Freedom will not be given to us.

Everywhere people are now waking up to the oppression and exploitation which is a daily fact of their lives. The lies of the ruling class about “prosperity” are being further exposed more and more everyday. There is prosperity – but it is for a handful of rich capitalists – the conditions of the working people are getting worse and worse. Austerity casts all the burden on the workers – wages stay the same, but profits continue to rise. The source of all these conditions and injustices is capitalism. 

This system of capitalism is set up with one thing in mind – to make the most profits possible for the handful of people who own the big banks and corporations. It is the system under which we, and our parents and grandparents before us, have done all the work. We mine the mines, build the buildings, manufacture all the products: and then get just enough to live on – if we fight hard enough for it! On the other hand the small capitalist class builds up huge fortunes off of our labour and do no work themselves, except running all around the world spending the money that we made for them. The Socialist Party stands for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system. 

Rising out of conditions that have long become unsupportable and the oppressive conditions under which the vast majority of wage workers must live is forcing the members of that class to seek a solution. It is said that our ideas are impractical, from the standpoint of old institutions, interests and their beneficiaries, that is true. There can be no common interests between those who own the tools, the machines, factories, mines, mills and land, with the workers who do all of the producing. One class does all the work, produces all, suffers all the hardships necessary to accomplish the task. The other class owns, but does not know, nor cares to know, how to produce wealth. One class works long hours under conditions generally and necessarily established by and suitable to the masters of industry, receives low wages, so that there may be high dividends and profits for the masters. For it must be borne in mind longer hours mean greater wealth produced, low wages mean greater profits for the capitalists. Shorter hours mean less production by each worker or group of workers, therefore the expense to the masters is greater to produce a certain amount of wealth. High wages, shorter hours, better shop conditions that will protect life and limb are objected to by the capitalist for a thousand and one “reasons,” but really because it all means greater cost—thus less dividends. Who can be so foolish as to talk of peace between these two classes?

The Socialist party is the only party which honestly represents the working class. The Socialist Party being the political expression of the rising working class stands for the absolute overthrow of the existing capitalist system and for the reorganisation of society into an industrial and social democracy. We are not asking you to give your votes to ourselves but only that you its policies, and satisfy yourselves as to what its principles are, what it stands for, and what it expects to accomplish. This will mean an end to the private ownership of the means of life; it will mean an end to wage slavery; it will mean an end to the army of the unemployed and it will mean an end to poverty. It will mean the beginning of a new era and the dawn of happier days. It will mean that this earth is for those who inhabit it and wealth for those who produce it. It will mean society organized upon a co-operative basis, collectively owning the sources of wealth and the means of production, and producing wealth to satisfy human wants and not to gorge a privileged few. The Socialist Party, the first and only international party is the party of the dispossessed and the impoverished. It is the party of emancipation. It stands for a world-wide democracy, for the freedom of every man, woman and child, and for all mankind.

 The Socialist Party is the only party which stands unequivocally for the working class on the political field. Its object is to overthrow the capitalist system of private ownership, abolish wage slavery and achieve the freedom of the whole working class and, in fact, of all humanity.

Low-quality jobs

Analysis by The Health Foundation found that 36 per cent of employees in Scotland - the equivalent of 830,000 workers - were engaged in jobs with perceived negative aspects such as low levels of autonomy, well-being, and security - as well as low pay.

The think-tank said such jobs were more likely to cause stress and other factors linked to poor health.

Trade unions and labour force experts have warned that increasing numbers of workers are relying upon precarious roles, with few of the benefits offered to those in permanent staff positions.

https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/more-than-a-third-of-scots-working-in-low-quality-jobs-1-5085801

Free Stuff

In Scotland there is free prescriptions for medicines,  we have nation-wide free travel on the buses for the over-60s. The Scottish Parliament has now passed legislation that makes  tampons and sanitary pads freely available at designated public places such as community centres, youth clubs and pharmacies.

Why do we stop there? Why not extend free access to all necessary goods and services?

The problem of production — of how to produce enough for everybody — has been solved. Mankind’s long battle to conquer scarcity has been won. Potential abundance is a reality. The task is to make abundance itself a reality.

A society of abundance is not an extension of today’s throwaway consumerism, with its enormous waste of resources. It does not mean people will acquire more and more useless and wasteful gadgets. It simply means that people’s material needs, both as individuals and as a community, will be fully satisfied in a rational way.

Contrary to what is popularly believed people are not inherently greedy; human needs are not limitless. From a material point of view, human beings need a certain amount and variety of food, clothing and shelter; what this is in individual cases can soon be discovered by the individual himself — and would be if there were free access to consumer goods and services. 

But, it may be objected, with free access wouldn’t people take more than they needed? But why should they if they can be certain (as they would, be given the productive power of modern industry and the common ownership of the means of production) that there would always be enough to go round? When all consumer goods and services are freely available people could be expected to take only as much food, clothing etc. as they felt they needed. To take any more would be abnormal and pointless.

Reforms cannot fix capitalism

Reform means a change from within. Reform skims the surface, and limits itself to external tinkering. Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. The Socialist Party is not reformers; we are revolutionists when the instruments of production shall be owned no longer by the minority, but shall be restored as  common wealth. No longer shall people be in poverty nor classes, class distinctions and class rule shall, as they necessarily must, have vanished. By revolutionary socialism we do not mean an appeal to arms. We mean by revolutionary socialism the capture of the political power by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class. This is the essence of revolutionary socialism. Whoever holds this position is a socialist. On the other hand, those who thinks we are to get socialism through any of the old political parties, that person is not a socialist at all.

Our system of production is in the nature of an orchestra. No one man, no one town, no one state, can be said any longer to be independent of the other, every individual therein, is dependent and interdependent upon all the others. The nature of the machinery of production; the subdivision of labour, which aids cooperation and which cooperation fosters, and which is necessary to the production that civilisation requires, compel a harmonious working together of all departments of labour, and thence compel the establishment of a central directing authority, of an orchestral director, so to speak, of the orchestra of the cooperative commonwealth. Today, production is left to anarchy, and only tyranny is organised.

Many organisations and movements have clamoured for the allegiance of the workers during the twentieth century, all claiming some panacea, some new project which would, at long last, make capitalism palatable. The Socialist Party’s aim is for a practical — and ecologically viable — alternative to the market and the state, a new way of living in which we can all give according to our abilities, and take according to our needs. The means to achieve this must be in harmony with the end itself: democratic, peaceful and without leaders trying to run society on our behalf. Not many have heard of us; fewer will know what we stand for.

The fact is present-day society cannot be run in the interest of the great majority. It does not matter what government we choose, they must dance to the tune of capitalism. The problems they grapple with are self-evidently endemic to the system itself. 

Present-day society is massively wasteful and inherently destructive — not just of our environment and resources but of our hopes and aspirations. It is time to organise for a real alternative. Socialism is about improving all aspects of human life. The task of the Socialist Party today is to make more socialists, by reasoned argument and democratic persuasion.

The desire for socialism as a just social system runs deep among workers. The Socialist Party teach that the wage workers and their employers have nothing whatever in common and that there is no community of interest between them. A state of class war is the natural relation between the wage earners and the employers and workers would never be satisfied with the wages they get, but should strike at all opportune times in order to secure whatever wages he can extract from his employer. “Right” and “wrong” are meaningless terms in the wage earner’s war for higher wages. This class war is unremitting and bitter, to be regarded only as a temporary expedient until workers shall eventually, by revolution take over all wealth assumed. The goal of socialism is freedom from hunger and poverty, freedom from war, from meaningless toil, from exploitation, from racial and sexual oppression, freedom to live without the state – these are the real freedom we strive for.

We are opponents of the state. The state is a weapon of class war. The state by its very nature is an instrument of domination and oppression – a means by which one section of the population forcibly holds down another. States cannot be other than institutions of violence. This applies to the so-called workers’ state just as it does to the capitalist state. The capitalist state is an instrument for maintaining the exploitation of the many by the few. The workers’ state similarly is an instrument of the majority for suppressing the minority of exploiters. In the socialist society of the future the state will wither away and marking the disappearance of class society.

Power to the people

There is no copyright on the term socialist and it is used by all sorts of people in all sorts of confused ways. The differences is that we contend that socialism can only logically and scientifically mean one thing

The capitalist class is only one of the two classes of capitalist society. The other is the working class. These two classes have no interests in common so that any party which takes on the task of governing is inevitably brought into conflict with the working class. The class struggle is a social phenomenon which cannot be abolished by mere pronouncement or by signing scraps of paper. It has its roots in the structure of society. Capitalism is based on the monopoly over the means of production by a minority, the capitalist class. As a result the working class are forced to work for this class.

And there is a struggle over the division of the product of labour. The share of the capitalist (profit, rent, interest) can only be increased at the expense of the share of the worker (wages) and vice versa. But this is not just a price struggle which can be settled by bargaining; it is a class struggle which can only be finally ended by the expropriation of the capitalist class.

This struggle takes place whether it is recognised for what it is or not. The trade unions in Britain, though to a certain limited extent an expression of this struggle, have never recognised this. They have regarded the struggle between employers and workers as a mere price struggle. They have sometimes acted on the assumption that there is a community of interests between employers and workers. Now trade unions have become an accepted part of the capitalist order in Britain. As long as the membership of the trade unions are not class-conscious, it can hardly be expected that the unions themselves would act on the principle of the class struggle. Although the trade unions are not all they might be as working class organisations, this does not detract one bit from the importance of trade unionism, of working class organisation on the economic field.

Ever since socialists first appeared and made the case for abolishing capitalism, they have had to contend with opponents voicing variations on the common theme of retaining that system. All of these reformers agree with each other in rejecting the Socialist argument that we can and should have a social system which will have no place for prices, wages, profits etc. They say that the human race cannot do without these things, and in any event has no need to waste time trying to do so because there is nothing wrong with them in principle, only with the way they are used. So at each general election we start a new round of schemes supposed to rid us of worries about prices, wages, strikes, monopolies and so on. And each succeeding election finds things just the same except that the government and opposition may have changed places.

The Socialist Party contends that the only way society will be transformed is for there to be a majority of workers who understand and want socialism. These workers must take away power from the capitalist minority. Just as workers give social power to the master class through the ballot box, so the ballot box can be used to show that a majority rejects capitalism and those who seek to run it. The ballot box will only be one part of the revolutionary process, the far greater part being the development of majority class consciousness and the building of an active movement by the revolutionary class. Unless political power is taken from the minority it will be used against the majority.

Of course, the precise details of the revolutionary change will differ from country to country depending on the political conditions (where legal ballots do not exist or cannot be trusted the workers must create our own) and it will also differ in accordance with different creative ideas about what needs to be done before the establishment of socialism which will emerge as the socialist movement grows. In this sense it is quite right to say that the millions of men and women who will be the architects of the new world. will decide the exact means by which the revolution is to occur. However, the revolutionary process cannot avoid democratic political action and still produce socialism. Without democratic action there will be no democratic society: without political action the state will be used to crush a non-political "socialist" movement. 

The Socialist Party cannot conceive of a way in which a socialist system of society will be established except by democratic means.

The Revolution – Why we need it

Capitalist society does and can only exist to the detriment, degradation, and demoralisation of the working-class. The capitalist-class has its representatives in the Government, local and national, and uses the legislative and administrative boards as pliant tools for the protection and promotion of its class interests, for the maintenance and extension of class domination, and for the further robbery and enslavement of the working-class. If, then, this is the economic function and political role of the capitalist class, what have the workers to expect from the present-day rulers of society ?

The basis of a socialist party in any country must, therefore, be a recognition of the fact that the material interests of the working class are in entire opposition to those of the employing class, that is, the recognition of the class war. Any party which declares that no class war exists rules itself, by virtue of that declaration, out of order as a socialist party. It is, necessary, therefore, in forming and organising a socialist party to have a clearly defined class war basis, and in every action of the party to always keep the class-conscious character of the party clearly to the front. Any action tending to obscure this position, any position keeping the class struggle in the background, is a virtual betrayal of socialist principles, serving only to confuse the issues in the minds of the workers and to make it more difficult for them to understand their class position and the reasons for it, and to see the road which must be followed if they are to achieve their emancipation — serving only, in brief, to retard the development of their class consciousness.

Any alliance, either permanent or temporary, with a party which does not recognise the class war is therefore out of the question. For does not every such alliance, whether openly avowed or tacitly understood, make less clear the class opposition which exists between the various political parties? How can we claim to be essentially distinct and, in fact, diametrically opposed to all other political parties, if we can find sufficient common objects to make possible any common ground of working? We think that the teaching of our principles is hindered by every such concession to the anti-class war parties, and is, therefore, opposed to the true interests of socialism.

We have, therefore, to recognise all the time that it is only possible to secure any real benefit for the people when the people themselves become class conscious, when behind the socialists in Parliament and on other bodies there stands a solid phalanx of men and women clear in their knowledge of socialism and clear in their knowledge that the only way to secure the socialist commonwealth of the future is to depend only upon the efforts of themselves and those who have the same class conscious opinions. Therefore we have no palliative programme. The only palliative we shall ever secure is the socialist society of the future gained by fighting uncompromisingly at all times and in every season.

Those who think in directing the attention of the working-class to the political representatives of the master-class for relief from the misery which is crushing them, in holding out to them the prospect or possibility of amelioration through the good grace of the ruling faction, are incurring a serious responsibility. Promising the working-class something that must inevitably fail is the fruitful source of that apathy and indifference in which the workers are sunk to-day; telling the workers they have gained victory when it is only a victory for the capitalist-class, entrenches ignorance and calling upon the capitalist governments to undermine their own position, which must be the case if any measure of material value to the working-class is put into operation, creates that pessimism in the minds of the workers that you so much deplore.

The Socialist Party exists to teach the workers their true position in society, and to create the political weapon whereby alone that position can be altered. The mission of the Socialist Party is to show the workers that capitalism lives on their wretchedness and prostitution, and that, if their emancipation is to be accomplished, they must adopt a political attitude necessarily hostile to all other political parties. Outside the Socialist Party, the party of socialism, the party of the working-class, all other political parties uphold and safeguard the interests of the capitalist-class and the continuance of the wage system which is responsible for not only the unemployed but the other evils that afflict society. 

The Socialist Party is the political expression of the material interests of the working-class for whom there can be only one policy and one programme, that is the control through public ownership of the tools and machinery for producing the necessaries and comforts of life, to be achieved by the political action of the working-class, cognisant of the causes of its suffering and wretchedness and conscious of its material interest and historic mission.

What will socialism be like?

Socialism will be a society which will work on majority consent, in the interests of the majority. It will have a universal, human unity in its objects and its achievements. Minority class interests will not exist and neither will the mess of deceits and cynicism which they entail. We can change things; as soon as the society of common ownership and free access arrives. Abolish money? “That’s impossible.” Is it? Surely all we need to produce wealth are people who are prepared to work and raw materials from nature.

We learn at an early age that money plays an important role in our lives. Even the toddler knows that coins must be handed over the counter before he can have an ice-cream. Later we find that money, or the lack of it, will dictate the standard of our living accommodation and level of education; it will even affect our medical treatment. It is useless to enter the supermarket with an empty purse, though on its shelves are displayed the very items we most urgently need; these have not been primarily produced as useful articles but as commodities to be sold at a profit. Access to them is obtained only by way of the special commodity in which the value of all others is expressed — money.

Money is familiar as a means of payment and exchange, but in capitalist society it is the medium by which the necessities of life are rationed to the great majority of people so that they must retain their position as wage workers. Conversely it is also the medium through which the owning class pockets surplus value.

Money is useful wherever wealth is exchanged. Exchange is a simple word whose meaning should be clear —when things are exchanged one is given in return for the other—but it is commonly confused with distribution. When things are distributed they are not exchanged; they are merely being taken from one place to another. The work involved in this is strictly speaking part of the process of producing wealth. Money, then, does not distribute wealth. Wealth is distributed by men loading and driving lorries or trains or ships or planes.

Perhaps this confusion arises because the word “Distribution” means sharing-out as well as dispersing and so fits in well with the mistaken view that money is a voucher entitling a person to such-and-such a share of the wealth that has been produced.

Historically, the most common kind of exchange has been that of equivalents and this is the only kind that need concern us now. So much wheat would be given in return for so many sheep or so many pots in return for so much cloth. This process of barter is cumbersome and becomes impractical when exchange grows to any extent. At this stage the need is felt for something that can be exchanged for anything else — money, for that is what money is, an item of wealth that can be exchanged for any and every other item of wealth. We can now see why money is itself, and must be, wealth. For, with the exchange of things of equal value, nobody is going to give his wheat or sheep or pots or cloth in return for something that is not worth the same.

Exchange implies something else, too. It implies that the wealth to be exchanged is owned by different people. After all, if one person or one community owned all the wheat as well as all the sheep, the question of exchanging them just would not arise. Exchange presupposes the private ownership of wealth.

This is why the establishment of the common ownership of the means of production and distribution will mean the end of exchange and so the disappearance of money. All the wealth that is produced, as well as the means and instruments for producing and distributing it, will belong to the whole community so that the problem will be simply to distribute it to where it is needed. This is just a question of organisation. When the wealth has reached the stores then people can freely take of it what they need. This — free access — is our alternative to money.

If we are interested in efficiency (as we are) there is something which is of top priority. If we want a society where wealth can move around the world freely, where it can be produced as human beings need it, we must think about a system which excludes money. The capitalist social system hinders distribution and restricts production. Its priority is not efficiency but profit for a minority. It must be swept away and replaced by socialism, the world of free production and access.

How then do we get money?

The privileged minority who owns the means for production and distribution — the land, factories, communications, etc. — get money from rent, interest and profit. They do not need to work.

The vast majority of people, about 90 per cent, possess only their ability to work The members of this working class must sell that ability, their labour power, to obtain money in the form of wages. Their labour is the source of all wealth yet access to the products of that labour is rationed by the size of their pay packets.

Though many look with envy at the better social conditions of higher paid workers the rights of the truly wealthy, the owning class, are seldom questioned.

“And why should they be?” Argues the capitalist. “I supply the machinery and raw materials and provide jobs for workers. The profits are justly mine and they get their share in wages".

But what are wages? Labour power is itself a commodity, bought and sold in the manner of all other commodities, and wages are its price.

Also in common with other commodities the value of labour power is determined by the average socially necessary labour time needed in production. Wages will be generally sufficient to keep a worker, and his family, at a standard demanded by prevailing social conditions. Workers whose labour is expensive to replace and maintain will command higher wages than those paid to the unskilled labourer.

Just as the working class is dependent on wages so the capitalist cannot make a profit without the employment of workers. When the capitalist buys labour power he gets a bargain, for this commodity has the unique capacity to create a value greater than its own.

Workers sell their mental and physical energies to an employer in return for wages. Then, for specified amounts of time, they work in his factory, operating his machinery on his raw materials. Over a given period the amount realised on the sale of the finished commodities will be greater than the cost of wages even after taking into account the cost of the raw materials and machinery. It is only labour power that can actually expand value. Only part of the workers’ labour time is needed to create a value equivalent to their wages; over the remaining time their unpaid labour is creating surplus value to be appropriated by the employer.

From this surplus value, now in the form of money capital, the capitalist can buy new machinery and expand his labour force so that an increased amount of surplus value can be created. However, expansion in the production of any commodity will only continue while market conditions are favourable. When sales fail to realise sufficient profit there will be a cut back in production, even if the commodity is a food crop and people go hungry.

Modern capitalism is a complex system and every individual capitalist may not always make a profit; but it is through their ownership of the means for production as a class that they are able to appropriate the wealth produced by the working class.

Every worker as an individual does not produce surplus value, it is in fact a social process. Workers co-operate to perform all of the tasks necessary to the running of capitalism, and it is as a class that they produce all wealth.

The capitalist mode of production has played a vital role in man’s social evolution. From it has come the ability to mass produce but paradoxically the profit motive prevents the realisation of production in abundance.

Is capitalism, as many would have it, the best of all possible worlds? Fortunately the answer is an emphatic No! There is a basic contradiction between social production and private ownership of the means for production.

When the working class understands its position in society it can, by way of the ballot box, perform the task of abolishing private property and take control of the means for production on behalf of all mankind. In other words Socialism will be established as soon as the vast majority of people want it.

With the means for production owned in common by the whole community production will be for use, not sale at a profit, with human needs the only criteria as to what is useful. With production geared to human needs the wasteful elements of capitalism such as advertising, built-in obsolescence and machinery for war will disappear.

Men will work in harmony as free individuals to produce all of the goods and services required by society and will partake of them according to their needs.

When all that is on and around the earth is owned in common by all of its inhabitants; when commodity production has given way to the production of articles for their usefulness and buying and selling is no more, the only possible part that money can play will be as a museum relic.