker to own the tools that make labour so productive.  Our heritage is turned against us. The capitalist, who owns the means of production – the instruments of our labor, finds us disinherited in the market place, with nothing to sell but our labour power. While our labor creates our work places and his pleasure palaces – our labor-power is rewarded with slave’s bread, masquerading under the name of a “living wage.”

The Socialist Party has to be able to come up with the ideas and language that resonates enough to create solidarity across our whole class. We need to expose the political manipulation that are preoccupied with just profit where working people tend to be considered as an afterthought, if at all. We must reveal the indifference of elite to the pain of the poor and working people. They feel as if they can get away with anything with impunity, immunity and no accountability. We are living under  right-wing authoritarian populism; of a chauvinistic, xenophobic and nationalistic. We need to instill much more vision among our fellow workers.

The Socialist Party seldom win popularity contests in the current political climate even though it believes that poverty is unacceptable and unnecessary. Anyone with an inkling of understanding of socialist ideas, and anyone who has ever been a have-not under a capitalist regime, knows that “caring” capitalism is a contradiction in terms. Capitalism in order to maintain itself has to put profit and economic growth ahead of people’s needs. If in a time of “economic boom” profit and people’s needs coincide, then we are told to believe that this will always be the case, that capitalism brings the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Socialists see this as a feeble brainwashing technique. It insults our intelligence.

The Socialist Party has explained the subject position of the working class under capitalist society, and has showed that this subjugated condition can only be abolished by converting the means of living from the private property of the capitalist class into the common property of society as a whole. This conversion could be carried out only after the capture of the political machinery by the workers, organised in a sound socialist movement. The Socialist Party says that reforms failed either to remove the cause of poverty or to change the general direction of capitalist development. Hence the necessity for revolutionary political action. Our object is the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by, and in the interests of, the whole people.

The time for waiting is over. The time for action is now. It is time to rip the blinkers off the eyes of the entire working population and instill within them the confidence that they possess a formidable political power and economic strength.

Life Under Capitalism, A Losing Battle.

The Parkdale area of Toronto ain’t exactly a hang-out for the rich and famous, in other words you don’t live there if you can afford not to. 

Since 1971 the Parkdale Community Legal Service Clinic, has done an amazing job in fighting evictions, rent increases and, as they put it: ”Bad landlords”.

Some residents have said without the clinic they would be homeless or dead. Sadly the clinic itself may soon be homeless. 

In mid-October it was served with a termination notice by landlord, Martin Usher, ordering it to be out of the office space it has rented for 18 years by Jan 1. 

Naturally they will fight it, but win or lose, it just goes to show that the more one tries to resist the effects of life under capitalism, the more one is fighting a losing battle.

For socialism, 

Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC

Elevating Profits. To Hell With Safety.

On December 5, Ontario Auditor General, Bonnie Lysyk, issued a scathing report about the state of elevator safety in the province. She slammed the agency that regulates elevators, The Technical Standards and Safety Authority, for falling down (no pun intended) on the job. 

Ms. Lysyk said 80 per cent of elevators failed their inspections in 2018 and that there had been 487 safety incidents. The report noted that the agency does not have consistent inspection standards, and ”A number of companies dominate the market and have been failing to make sure elevators meet safety laws”. 

The report did not add they were probably cutting corners for bigger profits and to hell with safety.

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

We need a rational world, Not a rationed world

The Socialist Party advocates the principle of common ownership. There was a time when it seemed to many that it was possible to tame the State and create a “welfare state” for the benefit of all. Yet it has only offered us crumbs. The apathy and despair endemic to our culture are symptoms of the powerlessness people experience over their lives. The State cannot build a socialist world for us, that must be built by ourselves. We seek to abolish capitalist commodity production and wage labour and replace these with a system where the wealth of society is owned in common, managed by the people themselves, and used to produce and allocate goods and services to each equitably and according to their needs. This socialist revolution will liberate us from both the need and the drive to create wealth for the rich, making possible a socialist mode of production that seeks to benefit all of humanity. Mutual aid is essential and promotes the positive flourishing of our collective humanity.

The Socialist Party’s object is the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by, and in the interests of, the whole people. What do we mean by common ownership? Do we propose taking over all the means of production, etc., and then divide them up amongst the whole people? Of course not. Industry and transport are all too large and too complicated to parcel out piecemeal division. In fact, one of the benefits capitalist production has conferred upon society is just this: that it has organised production on a social scale, though the process has brought misery to millions of workers and small proprietors. If we were to attempt to “divide up” existing wealth, therefore, we would have to take a step backward in development and revert to the primitive productive methods of our forefathers. And even if it were possible to take such a step backward, we would then be faced with two hopeless tasks: (1) To produce enough to satisfy the needs of the present huge population, without the productive, transport and other facilities that exist to-day; and (2) with private property of a primitive kind in existence to prevent the regrowth of huge amalgamations, such as exist to-day. We do not propose a “divvying up” society’s wealth.

What we do intend is that all the means of producing and distributing the things we need shall be taken over and administered as the common possession of one huge family—the human family. In other words, that each will be free to eat, drink and clothe himself according to his needs, and that in return each will contribute his services to production according to his capacities and the requirements of the times. This will involve the organisation of production according to plan. That is, it will be necessary to determine roughly: (1) The production required; (2) the raw material and machinery, etc., required; (3) the amount of work required to ensure the necessary production; (4) the allocation of the population to the work required.

Socialists are not hero worshippers because the emancipation of the working class can only be the job of the working class itself. That as long as it sits back trusting passively in some leader or savior or even party to “do good” for the people, it will never get an inch nearer to the great goal of freedom. The Socialist Party does not seek to “bring” socialism to the people; we seek to bring about  the conditions where the people win socialism for themselves.

When the new society has settled down to production on the new plan of organisation there will be ample leisure for each individual to employ himself in ways productive of pleasure. To some leisure time devoted to invention; to others the devotion to the different arts will be the outlet for their superfluous energies. Others again will like to spend some time in travel and it is just here that the new arrangement promises most. Modern technology has so simplified production that it has reduced the part of each to a comparatively simple one, and the tendency in this direction is still rapidly proceeding.

Working people live their whole life on the poverty line, some of them a little below it and some of them a little above it, but most of them precariously poised on it. Recession or war, unemployment or over-wok, hunger or obesity, collapse of economy or collapse of the environment – these are the alternatives presented by capitalism. It’s not difficult to prove that this is an insane world. Every issue of the Socialist Standard offers proof of the absurdity of the capitalist system. Even the capitalist media finds itself admitting the irrational character of this social system. Suffering and sorrow are the fate of individuals bent on self-destruction. Poverty and financial crises drive many into depression and to suicide. If one did not foresee a socialist solution to all of these problems, it would be easy to lose one’s mental balance. Our critics like to make fun of us and call us “crazy dreamers” But they are the ones who are supporting  this lunatic asylum called capitalism.

 You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Vulture Capitalism. Another Pension Fund sucked Dry

Two motions have been brought before the Ontario Superior Court, by 12,000 former Sears workers who feel they have been royally screwed, having been forced to take a 30 per cent cut on their pensions. 

The main focus of their ire is Eddie Lampert, a hedge fund billionaire, who took control over the ailing retail giant in 2005 and helped run it into the ground until it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017. 

What has upset the plaintiffs so much is that in December 2013 a $509 million dollar dividend was paid by Sears-Canada to its shareholders; you can bet they had a merry Christmas. 

As Bernie Sanders said, "Once again vulture capitalists have hollowed out a company to line their own pockets".

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

Why is socialism still relevant?

Part of centenary celebrations. Speakers Dick Donnelly and Bill Martin.

Capitalism Humbug, would’ve been better.

A letter came in my mail from Toronto’s Scott Mission, which calls itself, A Christian Ministry of Mercy and Love, asking for a donation to feed the homeless at Christmas. 

To quote, "But for those who are homeless and alone, there is no such thing as a holiday. Every single day is a new struggle to find food to eat and a safe place to stay”, which could also be said of many who are not homeless, especially as many parts of major cities are not safe. 

They also said, "for the last 77 years we have relied on the lords provision…”, well he’s not doing a very good job. Each meal they said would cost only $4.25, but what the good folks at Scott Mission don’t say is they’ll be starving the next day and for many afterward. 

What good is Christmas Spirit to them then? Perhaps Scrooge almost had it right when he said ‘Christmas Humbug'. Almost ‘cos' Capitalism Humbug, would’ve been better.

For socialism, 

Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC

Workers face the same problems result of living within the same system.

The last contract negotiated between GM and the auto-workers union, Unifor, which was in 2016, ensured that the plant in Oshawa would be in operation well past 2019. Imagine their shock and everyone else’s when GM announced it would lay off 2,700 workers there in December 2019. 

This was all the more amazing because GM had recently made $500 million in improvements at the plant and, to quote Mayor John Henry, ”those trucks are selling like crazy”. Unifor has been informed that, "There is no product allocated to the Oshawa plant past December 2019.

 Furthermore it will affect their suppliers and businesses in the Oshawa area. 

So one minute you think you’ve got a future and the next minute you find out the truth – that’s life under crapitalism.

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

Make Socialism a Reality

Socialism is a practical possibility. Human beings are quite capable of co-operating as free and equal men and women, to produce the wealth they need and to run a social system in which the satisfaction of these needs will be the guiding principle. The Socialist Party asserts that men and women can so organise the conditions of work that they can get pleasure from working and making useful things. The idea of a wage-free, money-free society terrifies the master-class. After all, how would they get their living without surplus labour to feast upon? Most people live in one of two quite different worlds. There is the world of sumptuous palaces for an opulent, parasitical few which the unemployed rich enjoy and there is the world of overcrowded slums for the poor, dispossessed multitudes.

 Capitalism is a brutal social system which splits the human race into two distinct classes: one a tiny, unproductive minority, able to wallow in the best of everything because of their ownership of the means of production and their unearned income from investments, and enormous number of propertyless workers who are restricted to shortages, enduring exploitation in spite of the fact that they are the actual creators of all the world’s real wealth.

The vast majority of people today are wage-slaves. In order to eat they are forced to work for the master class who own and control all the instruments of production. The masses who produce but do not own are robbed by the few who own but do not produce. They are robbed because they are paid in the form of wages only a small part of the value they create when they process raw materials into commodities. The workers must be paid less than the true value of the goods they produce for if they were paid the real value of those goods the master class would not be able to sell them for a profit. The profit which keeps the robber class in idle luxury come from the unpaid labour of the working class. That is what capitalism is all about and it cannot work any other way. Capitalism cannot operate in the interests of mankind.

What the poor cannot buy they must do without. If they cannot afford to buy food then they must starve, and capitalism will let them starve to death outside warehouses which are crammed full of good food which is rotting because the needy do not have the money to purchase it. Profit comes before people. Capitalism decrees that goods which cannot be sold for profit must not be produced, no matter how desirable and necessary they may be in order to make the world a better place for humanity. It also decrees that, at times of so-called glut, goods which cannot be sold must he destroyed as there is no money to be made by giving commodities away. That is why ‘surplus’ food (surplus only to the demands of the market, that is) is burned or dumped into the sea while underprivileged people are dying of hunger.

Capitalism causes unemployment, slums, poverty, famine, crime and war. Those social cankers are built into capitalist society and cannot possibly be eradicated as long as capitalism lasts. They are the natural and unavoidable consequences of the money system, the profit motive and the private property basis of society—the three fundamental rocks of capitalism. War cannot be charmed out of existence by reformist measures such as peace treaties and disarmament agreements. It is spawned by the national economic rivalries inseparable from capitalism. The structure of society must be altered in order to get rid of the social system which causes all the trouble. History proves that reforms achieve next to nothing—what we need now is a world-wide social revolution.

Instead of goods being produced simply to be sold to make a profit for the capitalists the privately-owned means of production should be converted to the common property of all Mankind so that everybody can have free access to everything that is produced. That would make money unnecessary as people would have no need to buy what they already owned. The working class would own the goods because they would be the people who had produced them. They produce everything now but capitalism deprives them of the fruits of their labour and relegates them to wage-slavery. But once production is organised to satisfy human need money will be superfluous and social equality will become a reality for everyone in the world of abundance which science could make possible tomorrow in a different social set-up. And when men have free access to all they need there will not be anything for them to fight over.

The capitalists employ every trick in the book to mislead people that capitalism is the best of all possible systems. Which it is—for the rich. But for the robbed millions who are the only useful, essential members of society capitalism is a curse. Unfortunately, it isn’t difficult to dazzle the masses of people with all the ostentatious ritual and ceremony, the pomp that the rulers stage for that purpose. The master class know how to divert the workers' attention from social conditions to irrelevancies.