People Power

There are many antagonisms in our existing social system, arising out of the conflict between social production and individual ownership which cannot be harmonised so long as there is a wage-paying class and a wage-receiving class. The Socialist Party advocates that capitalism must be ended before any thorough reorganisation and reconstruction can take place, wage-slavery being finally done away with by the abolition of capital, industrial democracy at once taking its place. Many of us feel powerless to do anything about the political, social, and environmental injustices we face. There are many ways to use our voices to speak up for social justice. People have always banded together to work for change and have organised for action.

It is up to the working people to make the necessary resource allocations to meet the needs of the whole society. It is up to the working people themselves to determine, democratically, the organisation and operation of labour in the enterprises. Self-management is global and cannot be limited to a region or to the level of the enterprise, all each acting on its own. It a question of dealing with a multitude of enterprises in every sector, working under varied conditions. Self-management is not different enterprises acting each for itself and in uncontrolled competition. Self-management is integrated into a social plan, which is applied and worked out democratically. This does not presuppose a rigidly centralised command economy. This is the only kind of socialism which will be worth achieving. The idea of the social and economic democracy must be put back on the political agenda. Under capitalism there can be no real democracy – no rule by the people as a whole – all the while the means of production are owned and controlled by a small minority, the capitalist class. Their control of the economy and the state apparatus means that they can resist and obstruct any serious threat to their class interests. It is quite clear that we can only achieve real control over our lives by getting rid of the capitalist system as a whole and this can be done only by means of revolution.

Talk of revolution is not at all fashionable these days but the task of working people today is not to wring our hands in despair for one thing is for sure, the material conditions which gave rise to a socialist world revolution still persist. The necessity for change is as strong as ever. But there are people who think of themselves as socialists - reformists - people who think that we’re going to get socialism by a gradual accumulation of reforms. They voice anti-capitalist sentiments. They think politicians and parliament rule and all that is required to make capitalism less exploitative are a few palliatives passed into law. They don’t understand that capitalism needs to end.

Many people across the world are in a state of absolute poverty of the most basic kind: they simply do not have enough food to stay alive while others suffer from nutrition deficiencies in their diets which means that they are susceptible to various illnesses and likely to die relatively young. Inequality has been widening with the well-off getting richer and the worst off becoming poorer. Even in the developed countries working people have been experiencing a decline in real incomes while actually working longer than they did before. The real revolutionaries today are not the leftwing who – as they always have done – try to keep alive illusions alive with campaigns for reforms. One part of the process of putting socialism on the political agenda again is to remind and inform people of what capitalism is and another part is for the renewing of the struggle for socialism is to rethink and revive the various struggles to resist capitalist oppression and exploitation. Defensive, reformist struggles will not fundamentally change capitalism but once people discover that they can fight back and protect themselves it will help them realise that the system is not impregnable and this can lead on to thoughts about getting rid of and changing the whole rotten system. The task of the Socialist Party is to encourage this trend.

In the recurring crisis that engulfs the World, there is only one solution - Power to the People

Capitalism: Social Disorder

It is impossible to discuss any important political problem of our time, let alone take a part in resolving it, without a clear understanding of what socialism really signifies. It is just as impossible to get such an understanding from the writings and speeches of capitalists, their statesmen, politicians, hangers-on, apologists, or any other beneficiaries of their rule. The true social significance of socialism escapes them because they precisely are prevented from doing by their own social interests and prejudices. Whoever does not know the real relationships between the social system of capitalism and the social system of socialism, may well be ever so intelligent in fields like physics or but in the most important field of social knowledge, he or she is helpless.

Working people are free when they do not serve as a means of achieving the goals of the ruling class but, instead, are themselves the chief goal of society, the object of all its plans and production. Where there is the abolition of exploitation, of hunger and of poverty. Socialism begins with the interests of the individual— not just the chosen few but all working people. There is not a single popular movement anywhere in the world that proclaims its allegiance to capitalism. The most that capitalism can expect from the people nowadays is not support but cynical tolerance, as a lesser evil compared with the alternative of universal anger, disillusionment, bitterness, hostility and open warfare directed against it. Capitalism has never able to solve a social problem.

A socialist looks upon the social system not as stationary but as constantly in motion. Evolution prepares the way for revolution; revolution is only a part of the evolutionary process. The social system is made up of a net of social relations, the most decisive of which are the economic, that is, those productive relations which result in the satisfaction of our basic needs, food, clothing, shelter. The struggle for life becomes the struggle for the means of life, which more and more becomes a struggle for the means of production of the necessities of life. Here we have the basic factor of all society, the forces of production.

While production is a social act, the appropriation of the product, under the present system, is individual. Under capitalism thousands of workers co-operate in the production of a single article, yet the article does not belong to them but to the owner of the means of production. The workers are merely paid wages for the use of their labour power. Simultaneously the owner of the industries becomes progressively more divorced from the productive process. As small partnerships become big corporations or are driven out of business by the monopolies, the original entrepreneurs become mere rentiers, share dividend collectors. The corporation also develops, becomes more and more a public utility. The state begins to take a hand, and to run the industry. The former individual owner now becomes a purely parasitic hanger-on, his dividends paid regularly by the state apparatus which he controls in the form of government bonds. Within the factory a rigid hierarchical dictatorship, where the dead machine rules over living labour, where the person is transformed into a cog of the machine, where work becomes wage-slavery. Outside the factory dictatorship is replaced by economic chaos, mankind ruled by prices which it cannot control, where the wild forces of the market make people the victim. Even in “prosperity” the life of the worker is not a very happy one. It is only through the hectic fluctuations of supply and demand, it is only through the frantic rush of “successes” and bankruptcies that society “decides” and “plans” the production of social wealth.

Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive of men, goods, power, land. The ultimate destiny of all useful goods is to be consumed. Yet under capitalism goods are not produced to be consumed, but for profit, and if a greater profit can be made by destroying the goods, the destruction takes place. Imagine a farmer who will plough under his crops while millions are starving and in want simply to maintain its market price. Here it becomes crystal clear how capitalism throttles the productive forces and how, if mankind is to develop and to grow, capitalism must be wiped out. At a time when millions are starving we must watch mountains of the necessities of life deliberately destroyed. Can a crazier system possibly be imagined? What is the way out of these contradictions and who is to show the way? Capitalism creates such a tangle of contradictions and conflicts as to be absolutely insoluble. The capitalists and their political servants in the seats of government are blinded by their self interest, by the profits which they make as beneficiaries of the present system. The ideas of the ruling class will always be along the line of protecting their private property and their right to exploit their workers. The socialists see that nothing can free society from its convulsions except the change in the mode of production from a capitalist one, of private ownership of the means of production, to one where the means of production are socialised and classes are no more. The capitalist class and the working class hold opposing interests. Who, then, can provide the way out? Certainly, it is clear that it is not the capitalist class. It is, us, the working class, who bear the full weight of capitalism upon our backs. As workers we fight against the increasingly worsening conditions imposed upon us and we come to the realisation that the only way out is to take what we have produced. To take over the means of production, the mines, mills, factories, resources, utilities and run them for our own benefit. Then we will have production for use and not for profit. Then we will end both despotism in the factory and anarchy in the market. Then society will administer and allocate its resources according to a social plan that will benefit all. The capitalists want to keep the old relations of exploitation. They resist the rise of the workers' power but our victory cannot be forever delayed. The Socialist Party will continue to push forward to where humanity will have reached a rational system of society, no longer choked by out-dated redundant social relations and where society will be a free one and mankind emancipated.

The Threat to Mankind

There is only one solution to this madness. Take control of science and technology out of the hands of the capitalists through the establishment of a socialist world. There is no time: mankind stands at the crossroads now. Mankind must make its choice now. And there are but two choices: Life or death, and life requires socialism. This is the plain fact: We as socialists must understand this above all. Nothing can save humanity but those who understand and teach, day and night, that there is but one possible way: Socialism. Mankind has to choose and this means that mankind faces the ultimate choice: Socialism or death. 

Should we make the wrong choice, there will probably be some surviving groups of the human race to start civilisation again up the weary path through the countless ages of barbarism. If some deep green environmentalists want to be cynical, they would say: good riddance to mankind, that humanity can start all over again. We would, however, have to wait for who knows how thousands of years for a new civilisation to be flourish, which could again give mankind the plenty which our technological society is capable of providing today. People will die and suffer in misery just as they had died and suffered before through the ages, until they face once more the same dilemma that today confronts mankind: socialism or barbarism.

The fear of the people about the climate crisis and global warming has resulted in conferences, forums and resolutions to seek some way to avoid an impending catastrophe but while there is the perpetuation of this system of private profit, no resolution is in sight. With profits and dividends rolling in, the capitalist ruling class is in danger of continuing “business-as-usual.” Socialism will unlock doors that have been locked to humanity throughout the whole course of our existence and enable us as a social species to consciously transform not just the external world, but, for the first time, ourselves.

The form of society in which men live is determined by the way they make a living, that is by what is called the mode of production. When the mode of production undergoes a change, the form of society changes accordingly. The material world including society undergoes constant change. It evolves. It is never static in any absolute sense. What you produce and how you produce it, they held, is the basis of your relation to property; what you’re going to own, if anything, depends on what kind of a class set-up is demanded by the mode of production. A change in the mode of production brings about the abolition of classes and a new evolution of humanity begins. Capitalism can be characterised by the fact that by and large all human needs can be bought and sold in the form of commodities. Among other commodities the worker sells his or her labour-power to the boss who employs him or her. Now by capitalist law, whatever the worker produces belongs to the employer, who in return pays the worker only part of the value of his product in the form of wages. The value retained by the capitalist in this exploitative process is called surplus value. Under capitalism the class struggle centres about the relative portions of the value produced by the worker that go to the worker in the form of wages and to the capitalist as surplus value. The exploiters are oppressing the overwhelming majority of the people of the world to such an extent that the people are hardly able to survive and have to unite and fight against this exploitation and oppression, because they cannot exist, much less make progress in any other way. This struggle, therefore, is natural and unavoidable.
 

The cause of socialism still faces powerful enemies who must be thoroughly defeated in every field; Only then will the socialist society be brought into being. We must understand that socialism is the greatest cause in human history, which will eliminate exploitation and classes once and for all, emancipate mankind and bring humanity into a world of happiness and beauty, such as it has never known before. Given the continued existence of capitalism, the world faces the danger of the extinction of civilisation. The issue is: either capitalist barbarism, the death of civilisation, or socialism. It is as obvious that the capitalists can’t plan for a sustainable world! Expansion and growth is in the bloodstream of capitalism. What meaning do the petty objections to socialism assume in the face of this? When faced with barbarism or socialism, there is no longer a choice. The rejection of socialism can be likened to the man who would rather drown than get into a lifeboat. The choice is ours. Sink or swim – socialism or barbarism.

Liberty in Solidarity

All socialists in the Socialist Party works for humanity’s fulfilment for humanity doesn’t yet fully exist, only barely so. Society is torn apart by the inevitable class conflict between the capitalist oligarchy and the working class. We look upon the miseries that overwhelm humanity with sadness and anger. Between nations there exists a barbaric regime of hatred and violence. Even in a state of peace, they bear the scars of yesterday’s wars, and the fear of tomorrow’s. To change the world and to create a better one is the reason for the foundation of the Socialist Party. Building a new world for a better future by our fellow-workers' own hands is both necessary and possible. It is a movement for changing the world and creating a free, equal, human and prosperous society. Socialism is not a design or recipe conceived by well-meaning know-it-alls, a bunch of utopian reformers and saviours of humanity. Socialism is a social movement arising from within capitalist society itself, a movement that reflects the vision, ideals and and interests of a vast section of society – the working class. All the propaganda and campaigns of the Socialist Party is aimed at the single goal of the complete liberation of the workers, the collective emancipation of the producers.

Only socialism, by ending all classes through the common ownership of the means of production, can resolve this antagonism and reconcile humanity with one another. Socialism, which will abolish all classes restores humanity to its highest level. Socialism alone can give true meaning to the whole idea of human justice. The Socialist Party maintains that the means of production and wealth accumulated by humanity should be at the disposal of all humankind and should be used to free them. According to us, every man and woman has a right to the means of development which society has created. Socialism when instituted will welcome all human beings from the hour of their birth, and assure to them their full development. Socialism is not an academic and Utopian conception, it is in closest touch with reality, a great vital force which will soon be able to administer society. Working men and women will secure justice only when they control the machinery and technology of society. The potential for a human way of living is already in being. Socialism is not a utopian vision, but the realisation of possibilities which are already here. In humanity’s efforts to find its way out of the nightmare world we need a socialist party. Political freedom without economic liberty is a pretence. The workers necessarily strive after a fundamental transformation of society, the result of which must be the abolition of classes, a system of society in which all men and women will enjoy the good things of life. These are the demands of social justice.

“Reformism” is the doctrine of those who, while saying they are in favour of a social transformation having as it objective establishing society on principles and foundations opposed to that which exist, propose to arrive at this result by a more or less a series of reforms .“Reformist” is the name to designate a person, group, or party that considers the whole of these successive and legal reforms as the best, if not the only means of transforming society rather than substituting the socialist world for the capitalist world. Those political parties who say they are of the “vanguard” and proclaim themselves revolutionary are all more or less reformist. The more reformist they are, the less revolutionary they are, and — and this is the logical consequence - the less revolutionary they are, the more reformist they are. The Socialist Party is frequently accused of professing the doctrine of “all or nothing.” In this accusation there is some element of truth, but only some. It is perfectly true we will fight until not even one stone remains of the capitalist citadel. It must be totally destroyed, so that no vestige of the edifice remains. We understand that the improvements toward which reforms tend are only agreed to by the capitalist rulers on condition that they don’t fundamentally infringe upon the authority of the rulers or the profits of the capitalists. Workers are reasonable people with common sense. We want 100% and that’s all. But if we can only achieve 10%, we'll pocket that as a down payment and demand the rest.

Experience has proved that the isolated organisation are no more powerful than are the isolated workers. Even if all workers' associations of a single country were united it would not be sufficiently powerful to stand up in conflict with the international combination of all profit-making world capital. The emancipation of the worker is no national question. No country, no matter how wealthy, mighty can accomplish a social revolution without the countries of the world. Its only possible through an worldwide socialist movement, founded upon justice and freedom for all mankind. For the triumph of the social revolution itself, violence will be unnecessary. The Socialist Party struggles for the complete emancipation of those who are exploited and enslaved by the capitalist system, advocating that our fellow-workers administer themselves. We want humanity’s happiness.

Socialist Standard No. 1390 September 2019

• Editorial: Save the planet, share the Earth
  
• Pathfinders:
  
• Letters
  
• Cooking the Books I: Who, where or what is NAIRU?
  
• Wood For The Trees: The Scale Of It All
  
• Material World: India Goes Dry
  
• No Outsiders: Class Inclusivity
  
• Mental Health: In a Mad, Mad World
  
• Africa: Can it help feed us all?
  
• Capitalism and Climate Change: Cause and effect
  
• Game of Thrones: Medieval Clichés
  
• Reflections on the Tolpuddle Festival
  
• Easy rider: Remembering Peter Fonda
  
• Cooking the Books II: The Next War
  
• Proper Gander: Can’t A Cleaner Like Avocados?
  
• Reviews
  
• 50 Years Ago: Man Ape in Wolfs Clothing?
  
• Meetings
  
• Rear View
  
• Free Lunch

Workers have a world to win, not a nation to fight for.

So the pro-Irish nationalists in Glasgow were met with opposition from British loyalists. The Irish Unity march, led by the James Connolly Republican Flute Band, was met by counter demonstrators which resulted, according to the police, in "significant disorder" along Govan Road and the deployment of riot police to separate the two factions. Once more the toxic politics of nationalism poisons the atmosphere.

Workers in Scotland need socialism, not independence. Nationalists do not want to abolish capitalist exploitation. A sovereign Scotland or an United Ireland can only serve capitalism. To pretend that the UK Union is the cause of all the problems is to deliberately fool the people. 

Nationalism is an attempt to rally the working class behind the cause of the local bosses seeking better profits or a more secure market. Nationalism does not oppose capitalism. Nationalists acts in the interests of an aspiring ruling class. There are no shortcuts to the socialist revolution, and those who followthe nationalist path set back the revolutionary movement by chasing fake enemies. Nationalism is predicated on the myth of a common identity uniting all the citizens of a given country. This has been cynically and opportunistically promoted by the Scottish and Irish nationalists.

The Socialist Party wants to abolish the private ownership of the means of production and expropriate the capitalists. Workers fight each other instead of attacking the system itself. Nationalism emasculates the workers. It is used to divide the workers among themselves so they can ignore their real enemy. Separatism would divide the workers of Scotland from their fellow-workers in England and Ireland. National divisions are a hindrance to working-class unity, and national jealousies and differences are fostered by the capitalists for their own ends.

It is nationalism that divides the workers so that the workers of one nationality struggle against the workers of another nationality for a few illusory crumbs the rulers throw out exactly for that purpose. If the working class divides its forces, this can only seriously hold back its victory. But if it remains unified, it will be able to triumph.

In the struggle to win the hearts and minds of the working class the Socialist Party has to contend with sacred beliefs and obstacles such as nationalism, the loyalty and patriotism felt by many for "their” country. Nationalism is at the top of the list of political illusions used to blind capitalism's victims. For the Socialist Party nationalist movements represent the interests of the capitalist class but politically they can take on a "right-wing" or a "left-wing" form. The Scottish nationalists choose to present themselves as the latter. However, once the native ruling class has captured and consolidated its power, then nationalism becomes a conservative force. Workers should reject the nonsense idea of nationalism and should unite for their common good to abolish capitalism and work for socialism.

The Socialist Party opposes all nationalist movements recognising that the working class has no country. Feelings of loyalty to a nation-state are purely subjective, having no basis in reality. The working class in Scotland has more in common with the workers in other countries than it has with a land-owning laird. We resolutely oppose the politics of capitalism in which some people support the British version of nationalism against the Scottish brand of nationalism. Since we hold that workers own no country, why should we care which section of the class of thieves owns which national portion of the world? Workers own no country, so why should we care which section of the class of thieves owns which national portion of the world?

You don’t enhance the power of workers in their economic struggles against the capitalists by taking the same side as those sitting opposite you at the negotiating table and fraternally regarding them as your 'fellow citizens'. Yet depressingly large swathes of the Left have opted for a course of action that effectively submerges and obliterates working class identity in favour of national identity. We witnessed the Scottish Socialist Party convenor sit alongside a hedge-fund manager in the 2014 referendum. And back in history James Connolly took the working class Citizens Army and allied it with those who only a few years earlier it was formed to resist. 

The obsession about Scottish independence is one which socialists meet all the time. We encounter it from Leftists who divide their time between paying lip service to the idea of workers of the world uniting and endorsing the nationalism of the SNP or Sinn Fein. Nationalists have always argued that workers would be better off in their own country, free from British rule. Socialists regard it as an irrelevance whether local capitalism is ruled by a Scottish/Irish capitalist state or by a British capitalist state or the multinational corporations..

For the worker in there is but one hope. It is to make common cause with the workers of other countries for the end of all forms of exploitation: saying to both English and Scottish and Irish capitalists: “A plague on all your houses."

For the true battle-cry of the working class is broader, more significant and more inspiring than mere nationalism, and that rallying cry is:

THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS!

WORKERS FOR THE WORLD!

The real future of the Earth

Socialism is a call for sharing and caring, and is a product of love for people and desire for beauty. Socialism does not seek to rape the planet and does not worship profits at the expense of people and nature. It has its basis in social democracy and the nature-based, materialist outlook which grew out of a deep reverence for and understanding of the real, natural, ever-changing, material world.

Socialist philosophy places mind-feelings-ideas in their physical and historical context as effects, not as basic causes. Yes, ideas and feelings can change the world, but people must still have bodies before their minds and emotions can function. Matter itself can neither be created nor destroyed, but all matter–in nature, society and the human mind–changes constantly through tension and contradiction. All things are interdependent and in a continual process of coming into being, changing and passing away. The capitalist system itself was born, matured and will die, because of its inherently contradictory nature–social production (by large groups of workers assembled in one plant)on the one hand, and private, capitalist ownership and appropriation of profit on the other. The application of the materialist dialectic to history is called historical materialism–a revolutionary science of society. It is the sociology of institutional changes caused by the interplay and conflict between the developing productive forces and the kind of world created by this technology.

Historical materialism teaches that all social life is evolutionary and revolutionary, and that human beings can learn to understand nature, production and social relations, and change them in a rational manner. The kind of economy we live in determines the nature and level of our laws, government, culture, ideas, feelings and ethics. The competitive, class warfare system of capitalist production produces a destructive, anti-human science and culture. Socialism is infused with equality, fraternity and liberty.

Historical materialism promotes the synthesis of ecological balance, social harmony, personal freedom and material comfort that is mankind's birthright. A loaf of bread, the work of the farmer, the activity of a baker or the equipment for baking are not just material objects or processes. They are nodes in the network of social connections: the customer’s relationship with the baker, the farmer who produced the wheat, the engineering worker who made the machinery, and so on. All these lives are bound together. To be human is to be both social and at the same time a particular individual, a person. You have a unique place in the world: you speak a particular language in your own inimitable manner, you like food or music of a particular sort, and so on. None of the things which make you exactly who you are exists except through the entire history of humankind. We can be conscious of our own humanity only because, and to the extent that, we act humanly, and that means creating ourselves. We are not some kind of machine, nor are we passive victims of evolutionary history, governed by ‘instincts’ which can never be understood or controlled. What distinguishes humanity from the rest of nature is the conscious, active relationship we have with everything else, with each other and with ourselves. No human individual is an isolated entity. Each human is – potentially – a ‘social individual’, and a ‘universal individual’. The human individual is free, self-created, but only in his or her true, social being. 

Capitalism has produced many things, good and bad, in the course of its evolution. But the most vital and valuable of all the social forces it has created is the working class. The capitalist class brought into existence a vast army of wage workers and set it into motion for its own purposes, to make and operate the machinery, factories, and all the other production and transportation facilities from which employers profits emanate. The exploitation and abuses, inherent and inescapable in the capitalist organisation of economic life, provoke the workers time and time again to organise themselves and undertake militant action to defend their elementary interests. The struggle between these conflicting social classes is today the dominant and driving force of world and history. The class conflict is the motivating force of history. It is the working-class that, if mobilised, can change the direction of political activism.

Socialism is the anathema of the ruling class. It has become the powerful tool of the exploited and oppressed in the struggle to overthrow capitalism. The real battle line lies between capitalists (of all colours) and the workers (of all colours). The only alternative to socialist revolution is a bleak defeatism, to passively accept the inevitability of eco-catastrophe is not revolution. And nothing can be more impossible than the goal of nationalist self-survival on a ruined planet. This is the politics of despair, pie-in-the-sky. But scarcity and privation need not be the future. There is a better way for suffering humanity – to go forward together to establish the democratic common ownership of the means of producing life’s necessities. Many environmentalists are not yet ready for this and blame the conventional scapegoats of overpopulation for problems, blinded by all-too-commonplace prejudices and mistaken analysis. The Socialist Party does not retreat into a bunker mentality of isolationism but will strive to flourish along with a liberated humanity as a whole.

Rangers and Sectarianism Again

Rangers are "liaising" with Uefa after being sanctioned for "racist behaviour" during the first leg of their Europa League play-off tie with Legia Warsaw in Poland last Thursday. Rangers have already been ordered to close part of Ibrox for Thursday's second leg after a similar breach in their first-round tie against St Joseph's on 18 July. Rangers have to leave at least 3,000 seats empty and display a banner with "#EqualGame". Rangers could face a euro 50,000 fine and the prospect of playing a tie behind closed doors if there is a further breach.

Manager Steven Gerrard has "pleaded" with Rangers fans to "behave in the right manner." 

"Our supporters have been asked repeatedly by the club to refrain from indulging in this, and other forms of unacceptable behaviour," said a statement from the Scottish club. "Sadly, the warnings have fallen on deaf ears..."

Looking forward, not backward.

Capitalism creates a situation where large masses of the people are dissatisfied, embittered, emboldened by intolerable hardships. Capitalism itself prepares the conditions for social evolution. The overthrow of the the capitalist system, grows out of the misery brought on by the crisis of capitalism. When we struggle against capitalism we are doing what is right and just for the future of humanity. In a class-free society there is nobody to suppress or keep in check. Class distinctions are done away with and both riches and poverty are being abolished. Exploitation of man by man is abolished. The rule “let each person work according to ability; let each person receive from the common stock of goods according to need” is established.

A revolution in technology has occurred and is still in process. It is impossible for this system of private ownership and profit to function, to supply the needs of the population today. The capitalist system acts as a brake upon production so that, as the phrase goes, you have “want in the midst of plenty.” socialism is i a worldwide economy. Every effort to establish “planned” production under private capitalism breaks down, since the competition between rival capitalists, within a nation and capitalist groups in different nations disrupts such efforts.The expansion of capitalism comes from the accumulate profits. Profits can only be made by fiercer exploitation, cutting down the living standards, of the people, taking away even such concessions as were previously made.

 Capitalism today means environmental destruction, continuous conflicts, possibly leading to the eventual collapse of civilisation. The one road to security, to peace, to freedom, to cultural advancement is the road to socialism. This is your choice – capitalist chaos or world socialism. Socialism is the order of the day throughout the world. Only the working class is capable of saving humanity from barbarism.

For the reformists they all believe that the capitalist class (usually referred to simply as "business interests") creates wealth rather than legally steals it from those who do actually create it — the working class. They all believe that the free market and competition offers the most efficient and viable method of producing wealth ever conceived by humankind, despite the untold misery it has caused but can't do anything about. They all believe in state repression of those who try to resist the system or who are denied access to wealth on the grounds that they are not part of "the business community", and who commit terrible crimes like joining trade unions to defend their meagre interests in the market place. They all believe in the 
necessity of a "strong defence capability” to safeguard the interests of Britain and the British — a Britain where one person owns more wealth than nineteen of the rest of us put together on average and where the majority's stake in "the national interest" is little more than a huge mortgage and a second-hand car. And they all believe that they — the guides and beneficent manipulators of our economic and moral interests are capable of bringing wealth and success to the mass of the population. They do nothing to offer real hope, real encouragement or a real sense that things can be different. They merely reinforce the spread of scepticism and apathy among an already downhearted and dispirited working class.

The Socialist Party is a revolutionary Marxian party, whose aim is the organisation of the working class for the transformation of the existing social system. All of its activities and methods are subordinated to this aim and are designed to serve it. A political organisation that proclaims that it is the party of the working class will consider its primary task is to go talk to the workers, and will clarify socialist ideas by explaining the important changes in society, and the need for the workers to lead themselves in all their actions, not an outside party substituting themselves for the working class. The socialist revolution is the first revolution aimed at a consciously planned overthrow of existing society. That is, it does not seek to return to a previous era, like the slave, nor does it seek to merely legalise its political domination of society in a situation where an economic transfer of power has already taken place, as had occurred in England in the seventeenth century and in France in the eighteenth century. Like other revolutions, the working class revolution grows out of class antagonisms, but the workers’ revolution does not stop at the political seizure of power. It continues overthrowing all existing human relationships and brings the whole working class into self-activity. The socialist revolution can only conclude with the construction of a global class-free society. Those workers who today already recognise the necessity of socialism ought to take the next step and join the Socialist Party on its path towards the revolutionary goal. Our road is indeed not a smooth one. We are still faced with many hard tests. But in this great cause we have voluntarily dedicated ourselves. The Socialist Party does not constitute a huge political force and we are not as yet a political pressure to be truly reckoned with — but the Socialist Party offers one thing - the scientific and logically-arrived at view that is able to account for society as it is and has a clear, practical vision of how it really could be. Without us it would indeed be a cynical, cold and miserable outlook for humanity. With us — and more importantly with you — organising for genuine change, there could yet be a ray of hope. We still wait for the real, significant revolt of understanding and which will sweep away capitalism.

We can make the changes

Putrefying capitalism is deadlocked. They know their system has failed - and they have no answers. The capitalist class have no perspective to offer society other than even more of that which is causing the problems. Possibly the most profound trend that is now emerging and rapidly advancing is not necessarily the recent decline in profitability of the wages system of production, but a decline rather in the confidence of the ruling class to convince us of the validity of their system. Yet for its part, the working class has been unable to implement its own historic solution to the contradictions of capitalist society – world socialism. How much longer can this malaise continue? Only as long as we want it to! There is a solution. It is founded firstly in an understanding of the basis of our insecurity and exploitation, which is the world system of production for profit. That is the Capitalist Mode of Production. We must think and discuss this fundamental fetter upon humanity constantly in a spirit of openness, and keep in close touch with what other people are thinking. And it is to be found in a rejuvenated working class solidarity which rejects reforms and palliatives in order to keep us a bit sweeter in the short term. It also resides in a genuine desire to learn and to educate ourselves about the potential we have within us.

 We need not sell our bodies and mental capacities to mendacious capitalists. Make no mistake, the wealth of the ruling capitalist elite is founded upon extracting surplus value from the labour of workers. We can make the world for the majority and no longer be slaves to the wages system of production. Our common endeavour can create a democratic world society in which production will be based upon need and not elitist profit, we can abolish money and utilise the resources of the earth for the benefit of all, no matter how disempowered some of our fellow world citizens may seem to be today. Rather than acquiesce to the ruling class which will only see us sink further into the gutter, let us aspire to a new form of society in which hope trumps desperation and the world socialist future is the only way forward for all of us.

It is a disgraceful indictment of a so-called civilised society. Poverty can be replaced by plenty, war, hunger and worry can be supplanted to the past as a rational, state-free, money-free, co-operative world society becomes the true expression of our common will. A form of society which has never before existed. And the Earth will belong to us all. It's our choice. If we vote for more rulers and the continued ownership of the world by a handful of people then it doesn't really matter how politicians share the spoils. But if the workers of the world used the vote to positively reject false choices we will be further on the road towards a truly democratic society.

If we vote to make the wealth of the world common property in which we all have an equal say, then we can finally have socialism - on a world scale. We can put an end to minority rule, and we can organise our common affairs in our own interest. Capitalism can be defeated once everyone decides it can be beaten. And then we can set about organising a higher and more human form of society in a completely new way. We can collectively build and create a new and truly democratic world society in which production is for need and not for profit, in which people co-operate rather than compete to produce the necessities of life.

The Socialist Party stands for a world society in which human ingenuity and creativity will be placed at the secular altar of majority Human need and not the pyre of minority Capitalist expropriation. It is not about trying to reform or regulate a social system which has reached its useful objective limits, it is about creating a new world society. We therefore need to keep in touch with what other people who share our thinking that the only viable future for the human race lies – in that post-capitalist society of common ownership of the world. It is impossible to be neutral in this debate.

Come on - Lets do it!