Socialism is the real thing

The capitalist class is the number one enemy of the people. It ruthlessly exploits and oppresses the working class. Capitalism hold the working class in subjection by the strength of its might and power, but capitalism can not do it without the willing consent and acquiescence of that working class. What is the secret of the Socialist Party? The secret lies not in the personality and the ability of orators and writers; it lies in the fact that all the propaganda and teaching of this party was, from the outset, based upon the class struggle – upon a recognition of the fact that the struggle between the Haves and the Have Nots was the controlling factor in politics, and that this fight could only be ended by the working class seizing hold of political power and using this power to transfer the ownership of the means of life, viz, land and machinery of production, from the hands of private individuals to the community, from individual to social or public ownership. This party had against it all the organised forces of society – of a society founded upon robbery, but it had on its side a latent force stronger than them all, the material interests of the working class. The awakened recognition of that material interest has carried us far; it will carry us in triumph to the end.

Political pundits are always telling us that the world has changed — the system has changed and the whole nature of capitalism isn’t what it used to be. The Socialist Party asserts capitalism has not changed. The struggles between rival capitalists, the harsh conflict of interests between workers and capitalists, the blind and wasteful way in which worker is set against his brother worker — these things remain, today. Socialism will be the outcome of a process of social evolution that is going on now. The culmination of this process will be the capture of political power for socialism by the working class and the consequent social revolution from capitalism to socialism. It is capitalism that paves the way for socialism. Capitalism has already brought into being a world-wide productive system that could provide a plenty for all and the people to run this system. What it has yet to bring into being is the desire for socialism on the part of those who work for wages throughout the world. This is the only real barrier to socialism today. If what our correspondent implies at one point is correct — if workers can’t run society without the capitalist class — then the time is not ripe for socialism. Our answer to this is clear and the evidence for it can be easily seen by looking at the world in which we live: the working class do now, as industrial, agricultural, clerical and, yes, managerial workers, run society from top to bottom even if not in their own interest. The capitalist class play no role in production; they are superfluous. On the personal-level few are even '‘skilled technicians”. Let’s get this straight: it is the working class who run the world today without the help-of the capitalist class. We are merely arguing that means of wealth production that are at present socially operated should also be socially owned and controlled, and that the people who run society today can and should — run it in their own interests.

We have no detailed plans for socialism. This is because socialism can only be established by the working class once they have become socialist. It is up to those people around at the time to work out the exact forms of running social affairs in a socialist society. It would be presumptuous and foolish of us today to predict the future. All we can do now is say where we think the general trends we see operating today are leading. When a majority of workers have become socialists they will organise for political power; then use this power to end private property in the means of wealth production, thus ending also their position as wage-slaves. This done, society can set about reorganising itself on a socialist basis, with production for use and free access for all to what has been produced. In such a society the government of people (and all that goes with it like armed forces, police, judges and jailers) will be unnecessary. Parliament as the means for controlling the machinery of government too will be unnecessary. But this does not mean that there will be no means for exercising democratic control over social affairs. The exact form of such democratic social control once again we can’t predict and don’t try to. Complex productive apparatus as exists today can only be controlled democratically by society through such means. If you find difficulty in envisaging world wide organisation and control of production consider that many organisations today are already world wide: General Motors, Shell, World Health Organisation, International Postal Union, to mention a few. Socialist society will allow a great variety of forms of social control from the local to the world-wide. Beyond this we can’t go today.

 

Glasgow Branch Meeting (19/6)

June 19 at 7 pm 
Maryhill Community Central Halls, 
304 Maryhill Road, 
Glasgow G20 7YE

The Socialist Party recognises that only through socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing wealth, can the people be freed from misery, we declare ourselves a socialist movement, and undertake to conduct campaigns among the people to win them to the need to establish socialism. We pledge ourselves to socialist understanding. It will be the task of the Socialist Party to establish a movement that will not only organise the energy and enthusiasm of our fellow-workers into the revolutionary struggle for socialism. It is our task to organize this energy in such a way that it strengthens the cause of socialism. We are now engaged in a struggle to build the Socialist Party, a party that can unite the working class over-throw capital and end the exploitation of mankind forever. Creating a world, a socialist society, where people live from birth to death never having to suffer under the chains of wage slavery is what all honest socialists should be fighting for.

The Socialist Party is based on the task of the emancipation of labour from the oppression of capital, the transfer of all means of production to social ownership and the capture of political power through capturing state power by the working class. 

There is a real need for genuine radicalism. We don’t mean the pettifogging, the slogan-mongering, the pseudo-Marxian profundities, the dogmatism, the bickerings and sectarian factionalism which have distinguished the Left and which carry a heavy onus of the responsibility for our own ineffectiveness.

We want socialism

We live under the system of capitalism. By that very fact, inequality, class inequality, and therefore, social, economic and political inequality, are the inescapable preconditions for the continued existence of this profit economy. The economic differences between the classes are enormous; the variations in the standard of living between the capitalist class and the proletariat are tremendous; the bourgeoisie has many ways of enriching itself, the proletariat lives only on its wages.

The Socialist Party produces a guide to action, defining the focus of the direction in which the working class must be educated, organised and mobilised by its own experience to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish socialism. Our Party is a working-class party based on the theory of Marxism. To make revolution and put an end to capitalism, the proletariat must have a clear plan. It must determine what the nature of the struggle is, who are its enemies, and who are its friends that can be rallied to its cause. After we have overthrown the capitalists we will establish socialism which will mean the rule of the people, the broadest democracy. We shall confiscate the factories, mines, railways, banks and large stores from the capitalists without compensation and turn them into the property of the people. The enormous waste of capitalism will be abolished.

Socialism is the future of humanity, a radically new society where classes and the state will have been completely eliminated. Socialism means tremendous progress. Humanity has not always been divided into classes. The State is simply an instrument by which one class dominates another. It became a necessity when society split into classes. Throughout history there have been many revolutions where the oppressed classes have broken the fetters that bound them and overthrown the ruling classes. When socialism is realised, classes and class inequalities will have been eliminated.

 The State and its instruments of repression will have ceased to exist; the class antagonisms that necessitated their existence will have ended. All social inequalities will have been banished; there will be no rich and no poor, and all members of society will contribute to the common good. Each person will contribute to society according to capacities, while society in turn provides for needs. The differences between workers and farmers, town and country, and manual and intellectual work will have disappeared. Each individual will develop to one's full potential.

Workers have no borders

Change taking place in the world, in communities and in workplaces. There has emerged of a minority of people who now question the global capitalist system. The mood of the people is changing rapidly who feel emboldened to demand more from governments. Suddenly there are large numbers of people around who are moving in the same direction, questioning environment policies, challenging their ineffectiveness, asking why this is. If we look about us today we see that the world is filled with suffering and despair. A new mood of resistance is changing the political scene.

 The Socialist Party does not only dream of the day when the world shall know that men are brothers and that women are sisters to each other, but it is working without respite to make that dream come true. Socialism is the greatest thing in all the world today. Those who are clear-eyed enough see that socialism is coming and are at the battle-front fighting to overcome the prejudices against it and to pave the way so that it may come.

The Socialist Party is the only party that has the future of our children and grand-children at heart; the only party that has a message for them. The children of working people have always been poor because the world has never been just. For ages and ages those who have built the houses, cultivated the fields, raised the crops, spun the wool, woven the cloth, supplied the food we eat and the clothes we wear, and furnished the homes we live in, have been the poor and despised, while those who profited by their labour and consumed the good things they produced, have been the rich and respectable. The Socialist Party says there has got to be some changes made. It says that the world is big enough for all the people that are in it, with plenty of room to spare for parks and playgrounds; that there is land enough to go around without over-crowding; that there are farms enough, or can be easily provided, to raise all we can eat, so that no child in all the world need to go hungry; that there is plenty of minerals and metals, stored in the earth; that there are forests and mountains and water courses galore; that there are mills and mines and factories and trains, boats and planes and railways and communication networks, and the power supplied free by nature to run them all; that there are millions of men and women ready to do all the work that may be required to build homes, raise crops, bake bread – and cake too – weave cloth, make clothes and everything else that is necessary for everybody, and have time enough besides to build schools and provide playgrounds for every child to make this earth a children’s paradise.

For real individual freedom, economic security is certainly necessary. That is, to be really free, human beings must be secure from economic want, the fear of unemployment, poverty and the misery that the masses are heir to today. They must be free from the oppression of the boss. They must be free, too, from the necessity of serving in the ever-recurring wars of capitalist society. When, in the

course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of humanity, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people should overthrow these institutions. The Socialist Party goal is to establish a new world without capitalism and without the exploitation of man by man. Only the working class can make the socialist revolution.

The Nats on Tour

The pro-independence group All Under One Banner have  marched through the streets of Oban. Organisers claimed 7,000 people took part.

The growing strength and influence of nationalism has compelled the World Socialist Movement to address the issue. Nationalist struggles are placed above the class struggle and eliminate the role of the working class and the socialist revolution. Nationalist struggles, by no means, stands for the liberation of workers. Pro-nationalists are driven by their desire to find a special explanation for the oppression of minorities. The class struggle is not enough; there must be a “national struggle” as well. The ruling class struggles for its own selfish ends, using nationalism to mobilise all the people under the leadership of the local capitalist class. In other words, it wants a bigger slice of the profits from exploitation of Scottish workers. Sections of the local capitalists, wanting a larger slice of the cake, offer nationalism and separatism as the peoples’ salvation.

Left nationalists view an independent Scotland as the first step on the path to socialism. They believe that Scottish (also Welsh, Cornish and Irish) nationalism is a progressive force, and can therefore be used. They either do not understand, or opportunistically, refuse to accept the fundamental role of nationalism. They see this nationalism as the lesser of evils. That’s why it resorts to all sorts of demagogy to the effect that it will “liberate” the workers. Scots do not see secession as their way to liberation but as some palliative remedy for the economic social problems in Scotland. Socialists must on no account help spread this new diversion but must resolutely expose and attack it. The ruling class, using nationalism and nationalists, has side-tracked the class aspirations of the working people.

The Socialist Party constantly hammer home that the SNP and their like are nothing but tools of the ruling class. We must popularise socialism in order that the workers shall not be side-tracked. At present, Scottish Nationalism and the SNP have the appearance of a progressive movement to some sincere people who have almost no political understanding. Deceived by this, people will work in and around the nationalist movement only to discover, in some years’ time, that they have been mistaken and most cruelly misled, have been wasting their time and worse – have been advocating a diversionary movement. Workers must not fall into this trap; they must not be deceived by any so-called potentially progressive facade of nationalism. Instead of tragically wasting their time fostering nationalism (in whatever form), the Socialist Party campaigns to prepare a powerful and unified socialist movement. We know socialism is the solution. We must prove it to our fellow-workers.

The Socialist Party repudiates the romance of nationalism, an idea that divides mankind into separate distinct sovereign nation-states whose claim is that the freedom and fulfillment of mankind are to be worked out in terms of its national identity. 

The class war is for the existence of humanity.

Then for a’ that and a’ that, man to man the world o’er, shall brithers be for a’ that.

The mission of socialism is so to organise the mechanism of production that wealth can be so abundantly produced as to free mankind from want and the fear of want, from the brute’s necessity of a life of arduous toil in the production of the brute’s mere necessaries of life. Socialist philosophy has made this clear. The Socialist Party is the only party that is or can be truly representative of the interests of the working class, the only class essential to society and the class that is destined ultimately to succeed to political power, “not for the purpose of governing men,” in the words of Engels, but “to administer things.” Between private ownership and common ownership there can be no compromise. One produces for profit, the other for use. One produces millionaires and mendicants, the other economic equals. One gives us palaces and hovels, robes and rags, the other will secure to every man and woman their full product of his or her toil, abolish class rule, wipe out class distinction, secure the peace of society, and make of this earth for the first time a habitable place. In the wage system you and your children, and your children’s children, if capitalism shall prevail until they are born, are condemned to slavery and there is no possible hope unless by throwing over the capitalist and voting for socialism. Now, what you want to do is quit every capitalist party of every name whatsoever. What you want to do is to organise your class and assert your class interests as capitalists do the interests of the class that is robbing you. Your lives depend upon the control and ownership of the means of production and distribution. Arise, ye wage-slaves! Declare war, not on the capitalist, but on the capitalist system. What is wanted is not a reform of the capitalist system, but its entire abolition. 

Socialism will give humanity a new world. Let us work so that the socialist revolution may come in peace. The Socialist Party is organised to pave the way for its peaceful culmination. We declare then, that the time has come when working men and women should open their eyes, when they should have an understanding of socialism and pave the way for its triumph and the abolition of capitalism from the face of the world. We are educating, we are agitating, we are organising, that is to say we are preparing for socialism.

The Socialist Party is founded in the bedrock principles of socialism. It understands the process of social evolution. It deludes itself with no promise of premature victory. It has no desire for political office. Spoils and privilege hold no temptation for it. The Socialist Party has but one mission and that is the political unity of the working class to wrest the State from the capitalist class as the necessary means of abolishing the capitalist system and achieving industrial freedom and social justice. This party knows no such word as fusion with our class enemy. The merest hint of compromise is rejected. No concessions that any capitalist party might offer would turn the Socialist Party the breadth of a hair from the clear-cut course through which it is hewing its way to ultimate victory. The Social Party is composed of working men and women who have come into consciousness of their class interests. It is a party of thinkers and the only party in which he rank and file are supreme. This party has no use for a political saviours and can never be misled or sold out by corrupt leaders. Private ownership of he means of life has reduced millions to hopeless poverty, ignorance, vice, and crime. Capitalism and competition have had their day. Socialism and cooperation are next in order. This will mean society free from class rule and all the world at peace. Then exploitation of class by class will cease — rent, interest, and profit will be no more. Wealth will be produced by social labour in such abundance as to satisfy all human wants. Then leisure, light, virtue, and joy instead of idleness, darkness, misery, and death.

In spite of worsening economic conditions, nothing can be accomplished until the people hold a vision of where they want to go and what they want to be. Creating and imbuing them with such vision is the foundation of our organisation. Destruction of the environment, the continual threat of nuclear war and looming pandemics are calling the very existence of the human race into question. Yet we in the Socialist Party face the future with confidence.

Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?

The Socialist Party calls on fellow-workers to study our principles. Together let us build our socialist party on firm foundations. We favour abolition of the wage system as a whole. Let the organised working people manage industry, eliminate private profit, plan production to suit the needs of the people – for peace, prosperity and plenty for all.

The Socialist Party declares that life, liberty, and happiness for every man, woman, and child are conditioned upon equal political and economic rights. That private ownership of the means of production and distribution of wealth has caused society to split into two distinct classes with conflicting interests, the small possessing class of capitalists or exploiters of the labour force of others and the ever-increasing large dispossessed class of wage-workers, who are deprived of the socially-due share of their product. That capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the ever-growing majority of our people. That the same economic forces which have produced and now intensify the capitalist system will compel the adoption of socialism, the common ownership of the means of production for the common good and welfare, or result in the destruction of civilisation. The Socialist Party's object is the establishment of a system of cooperative production and distribution. The capture and control of political power by the Socialist Party will be tantamount to the abolition of capitalism and all class rule. The solidarity of labour connecting us with millions of class conscious fellow workers throughout the civilised world will lead to world socialism. Working people will be guaranteed security, democracy, equality and peace only when our planet is run on an entirely different basis than it is now; only when a socialist system replaces the present capitalist one. The new socialist system would mean that working people would own the country’s factories and farms and they would plan production and distribution for their own needs. Workers must unite with workers in all countries to win peace and socialism. There must be constant public advocacy for socialism. The Socialist Party must always work towards unity and against division. At one point, a clear line drawn. The Socialist Party may never sacrifice their principles in order to maintain some unwarranted unity or to gain some temporary advantage.

To the establishment of socialism and the building towards communism, we pledge our efforts. To begin to understand it, and to be capable of revolutionising it, the first step is to distinguish between two antagonistic classes: the capitalist class and the working class. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production, distribution and communication. The working class owns none of these, and therefore workers must sell their labour power to the capitalist for wages in order to live. The worker creates a product of value, part of which is returned to him as wage, and the rest of which is taken from him by the capitalists as profit. Thus is created the basic antagonistic contradiction between worker and capitalist, since the interest of one is, and has to be, directly opposed to the interest of the other. This most fundamental of contradictions will not end until capitalism with its private ownership and/or control of the means of production is itself ended, and replaced with socialism.

In socialist society, all means of production will be common property. There will be no classes and no class struggle. The consequences of class divided society – racism, national chauvinism, male supremacy, the monogamous family based on property, etc. – will all have disappeared. There will be no wars, no armies, and no need for weapons of war, which will become historical curiosities. There will be no distinction between mental and manual work. Socialism will be a life of material and cultural abundance. The world is currently in a period of great economic and social crisis, as is the entire capitalist world. Layoffs, cutbacks, and inflation are damaging the lives of millions while a small minority reaps profits. And the crisis is showing itself not only in the economic sphere, but in every area of life for the people. Piecemeal reforms cannot solve the problems our society faces. 

Our party is the party of the revolution

The political control that the working class will acquire as a result of socialist knowledge, including control of the armed forces, will be acquired only when they gain such knowledge, and, therefore, cease to support capitalist agents. There will then be no power available for use by the master class that could prevent an organised majority of workers from using the present political machinery to establish socialism. The nature of capitalism and the remorseless and ruthlessly brutal nature of the pillaging pirates who exploit them will have to be brought home in a very clear manner to a very large number of workers before a socialist society becomes a nearer possibility.

The presence of an economically exploiting class is not always easy to discern. What is plain for all to observe is the wages system and the buying and selling of commodities; essential features of capitalism and definite pointers to the existence of an exploiting and governing class, who own the means by which all live. The wages contract safeguards this ownership by ensuring that the workers remain — as they have always been — propertyless, and that they are paid only the equivalent (in wages) of the labour it takes them to reproduce their own energies and support their families. The workers’ labour power, or energy, produces a value greater than itself, i.e. more labour (work done) for which no equivalent is paid. In the selling of commodities, the unpaid labour is realised as a sum of money (profit) and is appropriated by the privileged class. The profit is shared out among investors, bankers, landlords, and sometimes small owner-employers.

In the former state-capitalist countries ruled by the Communist Party, surplus value is appropriated as we have just described with reference to the West, but the ’face' of things is different. Instead of nationalisation of just a few industries as in this country, all industry is government owned and controlled. The ‘share-out’ is among Communist Party and government officials who appropriate profit in the form of their own bloated ‘salaries’ or bonuses. Because of the way in which the capitalist system works, the ruling class of any country is not a free agent but is subject to certain pressures which act on it remorselessly. It must compete with rival ruling groups for markets and supplies of raw materials and, such is the pace of industrial innovation in the modem world, it must continually accumulate capital — and at an ever-increasing rate.

“...the development of capitalist production makes it constantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each individual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it, but extend it he cannot except by means of progressive accumulation...” (Capital, Vol. I.).

Today these same pressures can best be seen acting on whole industries and on entire national capitals, since capitalist development has virtually eliminated the individual factory owner of Marx's day. Faced with this inescapable need to accumulate capital, the rulers of any country have only one way in which they can act — just like the 19th-century mine master or steel lord they must attempt to increase the amount of surplus value they are wringing out of the working class. The aim is to build up industry and to mechanise agriculture and this is being achieved by screwing down the working class.

The Socialist Party has always held that political power should be used to establish Socialism. In other words the state machine, which is the public power of coercion, will be used to force the capitalists to give up their privileges and hand over their wealth to the community. Whether or not this use of political power will involve actual physical violence — the setting in motion of the armed forces, the firing of guns and the killing of people — will depend entirely on the reaction of any pro-capitalist minority at the time of the socialist victory at the polls.

We think it unlikely that, faced with a determined socialist majority in control of political power, a small pro-capitalist minority would be so foolish as to take up arms to prevent the establishment of socialism. But if a violent minority tried to prevent the implementation of a democratically expressed will for socialism, then the socialist majority would have to use violence against them. As the old Chartist and socialist slogan put it: "Peaceably if we may; forcibly if we must”.

ABOLISH THE OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF LIFE BY THE BOSS CLASS.

There is not a single country where socialism has been realised, though over a century has passed since Marx and Engels made public the Communist Manifesto. Capitalism still remains.

 Capitalists are very cunning. They leave no stone un-turned to maintain their position. Here lies one of the major reasons why revolution does not break out. Our revolutionary goal shapes our policy in the daily struggle. We have to stand up and fight for the true interests of the working class as a whole, at every turn of the road. It is our duty to the working class to make such a fight. We would not be worthy of the proud name our party bears if we evaded such a fight on any pretext. The reason for this is that ours is the only party willing to fight for the immediate interests of the workers, and the only party standing for the solution of the labour problem by means of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. All of the interests of the working class, immediately and ultimately, are indissolubly bound up with the revolution. 

We have set up the theory of the salvation of the workers through uncompromising struggle against their exploiters. Our fight is to organise workers together on the basis of the class struggle. Therefore, they must be enlightened as to our aims and plans. We are fighting for their minds and hearts. Do not forget that. We must adopt the point of view that our struggle is a struggle to develop the class consciousness of the workers and to win them over to the principle of the revolutionary struggle against capitalism.

Our party is a party of workers, a party of struggle against capitalism and all its works. We are not progressives, but revolutionists. The test of our work can never be made by formal victories, but by the development of class consciousness among workers, the degree of their organisation on that basis. Many difficulties will confront us in the task we have undertaken, but, with the assistance of the party, we will solve them all. We will win over people to the side of socialism; we will wrest the labour movement from the hands of the bourgeoisie and convert them into mighty instruments for the socialist revolution. There are plenty of things in the movement that tend to discourage socialists who are striving to build an organisation that can actually serve as the instrument of the workers in their fight for power. Poverty and misery give birth and sustenance to religion. Solace for an empty stomach is often found by the wretched in the adoration of an icon.

We working people want to raise our wages, cut our hours, make our jobs safer and less injurious to our health and less unpleasant places in which to earn our living. If we realise what an injury the capitalist system does to us, we want also to get rid of it. We can not do these things by ourselves. We can do them together. The expression "rank-and-file" to which we refer are made most often by addicts of the "leadership principle." Now the "leadership principle"—the idea that we should pick and follow leaders, and seek a cure for our troubles by changing leaders—is the direct opposite to the Socialist Party's idea of organisation. It is indeed curious that those who advocate this style of organisation should ever demand "rank-and-file control." How does it happen? The object of these various political cults of "follow-the-leader" is to obtain more followers for their various leaders. And since every time there is a new leader there are new cults, this results in a rather bewildering situation.

 Since their purpose is not to organise a working class to do something for itself, but to make sure that the leaders of one cult are followed rather than the leaders of another, they seek their following chiefly in already organised groups of workers. Sometimes they try to secure such a following by currying favour with the officials of these unions. That was and is the pet policy of the Leninists and Trotskyists sects who vary this strategy with that of "boring from within" to grab the official positions. 

When a group of self-appointed saviours try to grab the official positions they resort to the favourite tricks of the politicians. They must charge the elected officials with "betraying their mandates," "not living up to their promises," "ignoring the wishes of the rank and file." They must promise that if they are elected, the "rank-and-file" will rule through them. As a result we have the strange spectacle of "rank-and-file" committees waiting instructions from some leader before they can decide upon their next step. To get into the saddle, these would-be leaders must convince their potential victims that they are now being ridden, but that with them in the saddle, they will no longer be ridden. It will not serve their purpose to urge that those who are being ridden should get rid of rider, saddle and all. They must urge that only the riders be changed. 

We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists

Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid off. A very small minority at present recognise this and are consciously anti-capitalist, but the majority of people continue trying to find solutions within the system rather than by overthrowing it. So presently there is no real possibility of overthrowing that system and attempt to do so would degenerate into futile reformism and/or terrorism, whatever the “revolutionary” rhetoric. The Left devote themselves to advancing slogans like “Make the Rich Pay” that imply no intention to abolish capitalism. The Left is hardly capable of challenging the ruling class for power, let alone winning that challenge. The confusion of the Left is so great the likelihood of those existing “left” movements and ideologies will disintegrate completely means there will be room for something new and genuinely revolutionary to emerge to open the way for revolutionary socialists to fight for progress rather than reacting against capitalism.

It has been said often enough that there can be no blueprints for the future because the people themselves will decide how to build the new society as they are building it. Fundamentally the Socialist Party agree with that, and refrains from attempting to present any blueprints. Nevertheless, it is appropriate to put forward a few broad ideas to discuss what a revolutionary movement might do to start building socialism. Consistent refusal to do so suggests that we do not possess an alternative. “No blueprints” is often a cop-out excuse for “no ideas”. “Revolution” does not mean that we would “demand” that the multinationals do this or that. It means that we, the working class take over the running of industry and make the decisions ourselves. To eliminate many of the social problems we must to proceed with abolishing the market economy.

What is the meaning of workers’ control of production? First, it means the taking over not of a single industry, but of every plant of every branch of every industry, by democratically elected committees. It means the wresting of the means of production, which are the livelihood of the vast majority of the population, from the absentee owners. Workers’ control of production is replacing economic dictatorship with economic democracy, transferring social wealth to the producers of that wealth, the workers. Those who work on the production lines , who, together with their families and dependents, constitute the majority of the country, those who produce the wealth of the country but who are denied a say in the disposition of that wealth, those who are deprived of the fruits of their labour – they should run things. This would eventually eliminate all classes.

The Socialist Party is not a reform party, but a revolutionary party. It does not propose to modify the competitive system, but to abolish it. An examination of its principles shows that it stands unequivocally for the common ownership and control of all the means of wealth production and distribution — in a word, socialism. The Socialist Party is necessarily an world party linked together in the indissoluble bonds of international socialism. The battle cry of Marx is heard around the world: “Workingmen of all countries, unite; you have a world to gain! You have nothing to lose but your chains!” It is as wide as the domain of capitalism. It is everywhere and always the same. It takes no backward step. It refuses to be flattered, bribed, or otherwise deflected from the course mapped out by Marx and Engels.

 The Socialist Party has no interest in any of the so-called issues over which capitalist politicians fight sham battles. They care nothing about protectionism and free trade, Brexit or whatever. It stands first, last, and always for the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution, and will press forward unceasingly until they secure them, thereby liberating the human race. We call upon all who share the sentiments, to join the Socialist Party in the fight for a new, socialist society.

The people of the world are brothers and sisters

In a world of abundance, we suffer from serious shortages and chronic misery. We face a future that is very bleak indeed unless the system of exploitation is abolished and replaced with a new socialist system. It is responsibility of the Socialist Part to rally and inspire working people. We are mindful, at all times, to keep the forefront of all our activity: the need to to raise the socialist consciousness and convince fellow-workers of the necessity for socialist revolution. There is a silent reaction going on today, inexorable, unremitting, pitiless, and it is twisting lives of working people more harshly than many a battle fought on the field. Union after union, grown accustomed to a familiar routine, has suddenly found itself grabbed by the scruff of the neck, with all the complacency shaken out of its officials as they face the spectre of loss as of members, and years of hard-won achievements in the way of contracts, seniority accumulations, health and pension funds get taken from under them. Who is this implacable enemy that has appeared in our midst, and is spreading disaster in his wake? The media speak of new technology and artificial intelligence.

The signs of the growth of automation and increased robotics, the building up of new industrial centres, are everywhere. Everyone has heard of ‘automation’ by now and knows it is a new giant stride in the elimination of human labour in production by the use of computerised controls. We are entering a distinctly new economic era, a catastrophic second industrial revolution. Whereas an assembly line contained a hundred workers, with automation, this same line requires only a skeleton maintenance crew to service the machine. But this new technology so expensive, they require such enormous capital outlays, that even companies that were considered big 10-20 years ago are unable to raise that kind of investment today. Many will survive only by permitting themselves to get absorbed by the shrinking number of giants.

How are unions meeting this threat? What is the program of the ‘labor statesmen’ to protect the workingman’s equity in his job, his seniority and pension rights? How do the officers who head the big labour federations visualise the union’s role in the changing economy, and what new strategy or tactics have they devised to safeguard labour’s position and sustain labour’s strength? If you are looking for an answer to these questions from the labour leaders, you have come to the wrong place. They have no answer. All their elaborate research and legal departments and economic advisers notwithstanding, the union leaders are as bewildered as the man on the street. Their actions thus far have been a combination of panic. On the wage front the picture is a dismal one. The workers are so demoralised by the job uncertainty, unemployment, outsourcing and off-shoring of plants, and apparent weakness of the unions, that they breathe a sigh of relief when their leaders get them a any sort of increase without their having to strike for it. Labour sights and goals are getting cut down drastically in this period of reaction and retreat. But giving up rights won after years of hard struggles is no solution to anything. Labour cannot even hope by these methods to stabilise itself on a lower level. Wage cuts and more speed-up are not a prelude to happier labour-management relationships, but to new demands for more wage cuts and still more speed-up. The tactic of conceding wage cuts in order to make businesses ‘more competitive,’ 'job security' in the face of unemployment or temporary casual contracts and conditions, all this has to be stopped in a hurry. Otherwise, it will not be too many years before working people are on the receiving end of disaster. Workers cannot afford to mark time and just hope for things to turn for the better.

It is our duty as socialists to help guide along right lines the effort of the workers to choose the correct kind of organisation to fight their battles in that conflict. According as they choose aright or wrongly, so will the development of class consciousness in their minds be hastened or retarded by their everyday experience in class struggles. In their march to freedom the workers will use every weapon they find necessary. Tomorrow belongs to the people. But it can only do so if the people understand the present state of society and, understanding it, change it. This change for the working people can only mean the elimination of the opposing capitalist class. The idea that if we wait things will get better is mistaken. Capitalism is a disease. Don’t be mesmerised by leftists running up and down screaming “Revolution”. Don’t be distracted by one set of reformers demanding a fight against these particular cuts but not those other cuts. Don’t believe we can disguise ourselves to infiltrate the Labour Party and take power so that we can then hand it over to the people. Only the people can take power. We the people must do it. Why at this time is there so much talk about workers’ participation from the liberal progressives? Such calls for workers’ participation is for the purpose of seeing to it that workers don’t have real control. The only real workers’ control is socialism.

The Socialist Party deny that reforms can eliminate the injustices of our society. Those injustices stem from the fundamental character of capitalism—so the system as a whole must be changed. It has carried on an unrelenting struggle against reformism in working class politics, attempting to break the workers from reformist illusions. There are no automatic, "guaranteed" routes to class consciousness. The task of socialists is to try to educate people towards an understanding of what is necessary to change capitalist society—but no struggle "necessarily" leads to socialist conclusions.

The ruling class creates the basic material conditions for its own downfall. The capitalists, in its drive for profits, continuously concentrates the means of production and aggravates the contradiction between the social character of production and the private ownership of production. The exploitation of the working class and the oppression of the masses intensifies. This is what is meant when one says that the proletarian revolution is inevitable. But the working class, in order to fulfill its historic mission of leading the battle to overthrow monopoly capital, must become conscious of itself as a class and of the nature of society. The working class must be armed with revolutionary class consciousness, and organisation

All societies, at all times, face the contradiction between the new and the old, between what is growing and what is dying out. Our society is dying out. It pollutes all that is fresh, alive, vital, and growing. The ballot-box was granted to us by our masters for their purpose; let us use it for our own. Let us demonstrate at that ballot-box the strength and intelligence of the revolutionary idea; let us make the hustings a rostrum from which to promulgate our principles. The Socialist Party holds that only the working class can bring about socialism. No other class as a whole has the thoroughgoing interest in the destruction of capitalism, nor the power and potential organisational force that the working class has. It is the socialised conditions of oppression of the working class that bring it into fundamental contradiction with the individual and private conditions of ownership that characterise capitalist society.

 Our vision remains undimmed and our resolve unbending. Our confidence in the party is strengthened by the fact that it has remained true to the banner of revolutionary internationalism and to the interests of the working man and working woman at a time when it counts – during the war. We have not retreated from our principles, we have not vacillated, we have not given up an inch of them or sought to gloss them over in the hope of gaining a deceptive and momentary popularity. And that is how we shall continue to be. Unite with us for a new age, for a society free of war and oppression, of exploitation and inequality, for world socialism. There are no separate roads to socialism. There is only one road and that is the road of revolution. The purpose and aim of a genuinely revolutionary socialist party is to capture power  through a willing majority. 

Transforming Our World

Fellow workers, sisters and brothers, people are under attack. Our communities are under siege. In the cities and in the rural areas, conditions are all the same. Jobs are minimum wage and factories continue to close. Unemployment benefits are a joke and welfare benefits can’t feed our children or pay our rent. Many of us are forced to live in the streets like animals. Our communities are flooded with drugs and alcohol. Our children have no future. The police harass us. The politicians and their political parties don’t represent us. They are tied to the banks, the rich, the powerful and the rest of the capitalist class. A system that cannot feed, clothe and house its people does not deserve to continue to exist. We can and must organise to replace it. 

Workers have won great victories. Workers have suffered painful defeats. Workers have suffered foulest betrayals. What the working class learned from its experiences is of decisive importance. One scarcely need add we are not “mechanical” Marxists – the workers didn’t learn automatically. Only where revolutionary forces drew correct conclusions and explained them to fellow-workers can conscious progress be made in the working class movement. A clear understanding of the nature and scope of the problem and of the prominent position strikes as a manifestation of the class struggle will play are necessary prerequisites to our success. Our goal is the equal sharing of the responsibility is running society and accruing it benefits of society, the establishment of the application of equality.

A contradiction under capitalism is that between the social/collective nature of society’s basic production process and the private nature of appropriation of the product of that process. This is in the form of profit, which represents wealth taken from those who produce through the system of wage labour. The resolution of this contradiction is and must be a revolution to establish socialism, a system characterised by the struggle to end all exploitative relations and establish collective ownership and control of society’s resources and production. This will result from the class struggle on a world-wide level, between the many who take part in social production and social life, and the small few whose power and wealth rests on their control of the means of production, and power to appropriate the fruits of the labour of the many. 

One of our tools for understanding is historical materialism, formulated by Marx and Engels. What we do in the world, is the main thing, it will never develop beyond early mistakes unless we constantly succeed in learning from it – to work hard at drawing necessary and appropriate conclusions from it, to guide future practice. The State is an elaborate political institution, and its main function is to protect and serve the power of the ruling class. In spite of apparent concessions, it will always protect the process of private appropriations of social production. Because of this, socialist revolution requires that the State of the capitalist ruling class must be abolished.