Our Purpose Is Clear: Socialism

Chattel slavery was abolished because wage slavery was more suitable for the growing capitalist economy. The subjugation of men and women has always been inseparably connected to class society, is maintained by class society, and cannot be resolved until classes are abolished. All national strife will be abolished only when inequality and capitalism are abolished.

The reformers are having a hey-day devising the means by which the world can be saved and the security working people is assured. The air is so full of schemes to give the workers a few more crumbs. The social consciousness of many people is being stirred. Men and women are asking themselves some questions like: What am I going to get out of all this misery? Do we have to have one war after the other? Isn’t there some way we can end all this inequality? Such questions are very dangerous for the capitalist system. Capitalism, with its system of production for profit and system of international rivalry for domination of foreign territories and trade, which produces one war after another keeps millions subjugated and exploited, by its wage system. Capitalism does not know how to abolish its many social problems BUT WE SOCIALISTS DO. If this system cannot give peace and plenty to its people, SOCIALISM CAN. A liberal reformer is someone who doesn’t like what capitalism does, but likes capitalism. They try to solve the problems created by the system by supporting the system.

Abolish the private ownership of the land and factories which will transfer the means of production from private ownership to common ownership. Socialism by makes all of – society the joint heirs and owners of the tools of production, will restore to the workers that private property of which capitalism deprives them. The aim of your striving must be the triumph of socialism. Socialism means production for use and not for profit. Socialism means internationalism. It means that one working class is not pitted against the others in wars, It means that one working man is not pitted against the other in the fight for a job. It means that one working class is not cutting the throat of the other by producing at lower wages than the other. The criteria for production under socialism would be – how much is needed? Some people will argue that it can’t work, it’s a utopia. We can only answer that capitalism has demonstrated that IT can’t work. A society organised on the basis of production for use would have more of a chance of working than our present economic system. none of the politicians and economists have been able to devise any kind of plan to solve the basic ills of capitalism. They all seek to do the impossible: make capitalism work. Untold misery, poverty and unemployment are the living facts that prove that capitalism doesn’t work – not for the working class, anyway. Socialism has not “broken down wherever it has been tried,” because it has never been tried.

Everything you use, everything you eat or wear, your car, your house — you didn’t make any of these things. We don’t produce these things as individuals. We produce socially. We have a division of work in the world. People in one part of the world make things which people in another part of the world use. But, even though we produce socially, through co-operation, we don’t own the means of production socially. And this affects all the basic decisions made in this society about what we produce. These decisions are not made on the basis of what people need, but on the basis of what makes a profit. 

There are people going hungry all over the world. And yet, because of the profit system, governments pay some farmers not to farm. Farmers don’t make their decisions by saying: “We need a lot of corn so I’m going to plant a lot of corn.” They never say that. They say: “How much money am I going to make if I plant corn?” Did you know that if decisions were not made on this basis we would have the potential to feed the whole world many times over? The economic potential is there. 

Take the question of housing. If you took just the money that’s spent on wars and armaments we could build beautiful free homes for every family. We could wipe out every slum. The potential exists, not only in the factories and materials for building, but in the potential to build new machines and factories. Yet, they are not going to solve the housing question because it’s not as profitable to build houses as it is war-planes. 

Did you know that because of the way the system is structured a large percentage of the people do not do any productive work at all? You have the unemployed who are not hired because it’s not profitable to hire them. Then you have the people in the army, not to mention the police and private security, and others who consume a great deal but don’t produce anything. Then you have things like the cashiers on the check-out. They don’t do anything really useful or necessary. In addition, you have a mammoth, organised effort to create waste. For instance, if you designed a car that would last 50 years, they wouldn’t manufacture it. Because that would destroy the purpose of making cars, which is to produce profits. 

Say you are a capitalist, and you’re about to build a factory. Do you say: “I’ll build it where it’s nice, where there are trees and fresh air, and where the workers will have nice homes and will be able to go mountain climbing or hunting or swimming?” No, that’s not the way you think. You say: “Well, where’s my market, where are my raw materials coming in, how can I make the most profit?” And this means you might build the factory where you will pump even more pollution into the air, another example of a problem which stems directly from this system.

All the institutions under capitalism are ideological institutions in the sense that all of them maintain and demand support for the system. So it should be no surprise to you that the higher you go in a corporate career, the higher you go in the university structure, the higher in rank you get in the army, the people get more and more conservative. They get more and more consciously pro-capitalist system; they are more and more for whatever crimes the system has to commit. They simply wouldn’t be there if they weren’t.

Socialists have been accused for many years of wanting to overthrow the capitalist class by force and violence. When they accuse us of this, what they are really trying to do is to imply that we want to abolish capitalism with a minority, that we want to force the will of the minority on the majority. The opposite is the truth. We believe we can win a majority of the people to support a change in the system. Many people have a stereotyped picture of what a revolution is like. What they do is they confuse revolution with insurrection. We have a working-class army, for example, that has a great deal of actual and potential power. Because workers run everything ask yourself, why is this power never realised politically? The reason is simple. The majority of people are under illusions and the capitalists can rule only through maintaining illusions. Many believe that the ruling class has unlimited power. If the ruling class announced that they were cancelling all elections, cancelling freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and so on and if there is any resistance they’ll throw us all into detention camps, how long do you think they would stay in power? They couldn’t do it. Their power is already limited by a certain consciousness that exists in the minds of the people. Their power is limited by the fact that people believe in free speech, in free assembly and in democracy. For sure, they will suppress opposition to them insofar as they can get away with it. And they will use brutal means if it suits their needs. But they will try to keep the repression in the bounds without arousing the resistance of the people, without destroying the illusions. Because, if the people begins to wake up, that’s a greater danger. The hope the ruling class has is if it can isolate the socialists completely from the rest of the people. That is why the number-one task of all socialists who really want to change the system is to reach out to the people. Capitalism does it for us. The system creates the situation in which people awaken. People grow dissatisfied, to the point of rebellion. They want to be free. And they realise this is possible. All of a sudden, you have an increase in consciousness, an awareness about the problems of society, created by the capitalists. And this awareness can become much more intensified. Now you can have radical uprisings of all sorts, but that will never result in a change of the system, unless it’s organised, because, people when they first become radicalised, don’t fully understand the general problems. They don’t understand how to change society. Very few individuals come to this consciousness completely on their own. What you have is an overwhelming mass of people who have objectively no interest in this system. They have to be won over, and our whole strategy, everything we do, has got to be directed at winning them. A socialist party, the collective expression of a whole class is required. That’s what Marxism is all about. That’s what revolutionary politics is all about. 

Women and men of the whole world let us clasp hands across the frontiers to bar the road to war, oppression and poverty. Let us end the wars now being waged.

The Socialist Party opposes the capitalist system.

We are living in extremely frightening times. Life is becoming more difficult for most and many of the causes workers have fought for are being pushed back. There is war. It is class war. It is waged by the representatives of one class, the oppressors, against the mass of another class, the oppressed. In this war, the State is always and invariably on the side of the oppressors. The State is the big stick of the owners of wealth, the big stick of the big corporations. Those who try to persuade you that the State is your friend and protector, that the State is impartial and only “regulatory,” are misleading you. Under capitalism you cannot protect both “industry” (meaning the capitalists) and labour (meaning the workers). When you defend “industry” you give it freedom to exploit “labour”. The State serves the interests of big business. The essence of the capitalist State is service in the employ of capitalism for the preservation of capitalism. Reformists propose a little tinkering here and there.

It becomes more and more obvious that mankind stands at a cross-road – to socialism or to barbarism. While the workers are striving to lead humanity up to socialism, the capitalists, fearing to lose their power and privileges are trying to drag the social development down the other road. Unfortunately, with the 'middle class' rapidly sinking into insecurity, others declassed by uber type gig employment and many young people who have no chance of entering the process of production are willing to follow any populist demagogue who promises them to bring about any change. The idea of forgoing democracy consequently seems less repugnant to the present generation. Tactics of lies and slander as well as their general hero-worship – all this assists in creating an even more dissatisfied audience.

Under capitalism the workers are wage slaves, slaves of the bosses. The bosses run the factories in order to maximise profits. This means that they pay workers as little as possible, that they do not hesitate to maintain unsafe working conditions to save a buck, and that poor quality products are purposely produced in order to increase profits. History has shown that these conditions are always present under capitalism, and cannot be eliminated as long as there is bosses rule. A capitalist has to exploit his workers in order to survive as a capitalist.

Without a vision of a better world and the organisation that goes with it, protests of ordinary working people in response to injustice will likely go nowhere or worse. The first step in creating this vision is taking the blinkers off and telling the truth about our current society. Fundamental social change leading us beyond the profit system is essential. The Socialist Party stands for the abolition of landlords and capitalists by the workers. We believe that society has reached a stage where it is possible so to organise production as to end poverty, unemployment, inequality and war. To lift the working class everywhere from wage-slavery to freedom, dignity, and self-control is the purpose of the world socialist movement. Socialism is modern free society, based upon cooperative industry, administered in the equal interest of all. There are no guarantees, of course, that humanity will ever get there. Global catastrophe is a real and growing possibility. But it is important to keep the dream alive and continue to struggle.

There Is A Way Foward

All States represent the rule of one class over another, but for the first time in history. And its purpose is to enforce exploitation, to allow one class to live parasitically off another, but socialism is to end all exploitation and create the community of working people, without class distinction. When all of society has been transformed, with the ulcers of capitalism have been eliminated, and the community of workers has been established, then socialism, completely class-free society, will have been achieved, and humanity will enter a whole new stage of history. Socialism is a tremendous advance over capitalism. Socialism eliminates the anarchy of capitalism and its crises, by common ownership of the means of production and collective planning of the economy controlled by society as a whole. This removes the tremendous barriers to production that capitalist relations have erected. Unemployment will be ended, because socialism will be able to make full use of the labour of everyone in society, while at the same time developing and introducing new techniques and scientific methods to expand output. As new technology can replace workers, workers will not be thrown into the streets, but transferred to other jobs–according to an overall plan–and gradually the work day for all workers will be reduced. The nature of work itself will change completely, because the labour of the workers will no longer go to enrich capital to further enslave the working class, but to improve life today, while providing for the future, according to a conscious plan. The pride that workers have in their work will be unhindered by any sense that they are working themselves, or someone else, out of a job, or that they are being driven to produce for the private benefit of an employer, under the orders of his or her foremen and the constant threat of being fired. Machines will no longer be weapons in the hands of the capitalists to grind down the working class, and workers will no longer be a mere extension of the machine, as they are under capitalism. Instead machines will become weapons in the hands of the working class in its own struggle to transform society. The organisation of work will be the province of the producers themselves. All this will unleash the stored-up knowledge of humanity, based on its direct experience in production, and inspire workers to make new breakthroughs in improving production. Work itself will become a joy and enrichment of the worker’s life, instead of a miserable means to sustain existence, as it is under capitalism. With the ownership of the means of production in its hands, the working class will take up the ending of all inequalities between nationalities as a crucial part of building socialism. Discrimination in work and all areas of society will be wiped out. This it will fully accomplish under socialism, as a key part of strengthening its rule, continuing to revolutionise society. Working people will have a variety of organisations and decision-making to involve the majority of people in the process of running and remaking society. Socialism will make possible the building of well-constructed housing for the masses of people. Under capitalism, it is more profitable to speculate in land, maintain slum housing and put capital into buildings for big business than to build decent housing for the masses. The slums will be ripped down, and in their place new homes and other facilities for the masses of people will be built. Health care under capitalism is a nightmare for the people and big business for the drug companies, hospital corporations and others who make billions from the butchery of the people. Under socialism health care and hospitals will no longer be a means to make profit, but a means for the working class to prevent disease and to preserve the health of the people.

Education in class society reflects and promotes the interests of the ruling class and instills in the youth the values and outlook of this class. Under capitalism this means that education is geared to maintain the division of society into classes, the conditions of capitalist exploitation and the rule of the capitalists over the working class and masses of people. Capitalist education prepares the great majority of youth only for existence as wage-slaves and as a key part of perpetuating the capitalist system of wage-slavery distorts history to make it revolve around the “brilliant ideas” and individual heroism of great “geniuses,” Kings, Emperors, Presidents, bankers, industrialists and other representatives of the exploiting classes throughout history. Children are taught to compete against each other and that competition is what “makes this country great.” Reality is stood on its head, so that it seems that capital, not labour, is the source of all progress and that the workers live by the grace of the capitalists. Education in socialist society will serve the interests of the working class in building socialism, suppressing the forces of capitalism and continuing the revolutionary struggle to transform all of society and achieve communism. It will put reality back on its feet and expose this bourgeois propaganda. It will instill in the youth the understanding that the labouring people throughout history have been the backbone of society and the source of its development. It will promote cooperation in place of competition, and equality between nationalities, between countries and peoples, and between men and women, in place of the bourgeois garbage that one nation should be over another, that men are superior and women inferior, etc. In place of the bourgeois view of history that presents it as a jumble of unrelated events, stemming from the personalities of “great men,” it will teach the youth that history is determined by the struggle between classes and will enable them to determine the class outlook of all ideas. Socialist education will stress the living link between theory and practice, between knowing and doing, and will help develop workers who are capable of combining mental and manual labour. In short, socialist education will be a crucial part of raising new generations that can carry forward the revolutionary role of the working class.

Religion serves capitalism by telling people that they are basically helpless before the forces of nature-and the rulers of society–and they should put their faith not in the ability of the masses of people to change the world, but in a supreme, supernatural being, or beings. And if that isn’t enough, religion can call up the image of fire and brimstone to threaten people.

More, those who control major organised religions make huge fortunes from collecting large sums from their members, investing much of these sums and exploiting labour. While telling the people to wait for “pie in the sky,” these hypocritical leeches live like kings, right here and now, from the sweat and blood, hopes and fears, of the people. At the same time, in every community, hustlers of all kinds–calling themselves “men of god, prophets,” etc.–prey on workers and other poor people, promising them all kinds of miracles to ease their misery–for a nice fee (donation), of course.

Socialist society will eliminate all use of religion to exploit and oppress the people. And the Party of the working class will lead a consistent political and ideological struggle to arm the masses of people with the understanding that they are the true force that changes the world and that they can conquer nature. The outlook of the working class is scientific–it recognises that the causes of things lie in the living struggle of opposing forces, in nature and society. While at any time there are things that are not yet known, there is nothing unknowable, there is nothing that is not bound by the laws of nature and society and nothing in the universe which cannot be harnessed and transformed in the interests of the people, once the basic laws governing it have been discovered and grasped by the masses of people. The working class, once it becomes conscious of all this, has no need for belief in supernatural beings or forces of any kind.

The capitalist class spreads its culture, not only through the educational system, but through its vast mass media–its newspapers, magazines, television, radio and movies, and other forms. Bourgeois culture, which reflects the outlook of the capitalists, is decadent. It glorifies parasites–whether bank president, gangster or pimp–and those who do the dirty work of the bourgeoisie in suppressing the people, like cops. It promotes cynicism, despair, and the lie that the masses of people are at fault for all the problems of society–since these can hardly be covered up. It tries to demoralise people with the idea that they are the helpless pawn of mysterious and sinister forces. In all its forms it aims at deflecting the anger of the people away from the ruling class back onto themselves–hate people of another nationality, or the other sex, hate yourself, hate people in general, hate anything but the ruling class itself.

Socialist society will wipe out the decadence of capitalism in all spheres. Capitalist society, which is based on the robbery of the working class by the bourgeoisie, breeds crime on all levels. The capitalists themselves are the greatest criminals and murderers of all time, and there is no way they can eliminate crime. Socialist society will eliminate crime, along with eliminating the criminal capitalist class. Those who, in capitalist society, are forced into crime for survival, because they cannot find work–at least not at a living wage–will no longer have the need to do so.

If all this seems like a mere dream now, it is only because the apologists of capital have so greatly distorted possibilities. Socialism will mean all this, and much more. But none of this will come as a “gift,” or “automatically”.

In the slave system, it was considered “natural” for one group of people, the slave-owners, to own other people, the slaves. In capitalist society, this idea is regarded as criminal and absurd, because the bourgeoisie has no need for slaves as private property (at least not in its own country). But it has every need for wage-slaves, proletarians. So it presents as “natural” the kind of society where a small group, the capitalists, own the means of production and on that basis force the great majority of society to work to enrich them. The slave-owners and the capitalists have one fundamental thing in common–they are both exploiters, and they both regard it as the correct and perfect order of things for a small group of parasites to live off the majority of labouring people. They differ only in the form in which they exploit and therefore in their view of how society should be organised to ensure this exploitation. When humanity has advanced to communism, society as a whole will consciously reject the idea that any one group should privately own the means of production. Then wage-slavery, based on the ownership of capital as private property, will be seen as just as criminal and absurd as ancient slavery, based on the ownership of other people as private property. The working class, by its own nature as a class, has no interest in promoting private gain at the expense of others and every interest in promoting cooperation. For only in this way can it emancipate itself and all humanity.

The working class can emancipate itself only by emancipating all humanity. The division of the world into nations will be replaced by the world community of people. Nothing can save capitalism in the long run, because it has long since become a barrier to progress and long since prepared the conditions for its own destruction. The advance of the proletariat, the greatest and most powerful class in history, to communism, to the elimination of class society, is inevitable.

The people need a future

We the working class create the wealth of society. But we do so only for the profit of the bosses on terms dictated by them. As workers, we are forced to work long hours in conditions which endanger our physical and mental health. We have no control over what we produce, how it is produced or what it is used for. Every aspect of our lives is dominated by the need for money. At most, what we are paid allows us to consume a part of what the bosses decide it is profitable for us to produce. Even then the goods we buy often fall apart before we have paid for them. The food we eat is adulterated. 

The working class is the dispossessed class. We depend on selling our labour power to the bosses. But since labour power, as a commodity, is bought and sold like any other commodity, the bosses can refuse to buy it when it is no longer required. For the bosses who own and control the means of production, all production has a single aim: profit. Nothing is produced unless it can be sold profitably, however much it may be needed. For the sake of profit mountains of food are destroyed. Resources are denied for basic health care. The houses and cities we live in are allowed to decay. Instead resources are devoted to arms and armies so that the bosses can send us into war against rival profiteers. Resources are used to maintain and arm the police forces which defend the bosses from our anger. Nor do the bosses stint on luxuries for themselves. None of this would happen in a rationally organised society. It is the outcome of a society propelled by the lust for profit. For all these reasons the working class has no interest in the continued existence of this society.

The era of capitalism is coming to an end. The continued existence of capitalism threatens the survival of humanity. The crisis of capitalism is propelling the world towards economic and ecological catastrophe. Nationalisation is a state capitalist measure which offers no benefits whatsoever either to the workers employed there or to the working class as a whole. Nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that state capitalism equals socialism, or a step towards it. Nevertheless, the idea that state capitalism is or could be beneficial to the working class is still a powerful force holding back the class struggle. The organisation of socialist society will be based or the collective 'administration of things', not on the political power of a ruling minority over the majority. The State, which throughout history has been the organisation of ruling class power, will have been abolished.

Socialism is a struggle to replace competition by cooperation, production for profit by production for need. This will make it possible to redevelop the large areas of the world devastated by capitalism, and to institute a system of global planned production. A socialist society such as we envisage is only possible on the basis of material abundance. The potential for this has already been created by the development of capitalist industry and agriculture. Goods will be freely available and free of charge. Money will disappear. However, socialism will not be like a huge supermarket where consumers simply help themselves. Work will be done because we want it to be done and want to do it - not because we have to in order to survive. The focus of interest in our lives will shift away from passively consumption, to include the new form of productive activity. This does not mean that overnight all productive activities will become passionately interesting but a free society will strive to make them so by continually transforming the aims and methods of production.

 There will no longer be a mad scramble to exploit resources without concern for the future, or a rush to buy the latest model or the newest fashion which gives the illusion of inventiveness and innovation. The separation between work and leisure will actually disappear. People will freely associate to creatively use and transform their lives, by creatively using and transforming goods, activities and the environment, in an attempt to satisfy all our developing needs and desires. Community and communication will emerge in this common project: people will no longer be mere objects in the production process. The essence of socialism is the passionate transformation of the world and of ourselves, in the creation of a world human community.

The Socialist Party role in all this is, through our agitation and campaigns, to publicise, support and encourage today’s struggles which help spread of revolutionary ideas and a revolutionary consciousness within the working class and to escalate the class war towards achieving socialism.

Abridged and adapted from here

We opt for socialism.

What distinguishes the Socialist Party from all other organisations is that it constantly pose the socialist alternative to capitalism. It points out that far more than trade union activity or political reforms are needed to achieve a decent world; one without money or a wages system where the means of production will be owned by society and can therefore be used to satisfy people’s needs instead of being cramped by the dictates of the market. The Socialist Party argues that what is needed is not merely to “Kick out the Tories” but to get rid of capitalism. This will not be achieved by any amount adventurism or ultra-revolutionary leadership. What is needed for such a social revolution is a majority of working men and women understanding what socialism entails and determined to establish such a system. This understanding grows out of the collective experience of workers under capitalism — a process which socialists attempt to encourage by their propaganda activities. So even while socialists are engaged in the struggle over wages and working conditions, they never cease putting forward the case for socialism as an immediate demand. Far from standing aside from the day-to-day struggles of the working class, socialists are involved in these efforts —and complement them with a socialist perspective.

We live in a society in which almost everything we need is owned by someone else. It is their property. We must buy it from them.

From infancy we are taught: theirs; ours; yours; mine. Possession. "Don't touch, it doesn't belong to you." We learn early about ownership, and when we obey its rules we have been "civilised". A peasant who watches her child die of starvation while armed guards protect grain mountains is a very civilised person. A homeless father whose family must live in squalor is civilised when he banishes from his mind the thought of breaking into one of thousands of empty properties. Civilisation is not an historical achievement, but an assault on the dignity of those who do not own.

Vast areas of land in Britain are owned by this Duke or that Lord. You are not even allowed to walk on it. for if you do you are a trespasser and trespassing is as illegal as owning is legal. "Private Property — Keep Out." And how did they get it? Thievery, generally speaking. Expropriation. Plunder. It is a long and violent history, the story of how the capitalists came to own. Suffice to say that they did not get it by the sweat of their labour. The history of property society is the history of robbery of the majority by the minority. That is a generalisation but it will do for now. So, they obtained it by thievery; but how do they keep hold of it? By law. They passed laws saving "This is ours". The law of property.

Racism cannot be separated from all the other delusions and misconceptions which are current; it cannot, in other words, be separated from the capitalist social system and all the strange, pernicious ideas which divide the working class and help to keep the system in existence. The first need, for those who want to fight racism, is to speak out loud and clear among the confusion. Capitalism does little to unite human beings; at most times it works actively to divide them—as it is working now, for example, to divide the people of Russian and China. This often means that capitalism actually fosters nationalism and racism; during the last war British workers were encouraged to believe that the only good German was a dead one and it is only a short step from there to being told, if the interests of a ruling class demand it, that the only good Black is a dead one. At the same time capitalism is working a particularly pernicious trick upon the working class. As a system of privilege, it must promote the idea that acquisitiveness is a high virtue, but at the same time it cannot provide security. Thus there are millions of workers in this country, reading of the glorious exploits of their masters in the press and trying to hold at bay the ravages which industrial capitalism is wreaking on their mortgaged homes, who are desperately dependent on their jobs, their masters. Workers who are struggling to buy a home on a mortgage often resent the existence of council houses near them, and think of council tenants as dirty and unprincipled spongers. This sort of neurotic resentment is all too easily transferred to immigrants, especially when they have a different cultural background and when they are easily distinguished by the colour of their skin.

The Socialist Party strives after the creation of a new kind of society—Socialism—in which such problems as famine, poverty, war, and inequality could not conceivably arise. The Socialist Party seeks the removal of class society where the minority capitalist class exploits the majority working class and which has brought about the conflicts and problems we have listed. The other parties, however, do not seek to remove the cause of these problems, which is capitalism, and therefore cannot succeed in removing them. We want to remove capitalism—the cause of wars, poverty, nationalism, and exploitation, and of the frustrations which provoke much aggressive behaviour. The lie of innate depravity is a weapon in the hands of the capitalist class: it prevents criticism of capitalism, since there is supposed to be no possible alternative. Of course, innate goodness is just as much a myth as innate wickedness. Why must we buy what we need? Why can we not take what we need from the common store, having contributed to wealth production according to our abilities? "If there was free access to everything people would take too much". The greedy people. But would they? In a society where there is no buying, but free access, why should you eat more than enough? We know why millions of workers eat less than enough under the buying and selling system: because they cannot afford to buy food. Would people in a society of free access drive more than one car at a time or wear more than one shirt or cover themselves with so much gold that they would be unable to walk?If there was a society of free access next week, would you take more than you need? If so, why? Because taking freely would be a novelty — but not for long, and then you could get down to just taking enough. Are you really naturally greedy? Or is it not the case that you are intelligent and self-confident enough to know that in a society based on satisfying people's needs there would be no reason to behave like a kid in a sweet shop when the governor's out the back? You are capable of acting as a co-operative human being. And if you are, others are. And if others are, then we could live without buying and selling.

Socialists are workers who want the world back. We want common ownership and democratic control of the world by all of its people. We want to let the minority know that they have had possession of property for too long. It is time for common property. Or. as a logical consequence, no property. A propertyless society: common ownership — no ownership.

And where there is no ownership, no property, there will be no exchange or money. There will be free access for all people to all goods and services. That is socialism.

Glasgow Branch (12/6)

SHARE THE WORLD

SPARE THE PLANET

June 12 at 7:00 pm

Maryhill Community Central Halls,

304 Maryhill Road,

Glasgow G20 7YE

The reason for organisation is that a number of people united are better able to accomplish a given end as a rule than the same people working in an isolated fashion. In fact, some ends can only be accomplished by means of organisations, and socialism is one of them. Mere organisation, however, is not enough. It must be of such a nature that it will meet the need to accomplish the end as soon as possible. Moreover, it must really accomplish the end, and not some pale shadow of it. Bad organisation will often defeat the end aimed at, weak organisation will hinder its accomplishment, and only sound organisation will adequately achieve it. The end that is aimed at determines the nature of the organisation. Our organization, a party of equals, is a political movement to revolutionise the present social arrangements.

It is from the workers that the Socialist Party draws its strength, because it is the workers whose interests demand the change. Many clever and honest people believed that the parliamentary avenue to State control could be ignored and held to the view that general strikes and insurrection were the means the workers should adopt to overthrow the present social system, but in the end they did not succeed. The attitude taken by our Party years ago still holds true—that only by having a socialist membership, and therefore a socialist policy, can a real socialist party be secured.

Socialism can only be established by a socialist working class. hence the chief task of the Socialist Party can only be to make their fellow workers socialist. We hold that this can best be done by campaigning for socialism and socialism alone. To do otherwise is to get the support of non-socialists and eventually to cease to be a socialist party altogether. We accept the doctrine of the class struggle and base our policy on it. Thus we refuse to compromise with other political parties which, including the Labour Party, can only stand for capitalism. It is sometimes argued by the Left that the way to make socialists is to back the demands of politically ignorant workers and show then that these demands can't be realised without getting rid of capitalism. But this is an odd way of going about things. Why not tell the workers straight off that they're going down a blind alley? Why bother to lead them down it just to show them it is a blind alley? The logic of this is that the working class should try out all wrong policies just to see that they are wrong. We reject such nonsensical doctrine. But once this doctrine is rejected then the case for entryism falls to the ground. There is no longer any need to make a principle of leading workers down blind alleys because you think it will benefit them.

The Socialist Party addresses its appeal for members to the working class. It is essential that those who join the Socialist Party clearly understand its object and policy. Why does the Socialist Party regularly achieve such a low percentage poll when it contests elections? Is it our “dogmatism” and "sectarianism", our refusal to unite with other groups, such as those in the anti-war, ecologist, feminist movements? Frankly, although we would not want to deny the sincerity of many activists in these groups in seeking to improve living conditions and solve social problems, we would not want to merge with them to try and bring about reforms of the capitalist system. It is necessary to keep our objective clear and not being sidetracked into activity which has nothing to do with the work of building a movement to advocate and achieve a society of common ownership. We are of course always keen to discuss with other groups and parties, hold forums with them, and indeed learn from them where they have knowledge that we do not have.

We need speakers and writers to spread our message so the more people who have already arrived at a socialist consciousness become part of the organisation propagating those ideas, the more members and the more resources this will give us. Let us be in no doubt: there are very many workers who are ready and willing to listen to the case for world socialism and to take it up with enthusiasm. Optimistic we may be but socialists have a message which is irresistible and the most urgent and exciting task of the moment is to work for a speedy termination to the system which enslaves the majority class. The Socialist Party stands in hostility to the boss class whether they pretend to dictate on the workers' behalf or they are undisguised legalised robbers, we are out to end their power, and to expose the ideologies which have allowed them to hold it this long. Socialism is not dead: it has not yet been tried.

If you are a convinced socialist you should vote for your principles whether there is a socialist candidate in your constituency or not. Where there is no socialist candidate, write SOCIALISM across your ballot paper. But do not leave it at that. Persuade your friends, relatives and workmates to consider the socialist case. Give your support to socialist campaigns where there is a genuine socialist candidate. No effort can be too great in relation to the urgent political task which faces us.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain

52 Clapham High Street,

 London SW4 7UN

The Socialist Party's Alternative

It is very easy to go with the flow, dead fish can that. But in order to be able to swim against the current, it is necessary to have ability, to exert energy and efforts, and even to risk death by drowning. The life line is provided by socialism.

It is very clear to many that today the workers as a class are not revolutionary. For them to become so implies a great mental change. Is it possible that our fellow-workers will ever be able to throw off their capitalistic outlook? The Socialist Party answers, yes! The process may turn out to be slower than we hope, but there are two powerful agents which further it—economic and social developments and socialist arguments. The function of the Socialist Party educational propaganda is to clarify and organise the vague anti-capitalist thoughts already present in the minds of discontented workers, by educating them to the true nature of capitalism and the means of their emancipation, thus giving to the working class an objective which social development demonstrates with ever increasing vividness to be both desirable and possible.

Only by the inauguration of international socialism will wars be abolished. For only then will there be no capitalist class to make war (using our class for the butcher's job) in order to seize territory which will become markets for their surplus products. For only then will the workers own and control all that which they alone produce, and only then will there be no vast surplus of wealth, stolen from the workers, for which a market must he found, and to provide a market for which working-class blood must be poured out like water. No man worthy of the name will hold back now.

To make our position clear, we emphasise that socialism can only be brought about by socialists. This involves the hard plodding work which the impatient and the ambitious cannot bear to undertake. The worker who speaks freely is open to the ridicule of those who have been conditioned to fear freedom. Our voices are all but drowned out by the pernicious blast of the capitalist media which functions as a silencer on the minds of the working class. But still we make our voices heard and, combined with the hard lessons of capitalist experience, those who ignore us today will be echoing our message in the times to come. It is our task to illuminate the dark places of capitalism in order to enlighten the workers as a preliminary to getting them to become active and understanding socialists.

The education of the workers may be a tedious process, but it is none the less essential for the achievement of our object. Show our fellow-workers the lines of class cleavage, its cause and the instrument of its perpetuation. Organise them politically for the capture of that instrument for their own purposes, that is, for the overthrow of the present social system and the establishment in its place of the socialist commonwealth. That and that alone is the cure for the misery of the working class.

No to the Bosses Dictatorship

Political parties are the product of the class struggle. In a class-free society which has rid itself of the remnants of class interests and ideology there will be no political parties. They will be unnecessary. But we have not reached the classless society. We are in the midst of a society torn asunder by class struggle, and the political parties of necessity express and reflect the interests of classes in conflict. The Socialist Party indicts capitalism at a barrier to the future evolution of civilisation and challenges its political spokesmen of whatever name or brand to defend it. The Socialist Party challenges the right of capitalism to exist and appeals to the world’s workers upon the lines of their class interests. In regards to the interests of the owners of production and distribution the Socialist Party have no concern, except to abolish that ownership.

Capitalism is founded upon production for profit. Socialism is postulated upon production for use. Whenever the owners of the world’s machinery of production and distribution fail for any reason to realise profit, it is in their power to cease production or distribution and the world’s workers may starve. Again, if the owners of the world’s machinery of production and distribution permit to be operated, they dictate the terms upon which the world’s workers may use that machinery. In other words, the only function of the modern capitalist is to own that which his brother man must use. The worker has naught but labour power, of hand or brain, to sell, and if he must sell labour power upon terms dictated by another, he or she is a slave. The war between capitalism and socialism resolves itself into the age-old question of human slavery. Until corporate wealth is supplanted by common wealth in the ownership of this nation, it will continue to write our laws and to enforce them or not, as best pleases its owners. The Socialist Party calls upon his brothers and sisters to join us in the overthrow of capitalism through capturing the powers of government and transferring the ownership of the world from capitalism to socialism. For the first time in the world’s history a subject class has it in its own power to accomplish its own emancipation without an appeal to brute force. This is the appeal which socialism makes to the workers of this nation and the world. It invites them to seize political power in the name of the working class, and to legally write their own economic emancipation proclamation.

Capitalism has survived beyond its time, and inflicted untold evil on the world, primarily because of the betrayal of the program and principles of socialism by those who pretended to speak in its name. The prolonged survival of capitalism, with all its frightful consequences, is due primarily to the influence of the reformist currents in the labour movement, falsely calling itself “socialist.” In every crisis, whenever the capitalists were no longer able to rule in their own name, they turned to the reformist labour parties to save their rule. That is the bitter fruit of opportunism and class collaboration policies.

We of the Socialist Party have nothing to do with these brands of so-called “socialism.” We are orthodox Marxists, because we know that Marxism is the only revolutionary socialism of the working class, and that is the only genuine socialism. History has demonstrated the spuriousness of every other brand. Marxism is a theory of social evolution which affirms that capitalism is obsolete and bankrupt, and that it must be, and inevitably will be, replaced by a higher form of social organisation which Marx and Engels called socialism, or communism.

Marxism teaches that socialism will not fall from the skies. Neither will it be gained by any appeals to the good will and compassion of the capitalist exploiters, as the Utopians, who preceded Marx, used to think, and as some people still seem to think. Socialism can be realised only as the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. The class struggle is the motive force of history. Politics has no serious meaning except as the expression of conflicting class interests. Marx and Engels asserted, and we repeat after them, that there is an irreconcilable conflict of class interests between the workers and their capitalist exploiters. The political programme of a socialist party must be determined accordingly. All the political actions and judgements of a workers party must always be directed against the capitalist class, and never be taken in collaboration with them. The class struggle is the central and governing principle of socialist politics. It is by carrying the class struggle to its necessary conclusion — that is, to the victory of the working class and the abolition of capitalism — that the socialist society will be realised. This is Marxism. There is no other way. And every attempt to find another way, by supporting the capitalists, by conciliating them, by collaborating with them, in peace or in war, has led not toward the socialist goal but to defeat and disaster for the workers.

The working class is on the verge of a great political awakening. All the more incumbent is it upon socialists to educate this working class in the true programme of socialism. And that is the programme of Marx and Engels. There can be no greater error than to miseducate or deceive this working class upon whom so much depends for the salvation of mankind. It is a crime to offer them a programme of reformist liberalism under the label of socialism. What hope can we ever have of socialism, or even of the preservation of the remnants of democracy, or even of the salvation of the human race, if we don’t resolutely oppose capitalism. take our position in this defence for the life and freedom and independence of mankind. And no one worthy of the name of socialist can do otherwise.