The Future Belongs to Us

The principles of the Socialist Party are clear and definite. It claims that the wealth of society is created by the workers. It claims that the workers must own and control all the processes of wealth production and operate these in the interests of the community. The Socialist Party is a revolutionary organisation and believes in revolutionary political action. It urges the workers to use their ballots to capture political power—not to play at politicians or pose as statesmen, but to use their votes to uproot the State and to hand to the working class the constructive task of building socialism. To think that Parliament can be used as the means of permanently improving the conditions of Labour, by passing a series of acts, is to believe in parliamentarianism. The Socialist Party is not a parliamentary party. It believes in entering Parliament only as a means of sweeping away all antiquated institutions which stand in the way of society owning and controlling the means of production.

Socialism is the next stage of social evolution. The builders of the socialist society of the future will be the socialist generations themselves. When discussing the socialist future, it is always essential to bear this in mind. The task for the Socialist Party is to expose the ruling class and all its divisive ideologies which stands in the way of the emancipation of working people. Universal peace and fraternity cannot become real and secure until there are no rich and no poor.

The fight for socialism is a hard fight. The revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is a vital urgent necessity. It is not true is that anti-capitalist struggle automatically equals socialist struggle. Socialism considers our views dependent upon our material needs, and our political standpoint dependent upon the economic position of the class we belong to. Socialism is distinguished by its principle that the people can only be free when they free themselves from poverty.

 The Socialist Party visualised socialism as a stage of human society where all the accumulated knowledge, all the treasures of technology created by the genius of mankind, all that science and art acquired by humanity over generations is to be used, not for the few, but for the benefit of mankind as a whole, striving not for sectional interests, but for the common good, transforming society into a community of free and equal producers. This socialist commonwealth liberates the individual from all economic, political and social oppression to provide the basis, for real liberty and for the full and harmonious development of the personality, giving full scope for the growth of the creative faculties of the mind.

The Socialist Party is not a reform party, but a revolutionary party. It does not propose to modify the competitive profit system, but abolish it. An examination of its case shows that it stands unequivocally for the common ownership and democratic control of all the means of weal production and distribution — in a word, socialism. We are not a party like other parties. The Socialist Party has no interest in any of the so-called issues over which capitalist politicians fight sham battles. We retain an unshakable confidence in the socialist future of humanity. We hold an undimmed vision of the future. To fight for the socialist future, to hasten its realisation, is the greatest privilege for a man or woman in the world today. Our party is built on correct ideas and therefore is indestructible. Organisation means getting together with a common understanding and a common end in view, and working systematically for the attainment of that end. For the workers to organise effectively, they must have a correct understanding of their position in society and of the conditions under which they live and work. If they fail to understand these things, they will either not organise at all or will organise in an ineffective manner. The effectiveness of their organisation depends on the correctness of their understanding. The better they understand conditions the more effectively they will organise. The workers have a power infinitely greater than that of the capitalists. That is their power to produce wealth - to run industry-to carry on production. They can do this without capitalists, while without workers, capitalists are helpless. But the power of the workers is unorganised and therefore ineffective.

The coming fight, the coming revolution, is a social revolution, the revolution for socialism. The Socialist Party stands first, last, and always for the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution, and will press forward unceasingly until it is secured, thereby liberating the human race. Complete workers' control means possession of the source of all wealth and social power. When the workers control industry, they will own the earth. In no other way can they improve their conditions or gain economic freedom. So let us study economic conditions that we may understand them and agree on a common end, and all work systematically by the intelligent use of our economic power for the attainment of that end, which can be none other than to take over the means of production and distribution and operate them for use instead of profit.

Climate Strikers banned from Princes St.

School-students have been banned from marching down Princes Street during a planned climate change protest. The council said marchers would not be allowed to set foot on Princes Street on 20 September.

School student strikers, an expected 10,000, had planned to assemble at Middle Meadow Walk at 11am on Friday the 20th September to march down Forrest Road, George IV Bridge, the Mound, Princes Street, North Bridge, High Street, Canongate, Horse Wynd and on to the Scottish Parliament. Police had raised no official objection to the event.

So much for the council declaring a climate emergency and its education committee granting pupils one day to take action without any punishment.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-49662070

The COP Comes to Glasgow

Thousands of people are starting to get politically active at the moment and they bring with them all sorts of ideas. We need to give the socialist vision high visibility and explain the socialist strategy. We hold a distinct alternative conception of society to offer. Many have the belief that socialists are productivists, an ideology that sees productivity in itself as the highest good. Socialists are second to none in denouncing the capitalist logic of production for the sake of production, the accumulation of capital, wealth and commodities as ends in themselves. Socialism is the production of use values, of goods necessary to satisfy human needs. The goal of technical progress for socialists is not the endless production of goods to have, but to transform labour into leisure and integrate work with nature. 

The problems of the environment, air, soil and water pollution, the accumulation of wastes, the destruction of forests, the greenhouse effect, all are setting up a catastrophic scenario where the very survival of humanity is at stake. The Socialist Party is well aware of the blind irrationality of the capitalist market, with its shortsighted profit and loss accounting. The Socialist Party is crafting a non-commodified future that is based upon based on non-monetary economy.

Many voices in the ecology movement inform us that we are responsible for climate change and that it is our fault that the planet's environment is fouled up. They tell us that we each individually contribute to carbon emission because our “excessive” consumption causes manufacturers to increase their production. The size of the carbon footprint of individual people is very small and practically irrelevant. The main culprit to global warming are the business interests which control the corporations which run the industries which produce almost all the emissions. Corporations cannot afford to be overly concerned with stopping pollution. The existence of every corporation is based on its ability to make more profits than the next corporation. Carbon capturing technology means that companies would have to cut deeply into their profits to take any real steps toward stop it. Business is not about to cut its profits for anybody. Business has not cut its profits to end poverty or to stop wars. There’s no reason to expect them to do such a thing in order to halt global warming. Of course, the main question is the survival of civilisation.

A planned socialist society which has control of the means of production, distribution will assure adequate comfort for the population. The potential to create such a society exists, but that potential can be realised only if workers act to gain control of their own lives by organising, politically and industrially, for socialism. The aim of socialist production is not profits but the prosperity of the country and the people’s happiness. The capitalist practice of only seeking profit while ignoring the harm done to the people is alien to socialism. The pollution of water, food and air is caused by the greed for profit. This could be abolished if the resources of the countries of the entire planet could be organised rationally to produce a healthy environment. Climate change is the direct result of the crazy, profit-motivated system we live in. And so long as that system is allowed to continue, global warming will continue and increase.

It is not a technical problem. It is a class and political problem. While capitalism remains, the wealth produced by the labour of the workers will be squandered. All the resources for a world of abundance, without pollution, disease and squalor, exist at the present time in skill, technique and science. They are the same resources used to produce the destruction of the environment.

“We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, affliction or infamy.We kill when, because it is easier, we countenance, or pretend to approve of atrophied social, political, educational, and religious institutions, instead of resolutely combating them.”- Herman Hesse

Join the Socialist Party's fight to get rid of capitalism worldwide, as the only way to end the horrors of hunger, disease and war.

The age of scarcity has passed.

The Socialist Party works for the co-operative commonwealth of socialism. Under capitalism, with its wage slavery, working people are nominally free; but, as we have seen, the land, the technology and all the products of labour belong to the employing class. The workers are at liberty to change their individual masters, if they can, that is all. There is a continuous class war between wage slaves and the capitalist class, with its parasites. So long as wages are paid by one class to another class, so long will men and women remain slaves to the employing class. Workers sell their labour power, which is the only commodity they possess, to the capitalists who own or control all the means of producing wealth, including the tools, raw material, land and money. Under capitalist production the workers are controlled by their machine, instead of being in control of them. Under the capitalist system producers themselves have no control over their own products. Commodities, social goods, are produced, not directly for social purposes, but indirectly, in order to create a profit for the capitalists. If capitalists are unable for any reason to produce goods profitably, the wage-earners cease to be employed, though there may be a vast quantity of useful goods glutting the warehouses on the one hand, and millions of people who are anxious to have them on the other.

Rent, profit and interest are all provided by the workers. They are, all three, the component parts of the labour value embodied in saleable commodities by the labour power of the workers, over and above the actual wages paid to the toiler, and the cost of raw materials, incidental materials, etc., needed by the capitalist for the conduct of his business.

The wages paid by the employers to their hands represent the customary standard of life of the special grade of skilled or unskilled workers employed These wages are, on the average, returned in saleable values to the capitalist in a portion of the working day, or week, for which the worker has sold his labour power to the capitalist. The goods produced during the rest of the time the wage-earner works for the capitalist are the result of this extra and unpaid labour, furnished by the toiler to the capitalist. It is the modern industrial expression of the corvée, enforced, not by the whip, but by pecuniary necessity and individual hunger. This is the surplus value, out of which all the classes who do not directly produce are paid their share: the majority as parasites, the minority as professional persons. Workers have advanced their labour power to the capitalist before they are paid their wages for its use. Capitalists, as a class, run no risks whatever; the unfortunate in the competitive struggle for gain are simply wiped out by their competitors, who benefit by their downfall. Shareholders in capitalist companies rarely or never render any service to the company, or the community, as shareholders. In the vast majority of cases they have never visited the enterprises from which they draw their dividends. The market for commodities, the whole population of the globe is drawn into the whirl of capitalist production for profit.

Production for profit and exchange by wage labour assumes the existence, from historic causes, of large numbers of people who are divorced from the land and possess no property of their own. The only way to solve the growing antagonism between the two great classes of modern society is, by substituting co­operation for competition, in all branches of production and distribution. This involves a social revolution, peacefully if possible or forcible, if necessary.

The power of mankind in every branch of human industry, including agriculture, that if all the technology, productive forces and general knowledge at the disposal of mankind in the civilisation of to-day were applied co-operatively to the supply of useful goods and social luxuries, “wealth might easily be made as plentiful as water” to use Robert Owen’s phrase. Enjoyable labour by all members of the community would thus produce plenty for all, and wages and prices would disappear.

The only real deterrent to the attack on the working class by capitalism is socialism. The time has arrived when every man and woman of our class will have to make a great decision. We shall have to choose whether capitalism with all its attendant miseries and horrors is to remain enthroned or whether we intend to be free. We shall have to choose whether we prefer to remain the slaves of profit. The Socialist Party explains to our fellow workers the nature of the struggle in which they are participating. To tell them of the principles for which our party works and fights for. To reveal what we are confident of the way out for our class from the horrid nightmare of the competitive struggle which sets nation against nation, class against class, and individual against individual. 

The struggle between individual capitalists to realise profits sets employer against employer. The conflict between national groups of financiers sets nation against nation, and produces war. But despite their individual and national conflicts the whole capitalist class stands united in their common desire to exploit workers. Hence under capitalism the freedom of the working class consists in the freedom to starve or accept such conditions as are imposed upon them by the employing class. But the freedom of the master class consists in their untrammelled freedom to buy labour to create profit. Thus the workers are not free. Neither owning nor controlling the means of life, they are wage slaves of their employers, and are but mere commodities. 

The principles of the Socialist Party are not based upon passing and ephemeral conditions, but upon principles which penetrate to the very foundations of society. Principles that are permanent and imperishable, applicable to all lands as well as our own. These are the common ownership of the means of life, government of the people by the people for the people. Such are the principles of the Socialist Party. Support and work for the building of the world anew. For the sweeping away of ignorance, for the full physical and mental development of men and women free from class exploitation, and the degradations of poverty. Refuse, and by your neglect you stand for misery, exploitation, greed and war. The hour is great. The eyes of the world are upon you. The choice is yours. 

Capitalism Can't Resolve Those Social Issues.

 

Between August 3 and 10 there were 19 shooting incidents, some of which were in public places, including night clubs where anyone not involved could get shot.

 Police Chief Mark Saunders naturally wanted to make it seem like the cops were on top of it, stating: ''We're continuing to make arrests. We've laid thousands of charges. We've arrested hundreds of people. The street gang issue is alive and well.'' 

Yeah, right! Saunders did, though admit that arresting people isn't the answer. ''There are social issues related to this'' he said. 

Of course the Chief is perfectly right, but those social issues will not be resolved within capitalism.

Yours for Socialism, 

SPC contributing members 

Workers need Solidarity not Saviours

The persistence of reformism and outright conservatism among workers has long confounded members of the Socialist Party. The capitalist system’s drive to maximise profits should force workers to struggle against their employers, progressively broaden their struggle and eventually overthrow the system and replace it. We often assert that capitalism creates it own “gravediggers” – workers with no interest in the maintenance of private ownership of the means of production. The reality of politics appear to challenge this. The majority of the working class remain tied to reformist pro-capitalist political parties premised on the possibility of acquiring improvements in the condition of workers without the overthrow of capitalism. We have also seen a rise in reactionary ideas – racism, sexism, homophobia, nationalism, militarism. How do we explain the fact that most workers, most of the time, do not act on their potential power? Why do workers embrace reformist politics or worse, reactionary politics.

The working class cannot be permanently active in the class struggle. The entire working class cannot consistently engage in strikes, protests and other forms of political activity because it is members are compelled to sell their labour power to capital in order to survive. They have to go to work. Put simply, most workers, most of the time are engaged in the individual struggle to sell their capacity to work and secure the reproduction of themselves and their families – not the collective struggle against the employers and the State. the majority of workers come to accept the “rules of the game” of capitalist competition and profitability. They seek a “fair share” of the products of capitalist accumulation, but do not feel capable of challenging capitalist power in the workplace, the streets or society. For most workers mass, militant struggle seems unrealistic; they tend to embrace liberal and reformist electoral politics, institutionalised collective bargaining and grievance handling. As competing sellers of labour power, workers are open to the appeal of politics that pit them against other workers. The stronger sections of the working class defend their status against weaker, less-organised sections. They can take advantage of their privileged positions as Americans over and against foreigners, as whites over and against blacks, as men over and against women, as employed over and against unemployed, etc. These ideas are, of course, the ideas of the right-wing. Such strategies are counter-productive. Divisions among workers offers the capitalist class the ability to undermine the ability of workers to defend or improve their conditions of life under capitalism. The continued hold of reformism over the majority of workers requires that politicians “deliver the goods.” However, when reformism proves incapable of realistically defending workers’ interests workers embrace individualist and sectional perspectives.

This paradox poses a crucial challenge for the Socialist Party's campaign for socialism. Today, the main audience for the idea that workers need to stand up to right-wing ideas and practices are the small number of militant activists who are trying to promote solidarity, and democracy in the labour movement. Workers must begin to think of themselves as a class with interests in common with other workers and opposed to the capitalists and anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-militarist, anti-nationalist – ways of thinking. Struggles in working-class communities are not to be limited to work-places but also around housing, social welfare, transport and other issues; and political struggles against racism and war, crucial elements in the political self-transformation of the working class. Without the experience of such struggles, workers will continue to passively accept reformist politics

A better future will not come about automatically or simply because many people wish it. Socialism will only come about if we are able to draw enough people into the struggle to create it. But success is not guaranteed. Those who are serious about socialism must be serious about achieving it. The Socialist Party hopes that we can build up a human society. Our aim is to gain equality in society. The present political situation, including the existing relationship of class forces in society, is not likely to endure for long. Vast political changes are in store. The capitalist system has adversely affected the living standard of the working class around the world. The latest technology in commodity production and distribution has created financial and political crises. As capitalism's exploitation intensifies, and drives lower wages and weaken the unions, the conditions are ripening for a revival of the class war.

Beings Being In The Margins of Error.

Regular readers of this report will recall how Stats-Canada waxed rhapsodic about how the economy had picked up in June and how many new jobs were added to it, but - ''Surprise, Surprise,'' the July figures were not so rosy. 
The unemployment rate went up to 5.7 per cent as Canada shed 24,200 jobs. 

In terms of job creation, the economy saw its worst 3 months since early 2018. Stats-Canada did, however, caution that the recent monthly readings have been small enough that they're within the margin for error, and therefore statistically insignificant.

 I guess that make's those who've been laid off feel so much better

Yours for Socialism,
 SPC contributing members 

The Hope and the Challenge

Recessions are an inherent feature of capitalism and cannot be ended without eliminating the root, the capitalist system. The anarchy of production and crisis will not be eliminated without putting an end to the capitalist system. The motive of capitalist production is the securing of maximum profits. Production of goods is in fact an incidental aim of capitalism, as is employment. The capitalist class organises production for the purposes of increasing profits. When conditions are such that profits can be increased by increasing production, the capitalists does so, and when conditions are such that profits can only be increased by cutting back production to keep up the price, then that is what the capitalist class does. Thus if it serves to increase profits to increase the numbers of workers in production, then this is done; but if profits can only be increased by intensifying exploitation, getting more or the same amount of work out of fewer workers, then this is done instead. These fundamental features of the capitalist system cannot be eliminated without removing the capitalist system itself.

All the capitalist parties are dedicated to the continuation of the capitalist system of wage slavery. The working class must prepare through the course of this and other struggles for putting an end to the capitalist system. The reason for the treachery and betrayal of the “friends” of labour is not simply the cowardice and spinelessness of various individuals. The workers can never rely on the labour leaders because their entire position depends on the maintenance of the capitalist system. The socialist struggle is to build the unity of the class against the class enemy, fighting against the class-collaborationism and reformism. The workers can and must fight the encroachments on their employment conditions, but they cannot restrict themselves to addressing only the symptoms; they must in the course of combatting the encroachments prepare for removing the source of the disease, the capitalist system of wage slavery. It is the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression, the system of wage slavery, that is the source of all the problems facing the working class. It demonstrates the urgent necessity to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism through revolution. Social revolution is not only a possibility, it is a necessity in order to avert the dangers facing working people to prevent their immiseration and destitution.

So widespread is the chaos across the world that it cannot do other than create the possibility of revolutionary activity. The position of capitalism is extremely precarious. No one is more conscious of this than the financiers and statesmen themselves. The capitalists would very much like, if they could, to clear up the mess that their system is in—but they cannot. It is in this context that we are attempting to develop our socialist analysis. Exploited by the relations of production under capitalism, the working class has a direct interest in the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism, the system in which the working class owns and controls the means of production and collectively shares in the products of its labour. The working class, created by capitalism, is also the destroyer of capitalism.

The Socialist Party is the party of the working class, in fundamental opposition to all other parties. It declares that the social contrasts of increasing wealth in the hands of the rich, side by side with the increasing misery and poverty of the people, cannot be eliminated within the framework of capitalism. It proclaims that the organisation of the economic life of the whole world, the abolition of war, the end of the capitalist dictatorship and the building of socialism, are impossible, unless the working class overthrows the capitalist class. The Socialist Party therefore is the deadly foe of capitalism and capitalist parties. We do not intend to appeal to emotion. We hope to present a few facts about the class question that every worker should know. We appeal to workers to use their reason. History is full of examples of the decline of civilisations. All of us have read about them. But we can do nothing about the past. That is history. The period in which we live is different. We can do something about it. Human beings can actively intervene and change the course of history. We need not become fatalists and assume that barbarism will follow the present period. That can happen only if the workers do not understand the system, they live in and do not organise to do something about it. The starting point is understanding the present system.

A Typical Political Way of Just Lying.

A budget passed by Alberta's provincial government has resulted in cuts to homeless programs in several cities. On August 14, the Calgary Star reported the Calgary Homeless Foundation would see its funding cut by 8 per cent - a 3.2 million reduction.  Homewood Trust Edmonton, that works to end homelessness there, will see its funding cut by $1.4 million, which is 5 per cent of the amount it gets from the province. 

Alberta's Community and Social Services Minister, Rajan Sawney, said: ''Our government is committed to protecting vulnerable Albertans, while getting the province’s finances back on track,'' which is a typical political way of just lying. 

The plain fact is, for the working class in Alberta, and elsewhere, life ain't getting any easier. Yes folks, Andrew Ure’s infamous Utilitarian words shine brightly in 21st century Canada: Work the idle, and grind the poor!  

Yours for Socialism, 

SPC contributing members

World for the Workers, Workers for the World

Working people built this world and all its industries. The World is rich in natural resources. It is capable of satisfying the needs of all its people. The two classes in our society, the working class and the capitalist, are locked in a bitter struggle. A handful of capitalists control our planet and make fabulous profits off the labour of working people. All the major means of production - the factories, the mines, communications and transportation are concentrated in the hands of a few thousand capitalists who employ millions of workers. The capitalists represents the system of exploitation and oppression. The working class represents progress and the struggle to eliminate capitalism. For the workers, the future is less and less certain. The exploitation and oppression gets worse every year. All this misery is created by a clique of very wealthy individuals so they can continue to fill their pockets

Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. A handful of parasites live off the backs of the workers and could not care less about their situation. This is how they came to pocket their profits. Every bit of capitalists’ vast possessions was stolen from the people. It’s the capitalists that get rich by appropriating the fruits of our labour. At the end of a work week the worker collects his pay. The capitalists claim this is a fair exchange. But it is highway robbery. In reality, a worker gets paid for only a small part of the value he produced. The rest, the surplus value, goes straight into the boss’s pocket. The bosses get rich, not because they have “taken risks” or “worked harder,” as they would have us believe. The more they keep wages down and reduce the number of employees with speed-ups, the more they can steal from us and the greater their profits. And if the boss thinks he can make more profit somewhere else, he just closes his factory and throws the workers out on the street. The idea that everyone can get rich under this system is a lie invented by the rich themselves. Under capitalism, the only way to get rich is to trample on someone else. This is why workers have only one choice: either submit to this wage slavery or fight it. The idea that everyone can get rich under this system is a lie invented by the rich themselves. Under capitalism, the only way to get rich is to trample on someone else. This is why workers have only one choice: either submit to this wage slavery or fight it.

The reformist Labour Party having rejected socialist revolution, has no alternative but to try to patch up, to bolster here and there the crumbling capitalist economy of England. Nationalisation has nothing in common with socialism; on the contrary, it has as its purpose the perpetuation of capitalism. When one sector of the capitalist economy becomes obsolete, incapable of yielding profit, and without prospect of a profitable recovery under private auspices, then the State takes over that part of the private economy, “compensating” the former owners. The capitalists unburdened of the debts of their former holdings are enabled to invest anew and in more profitable ventures. The State bears the expense of running and renovating the obsolete industries and later when once again a going concern, they can be privatized.

The working class has always fought against the capitalists. Under capitalism, the fundamental contradiction in society is between the social character of production and the private ownership of the means of production. More and more workers conic to work together in modern industry, which is capable of providing for the needs of all the people. But the means of production are in the hands of an ever-smaller number of billionaires whose only goal it to maximise profits. In class terms, this contradiction translates into the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class. There can never be class peace between exploiter and exploited, between boss and worker. The working class, for its part, cannot eliminate exploitation and poverty unless it overthrows the capitalist system. We must wipe away the nightmare of capitalism and build socialism. Only socialism can respond to the aspirations of the working people.

Why we oppose capitalism

The Socialist Party is pledged to establish the cooperative commonwealth. We propose to battle with all our energy and zeal to further the cause of socialism until its universal triumph is proclaimed. We shall not rest until slave and master have both disappeared and equal freedom of all has been established. We await no miracles that will end hunger and squalor in a world of plenty. Men and women will put an end to the wages system where no-one is master and no-one a slave. Each will contribute according to ability and receive according to need. Plenty banishes poverty. Work is no longer a curse to be deplored, and life, emancipated from despair, is worth the living. Join hands with us for the removal of the cause as the only way to alter the effect, and that in place of the present struggle for a miserable existence we may so alter the conditions of that existence that everyone shall work, and in return shall get all that he or she can require, not only food, healthcare and shelter, but leisure and means of enjoyment. This can be done by voluntary associated effort only. The world has never more unsafe. 

This is why we are opposed to capitalism and favour social change.

Capitalists keep saying they have solutions, but they all come down to one thing - tightening their belts around other people’s necks. To save their own necks the capitalists sacrifice millions of lives as they plunder other people. Things do not have to be like this. The working class possesses tremendous potential power to change the world, a fact that is shown every day in the process and product of its labour and in its many struggles against capitalism. It is the task of the working class to displace the rule of the capitalists and remake society to serve the interests of the great majority of the people. Working people are hard-working and have produced wonders through their labour. The world is rich in many resources, and because of the toil of generations here in many other parts of the world, we have achieved a high level of science and technology. 

The treasure-house of society’s wealth is created by the millions of workers who with their labour mine, grow, and transport raw materials, construct machinery, and use the machines to transform raw materials into finished products. The machines, raw materials and other means of production created by the workers are an important part of the productive forces of society, but the most important part is the working class itself without whose labour the means of production would rust and rot. But in the hands of the capitalists the means of production become tools for the continued enslavement and impoverishment of the working class. Under the capitalist system, production only takes place if those who control production, the capitalists, can make profit from it. And they can make profit only by wringing it out of the workers, and constantly pushing their wages down to the lowest level, allowing the workers only enough to keep working-and to bring up new generations of workers to further enrich capital. Part of the workers’ labour covers the cost of maintaining themselves and their families–their wages–and the rest is unpaid labour that produces surplus value for the capitalists, the source of their profit. This exploitation of the workers to create profit for the capitalists is the basis of the whole capitalist system and all its evils.

Capital chases after the highest rate of profit, as surely as iron is drawn to a magnet–this is a law beyond anyone’s will, even the capitalists’, and it will continue in force so long as society is ruled by capital. Each capitalist must try to enlarge his share at the expense of the other capitalists. Capitalists therefore repeatedly introduce new technology to try to produce goods faster and more cheaply, in order to capture more of the market from their competitors. Capitalists battle each other for profit, and those who lose out go under. While each capitalist tries to plan production, the private ownership, the blind drive for profit and the cut-throat competition continually upset their best-laid plans, and anarchy reigns in the economy as a whole.

Capitalists constantly pull their capital out of one area of investment and into another, along with bringing in new machines to speed up production. Some capitalists temporarily surge ahead and expand while others fall behind or are forced out of business altogether. With each of these developments, thousands of workers are thrown into the streets and forced once again to search for a new master to exploit them.

All this is why, from its beginning, capitalism has gone from crisis to crisis. And the way the capitalists get out of these crises only lays the basis for worse ones–they destroy goods and even the means to produce goods, scramble to grab up more markets, and a bigger chunk of the existing ones, and increase their exploitation of the workers. 

The strongest capitalists survive, and in surviving concentrate more of the means of production in their hands and hurl more of the smaller producers into the ranks of the working class. As capitalism develops, society more and more divides into two antagonistic camps – at one pole tremendous wealth and greater concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer hands; at the other pole tremendous misery for the millions who can live only by working for the owners and can work only so long as they produce profit for them.

Through all this, and especially in times of the sharpest crisis, the basic contradiction of capitalism stands out all the more starkly: production itself is highly socialised–it requires large concentrations of workers, each performing part of the total process and all essential to its completion, and it is capable of massive output on this basis; but the ownership of the means of production and the appropriation of the wealth produced is in the hands of a few, competing owners of capital.

The “democracy” of capitalism (bourgeois democracy) is really democracy only for the capitalist rulers, just as ancient Greek “democracy” was democracy only for the small minority of slaveowners. Capitalist rule is still a form of dictatorship, and capitalism still a form of slavery for the working class. For the workers, capitalist “freedom” means in essence the freedom to choose between slaving for some capitalist or starving-and in times of crisis even the first choice disappears for millions.

"What A Lot Of Bollocks"

Federal Minister for Indigenous Relations, Carolyn Bennett, said on August 16 First Nations women will be treated the same as men under the changes to the Indian Act. 

Until now, Indian women lost their status when they married non-Indian men, but men did not if they married non-Indian women. This also means women born before April 17 1985 who lost their status can reclaim it. To quote Ms.Bennett, ''What we are saying now is that there will now be gender equality for all of the Early Peterborough union activists at GE women.'' 

Another quote worthy of mention and thoroughly appropriate is the one used frequently by Inspector Brakenreid on Murdoch Mysteries: ''What a lot of bollocks!''

 As if the new law will make a difference to its beneficiaries as wage slaves. For all this talk of equality, there is only one kind of equality worth striving for - a society where all will stand equal in social relation to the means of life.

Yours for Socialism, 

SPC contributing members

Only Sheep Need Shepherds

We address all workers. We cannot sit down and wait patiently for capitalism to collapse.

Political power is wielded by social classes through political parties. The transference of power from one class to another is not an automatic process. The Socialist Party faces a well-organised capitalist class highly conscious of its interests, and we must strive to excel the class enemy in organisation and determination. It cannot, if it is to reach the historic goal, be an amorphous all-inclusive society of dabblers in reforms and palliatives. We mobilise humanity so that society determines its own social and technical fate, master of its production and distribution and of all the products of its manual and intellectual labour.

Capitalism is a society based on a system which creates a wealthy few above the masses of poor and develops a huge contrast between wealth and poverty. Capitalism spreads the false illusion that we can all have a share of that wealth if we toil hard enough, are clever enough or ruthless enough. In capitalist society the working person is not, in fact, a person at all; as a wage-worker, he or she is simply merchandise, commodity to be bought and sold on the labour market. What is your status in society today? You are not a human being but a resource, a wage-slave. There is no hope for you in this system. No master ever had the slightest respect for his slave. But why don't you understand that you do not need the capitalist. He could not exist an instant without you. You would just begin to live without him. You do everything and he has everything. He consumes, you produce. If you don’t change this relation, he certainly won’t. Ask no favours from capitalists. t there is nothing in common between capitalists and wage-workers. The capitalists own the tools they do not use, and the workers use the tools they do not own. The capitalists, who own the tools that the working class use, appropriate to themselves what the working class produce, and this accounts for the fact that a few capitalists become fabulously rich while the toiling millions remain in poverty and dependence. Workers must make themselves the masters of the tools with which they work. Between the two classes there is an irrepressible conflict. You must organise upon the basis of this fact. You are the only class essential to society and without you society would perish. You produce the wealth, you create and conserve civilisation. Every cog in every wheel that revolves everywhere has been made by the working class, and is set and kept in operation by the working class; and if the working class can make and operate this wealth-producing technology, they can also develop the intelligence to make themselves the masters of this machinery, and operate it not to turn out millionaires, but to produce wealth in abundance for themselves. You cannot afford to be content with your lot in life. You ought to aspire to be free, not a wage-slave subject to the command of the capitalist. Mankind is the expression of his or her environment. Just as a majestic tree towers aloft made possible only because the soil and climate are adapted to its healthy growth. Transfer this tree from the sunlight and the fresh atmosphere to a place of polluted poisoned air and see it wither and die. The same applies to human beings; the industrial soil and the social climate must be adapted to the development of men and women, and then society will cease producing the defiled diseased deformities. The workers are the saviours of the human race and the planet.

The Socialist Party proposes to end capitalism. We want a system in which the worker shall get what he or she produces. We hold a the vision of the world without masters and without slaves, a planet regenerated and resplendent

Rally to the call for complete emancipation! In answer to the oppression of the capitalist class let our battle cry be:

"The World for the Workers. The Workers for the World"

Lesson Capitalism Teaches Workers Over and Over Again.

On August 8 CBC showed a documentary about the General Electric plant in Peterborough, Ontario, which mercifully was shut down two years ago. The program focused on the attempts of a group who called themselves the Coalition of Widows, to get compensation from Ontario's Workplace and Safety Board for the deaths of relatives who worked with toxic chemicals at GE, such as asbestos, cyanide and PVC, which they were told were not harmful.

 Most of the deceased were long serving workers at GE, some of whom had questioned if their work was safe, but three Mayors of Peterborough took no action against GE, it being the Cities main employer. 

Of the 250 claims submitted to the Board only 71 were compensated, causing one ex-employee to ask, ''What chance does a guy with a grade ten education have against a powerful corporation with all the resources in the world?'' 

Another said, ''As long as they were making money they didn't give a damn about the health of their workers.''

 And that’s a lesson capitalism teaches workers over and over again.

Yours for Socialism,

 SPC contributing members 

The Future Is Up To Us

Barbarism or Socialism is no mere rhetoric. Socialism or barbarism is not an exhortative admonition; it is a grim fact. At its core, capitalism rests on the domination of the overwhelming majority by a small minority. Our objective is a society in which “the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all” as stated in the Communist Manifesto. This cannot be achieved by authoritarian methods. If self-emancipation is the goal, it must be the means as well. Part of our job as socialists is to help people see through the illusions of capitalism, to understand that we are faced with this stark choice of socialism or barbarism, and to encourage a vision of self-emancipation as both the means and our end , the only means of creating socialism and the essence of what socialism will be. The Socialist Party alone carries the banner of uncompromising struggle and holds the promise a new finer better world. Socialism hasn’t failed because it had never been tried. Socialism as a movement has still to fulfil its potential. Socialism is a system that allows every person to contribute to society, to express self worth, the foundation of happiness. It is the rational distribution of the necessaries of life according to need. These needs differ today from two hundred years ago, when a person’s needs were more basic in demands for food and shelter. Today, our needs now include education, health care, culture and entertainment. Working people do not compare their present situation with what their grandparents or great grandparents endured but compare themselves and their lives to the wealthy, to what they know society can deliver for a privileged few, and they question why it is not available for all. The huge potential which capitalism has opened up for improving our lives but yet the simultaneous crushing of that potential by the drive for profits leads to the expectation that things should get better which can contribute towards the formation of increased class consciousness. We cannot precisely define needs, but each level of satisfaction is bound to produce greater longings and needs which can be satisfied with the ever expanding technology. We can determine what type of food production is possible. What agrarian techniques. In which places Which materials to produce. In which localities. Under capitalism production is for profit and not for use.

The working class is called upon to refashion an economic system which has served its purpose and now can produce only crises and war; a class which has shown that it can learn and take action to meet its needs. Our goal is not only to explain the world, but to change it so that it may better serve the needs of the working people. We have always said that the future belongs to socialism, even though in recent years that seems a dim prospect. The very word “socialism” had almost dropped out of the political vocabulary, so complete there appeared an abandonment of the concept but now there is an increasing positive recognition given the word. The threat of global warming tied up with our current social system is forcing people to wonder if there is not some way out. That they now begin to consider the ideas of those people who call themselves socialists. There are clear signs of a re-awakening is the discussions. 

The principal task of the Socialist Party is to try to restore the credibility of socialism in the consciousness of millions of men and women. We are not the evangelists of a new revelation. Our society if organised properly can give a dignified life to everyone. None of this is dogmatic or utopian. Priority must be given to solidarity and cooperation. The practice of socialists must be totally consistent with their principles. We must not justify any alienating or oppressive practices whatsoever. We must struggle against all conditions in which human beings are alienated and humiliated. If our practice is consistent socialism will once again become a political force that will be invincible. We do not believe in the permanence of capitalism. We are dedicated to the task of promoting the liberating workers' revolution. We aim to help build – and we invite you to join us in building – a mass socialist party, an honest party that tells the truth to the workers, a party united with workers in all lands in one army for one idea, one program, one goal – Socialism. There is no middle road. The whole history of humanity shows that there is another road – the road which the oppressed in every society sooner or later take, the road not backward but forward – the road of resistance against and the overthrow of the capitalist oppressors, the only road to real freedom.