Reasons to vote for the Socialist Party

Why does the Socialist Party contest elections when it receives poor results?

 Firstly, because to confront and defeat the arguments of the pernicious apologists for the profit system at election time has considerable propaganda value. 

Secondly, because socialists are democrats. No, not the defenders of that perverse "democracy’ which requires the working class to follow like sheep their political leaders. We are democrats in that we stand for a new system which will not be characterised by the divisions of class, sex, age or race. Only when a conscious majority want and understand socialism will the new social order be created. The ballot box is a means of registering that consciousness. 

And thirdly, because election campaigns help to organise workers in a particular area. 

You cannot be on two sides at once. You either want, work and vote for socialism alone, or you want capitalism one form or another. Vote Labour, LibDems, Tory, or any of the left-wing groups and you will get capitalism. So instead of wasting your time and energy tampering about with the system, go straight to the root cause of nearly every problem you can think of capitalism itself and concentrate solely on its global abolition and replacement with socialism. It is class war and we are the only socialist party in this country, no matter what others may call themselves. 

We are in total opposition to all other parties because not a single one of them can ever abolish this system, no matter what they claim. Ours is not a war of bombs, bullets, street-fighting or any form of mindless violence, but a war in which our weapons are irrefutable facts. 

We expose all who deal in myth, illusion, ignorance and deceit. No problem is fully solved under capitalism by the time one is half-solved another presents itself, and by the time this one is half dealt with the original is festering again. Poverty, war, hunger, homelessness, hardship, monotony. So long as capitalism lasts so will these.

nce the majority understand and want socialism, have purposefully organised within the socialist movement, and have placed in Parliament—and its equivalent in other countries—democratically elected delegates, then there will be absolutely no problem. It will be as simple and straightforward as that. For how could a minority capitalist force stand the remotest chance against the socialist majority? Who would do their fighting for them? This is why we reject political violence, not on pacifist grounds but because it is completely unnecessary, damaging and futile. The act of voting is the only way, since this is how affairs in the new society will be conducted. Forget all about ends justifying means; power obtained by violence can only be maintained by violence and force. The truth is that the means condition the end.

The Socialist Party totally reject all concepts of leadership and why we are one hundred per cent a democratic organisation, where each has an equal right to contribute opinions. Only knowledge and understanding coupled with conscious, democratic political commitment by the large majority can possibly bring world socialism about. Once the majority of the working class—which, remember, means everyone who works for a living—realises its own position and acts accordingly, then it will mean the freedom of everyone whether black, white, yellow, man, woman and child. Simply because it is the wage-slave class — the class you and we belong to — who make up the vast majority of the world’s population.

So there you have it—clear, straight and uncompromising. You agree that socialism is a highly desirable proposition. You agree that it is a straight choice. You agree that this new world can only come about when a majority understand and want it. Now make your choice. Join us and help to bring a sane and harmonious society all the closer. Don’t wait for others to do it—they may be waiting for you.

No Comment Needed.

The Federal government is considering making September 30 a Federal holiday to commemorate the dark history of residential schools. To quote a spokesman for Heritage Minister, Steven Guilbeault,''We need to recognize the harm residential schools have done to Indigenous peoples and want to make Sept.30 the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honour the survivors of residential schools.'' In other words the government wish to apologize to native Canadian's for their ancestors coming to Canada, murdering them, stealing their land, stealing their livelihood, stealing their children and putting them in schools to be brainwashed into believing capitalism is the best of all worlds. No comment needed.
S.P.C. Members.

Again Advances In Technology Adversely Affect The Working Class

 Barrymore Furniture Company of Toronto have filed for bankruptcy leaving a throng of angry unpaid workers demanding severance pay and benefits, some as much as $50,000. Roopchand Doon of the United Steelworkers Union, which represents the 48 unionized former employees, said they only received one day’s notice that the company would shut down, and that they were informed they would not receive termination, severance and benefit payments. The company had been in existence since 1919 and was one of Canada's leading furniture makers, but like Ridpath’s and De Boer's suffered from online buying and international retailers selling much cheaper products, many of them made overseas. Again advances in technology adversely affect the working class, when in a sane society they would lead to everyone’s benefit.
S.P.C. Members.

The Socialist Party - No Compromise, No Concessions, No Conciliation

The Socialist Party comes before you as a political organisation advocating the principles of world socialism. We seek a change in the basis of Society which would destroy the distinctions of class and nationalities. The profit system is maintained by competition, not only between the master and working classes, but there is always rivalry among the workers for bare subsistence, and among their masters, the employers for the share of the profit wrung out of the workers. Lastly, there is competition always, and often open war, among nations for their share of the world-market.

Pity for the poor, protesting for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of the disparities in wealth is not socialism.

 The Socialist Party is the party of wage-slave abolitionists. We either stand up like men and women or crawl on our bellies. There can be no compromise. Let us use our brains and muscle and let us have self-respect and courage in ourselves.

Another Crazy Situation.

 Ontario's Ford government have proposed increasing logging on government owned lands from 15 million cubic metres to 30 million by 2030. Resources Minister John Yakabuski said it will revitalize the industry and create jobs. Environmental groups, including the David Suzuki Foundation, Ontario Nature and the Wildlands League oppose the plan because it will threaten already endangered species like the Boreal Caribou. So there it is: another crazy situation which is the norm for capitalism; either would-be loggers won’t get jobs or the environment will suffer. At the time of writing we don’t know how it will play out, but we can be sure it won't be good.
S.P.C.Members.

You Never Know Who Is Watching You.

Enforcement plan to make drivers slow down in school zones and community safety zones. Certainly any reasonable person would approve of this, but, but, but, buddy, lets not lose sight of the fact that more and more methods of surveillance are becoming prevalent; in U.K. there are cameras on nearly every street corner. These things always start out in a way most people will find acceptable, such as the above. It’s the old proverb of the journey of a thousand miles starting out with a single step and a case of the capitalist class keeping their eyes on us in case we get naughty, like attempting to overthrow their atrocious system -- shades of Orwell's 1984. This does not mean socialists want to do away with sensible safety laws, but we do try to see where all this stuff is heading and want to see the end of a system that needs so much surveillance.

S.C.P. Members.

Scottish Independence : Tartan Delusions

On the 31January the blue Euro-banner was hauled down at Westminster and the Union flag raised in its stead. In Edinburgh, though, the self-awarded gold stars flag was pointedly left fluttering in place next to the saltire.

The SNP are making a none too subtle point. The antidote to the referendum they don’t like is to be… another referendum. It would seem the political ‘logic’ is that the best way to counter leaving a union is to leave a union.

It is somewhat ironic that the clash between Holyrood and Westminster stems from a single shared source, nationalism, be it competing nationalisms. The cause is perceived sovereignty, as if Scotland, or England, or Britain can stand alone, or at least break away from a power portrayed as inhibiting its freedom.

However, what would the SNP do in short order should they achieve independence? Give it up to the EU of course. Similarly, should Britain shake off the last vestiges of EU influence, then treaties will be sought and signed with such as the USA.

Not only will the USA want untrammelled access to the NHS for its big pharma, for example, there will be a demand for any arrangements to be subject to America’s legal system. For the USA substitute any other major trading nation/bloc and something similar will apply.

This is what ‘independence’ means in a global capitalist world. Significant change cannot be achieved by a binary vote in a referendum. At best there is some reordering of the arrangements, but essentially, adjustments made, capitalism continues unhindered other than by its own contradictions.

The SNP has previously stated its intention of retaining the monarch as their country’s head of state, continuing the use of sterling and joining NATO. Presumably unaware of any contradiction, they also want to be rid of the Trident submarine bases.

Do they really think that if capitalism degenerates to the point where international warfare results in the use of nuclear weapons, the removal of Trident bases will somehow insulate Scotland from the consequences?

Should the SNP decide the monarch was not to be their head of state, then a president or some such would fulfil that function. Has being a republic lessened the grip of capitalism, with its extremes of war, inequality and crises, on the USA?

If Scotland was denied the use of sterling presumably that would mean embracing the euro with all its financial hazards and, more importantly, subservience to, not independence from, the European Union. If sterling is retained, then economic policy would, ultimately, continue to be determined in London.

The formation of Britain enabled the industrial revolution to create a dynamic economy in which Scots, Welsh and English played full parts. This also led to the formation of the working class with interests transcending those of constituent regional and national parts. Workers in Scotland faced the same exploitative capitalism as they did in England and Wales and expressed their voice through their own organisations, the trade unions.

And nothing has changed. Workers on any side of a border, wherever it is drawn, all face the same fundamental problem, capitalism. To exist, capitalism must exploit workers to make profit. Painting your face blue with crossed white stripes alters this not one iota.

Whatever the outcome of another referendum the people of Scotland will continue to live under a parliamentary system designed to preserve the interests of capitalism. If they have opted for ‘independence’ they will find ‘sovereignty’ surrendered to the EU.

The parliamentary system has evolved to serve the interests of capitalism, not democracy. It does not matter if a parliament is situated in London or Edinburgh, nor if its benches are upholstered in tartan and populated by nationalist MSPs, it will remain subservient to the needs and preservation of capitalism.

Referendums are designed to give apparently simple solutions to complex problems, they are the chosen way of despots and demagogues attempting to garner some semblance of popular support of their self-serving programmes.

The ballot box can indeed be part of the response of the working class to taking economic and political power away from the capitalist class. But this will have to be just one element of a much wider movement in which the working class consciously acts for itself.

No referendum can solve problems for the working class, not in Scotland, not in Britain via Brexit (or re-joining the EU at some point), not anywhere. There is no Tartan alternative to socialism.

DAVE ALTON

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020/2020s/no-1387-march-2020/scottish-independence-tartan-delusions/

Socialist Standard

        March-2020 PDF

• Editorial: Towards a Disunited Kingdom
• Pathfinders: Stories from the city
• Letters: Islands of socialism?
• Cooking the Books I: Same difference
• Wood For the Trees: The Art of Cynicism
• Material World: Africa’s food potential
• The Irish Election: Sinn Fein Resurgence
• Learning machines: Algorithmic Dreams
• The LTV: A Bad Criticism of Marx’s Labour Theory of Value
• Resource War: Oil, Gas and Aphrodite
• Scottish Independence : Tartan Delusions
• A letter to Greta
• Cooking the Books II: Capitalism is irredeemable
• Proper Gander: All’s Whale That Ends Well?
• Reviews
• 50 Years Ago: The mad world of capitalism
• Meetings
• Rear View
• Free Lunch

The Socialist Party and the Socialist Revolution

The Socialist Party’s goal is socialist revolution – the abolition of capitalist private property, the abolition of all exploitation of man by man, the common ownership of the means of production and their planned use for the benefit of the whole of society, leading to abundance and universal brotherhood.

 The Socialist Party does not put forward this goal as a mere Utopian vision of what would ideally make people happy, but as a practical attainment made necessary by the actual conditions of modern society because only within a socialist economy can the contradictions of modern capitalist society be solved and the great modern forces of production be fully utilised. The aim of socialism is profoundly in accord with the sentiment for democracy and liberty – is, indeed, the only aim in which this sentiment can find fulfilment. The word ‘socialism’ is more than the name merely for a new system of economic relationship. 

Socialism means a society without class antagonisms, in which the people themselves control their means of life and use them for their own happiness.

 Socialism is not inevitable. What has been termed its ‘inevitability’ consists in this, that only through socialism can human progress continue. But there is not and cannot be any absolute deterministic inevitability in human affairs, since man makes his own history and chooses what to do. The meaning of scientific socialism is not that it tells us that socialism will come regardless, but that it explains to us where we stand, what course lies open to us, what is the road to choose. Ideas cannot be produced to order; they must achieve their own growth in the minds and hearts of men. Fostered and allowed to grow, they will truly and adequately express the experiences and aspirations of the people, the arguments, conflicts, sentiments and conclusions of people on the move for a better way of life.

Explaining Surplus Value and Exploitation

Socialism is a society in which all the members of the community collectively and democratically determine their way of living. In order to do so, they must control the use to which technology and resources  – the means of production – are put. 

Every capitalist competes with every other one for a market. When they sell similar goods, their competition is obvious. Even when they sell altogether different goods, like TV sets and houses, they still compete for the limited wage-packet of the worker. If one capitalist does not compete, he is lost. Others will acquire his buyers.

Competition means under-selling and price-cutting on the one hand, and on the others, advertising wars  Whoever can undersell or spend more money on advertising is sure to win and knock the others out of the running. In other words, the bigger the amount of capital under your control, the bigger it is going to become. Only the very big capitalists can afford the techniques of mass production. Only the big ones can buy raw materials in bulk.

To become big the capitalist must first squeeze out his weaker competitors and add their capital to his – centralization of capital – or make as much profit as possible from his current sales and reinvest it – accumulation of capital. The first method is of no direct interest to the worker as it matters very little who the boss is. If the capitalists want to fight things out amongst themselves, it is their business. It is of little interest for another reason: it adds nothing to the productive powers of society; the national wealth does not grow as a result of it. In fact all it leads to is the concentration of the same amount of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

We are interested mainly in the second form of capitalist growth: the accumulation of capital. It is accumulation which has made capitalist society the dominant form of society in the world. This is what affects the worker most directly. How do capitalist firms accumulate? Where does the money which they reinvest come from?

The source of accumulation – surplus value

In order to produce commodities for the market, every capitalist must buy other commodities which he uses in production. The things he buys are mainly: machines, raw materials or semi-finished goods, and labour-power. Machines, raw materials or semi-finished goods, although an item of expenditure on the part of one capitalist, are commodities sold by other capitalists and appear as part of their incomes. Those capitalists also spend money on machines, raw materials or semi-finished goods and labour-power, the money spent on machines, raw materials and semi-finished goods being the income of yet another group of capitalists who spend money on... and so on indefinitely. Whenever one capitalist spends money on machines, etc., that money is part of the income of other capitalists who then hand it over to yet other capitalists for machines, etc. If all the capitalists belonged to one great trust these transactions would not take place and the only buying and selling that there would be is the buying of labour-power by the capitalists and the selling of it by the workers and technicians in exchange for wages and salaries. Taken all in all, the capitalist class (not the individual capitalist) has only one expense – buying labour-power. Whatever remains to that class after its purchase of labour-power is profit (surplus value).

That part of the capitalist’s expenditure which is spent on machines, raw materials and unfinished goods goes the rounds from one capitalist to another in a perpetual circle – this is the social wealth that has already been created. If the productive forces of capitalism were to remain static and not increase, this expenditure would appear like a constant, fixed fund thrown from hand to hand in an endless relay race of production, each capitalist handing on to the next the exact amount required to renew his stock of machines and raw materials. No profit would be made on such sales as each capitalist would swap exactly that amount of machines, etc., for an equivalent amount, and, when all the exchanges were done with, everyone would be where he started.

There is, however, one item of expenditure which makes all the difference, namely, wages and salaries – the expenditure on labour-power. This expenditure is the only one which is not a transfer of goods already produced from one capitalist to another. It is the only item of expenditure which is productive in the dual sense of producing the wealth of society and in the sense of producing profits for the capitalist. Labour alone produces wealth.

The capitalist controls the physical means of production; the workers control nothing but themselves, the capacity to work. They are driven to work, to sell their labour–power to the capitalist, in order to keep themselves and their families. When they sell, they demand a ‘living wage’ for their labour-power, and, if unions are strong and there is not much unemployment, they usually get it. Of course there are exceptions, but by and large, for the working class as whole, this is true.

If the worker produced exactly that amount of products which he could buy for his or her weekly wage plus what would replace the raw materials and machinery used up in its production, the capitalist would clearly not make a profit. Profit can only be made when the workers produce more than their wage bill and the depreciation of machinery and the depletion of stocks of raw materials put together, i.e. when they produce surplus value, value over and above the wages necessary to maintain themselves and their families.

Adapted from here

https://www.marxists.org/archive/kidron/works/1958/socialism/5712-socialism.html

The need for revolution

The world about us is falling to pieces. 

The younger generation understand that the environment is collapsing, but they do not know what to do about it.
 
Marx and Engels defined socialism as the rule of working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation is not socialism but state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. Nor is the “Welfare State” socialist but another form of state capitalism. For sure, an improvement on capitalism with no welfare, just as a 40-hour week is an improvement on a 60-hour week. But it is still not socialism. If we want a class-free society, we have to create a new model of economics.

The greatest problem awaiting solution in the world to-day is the existence of extreme poverty side by side with extreme wealth. The greater the grip capitalism has, the more intense is the poverty of the many and the more marked are the riches of the few. How comes it that the men and women who till the soil, who dig the mine, who runs the machines, who build the factories and the houses, who create the whole of the wealth, receive barely sufficient to maintain themselves and their families yet those who do not get involved in production – the employing class – obtain more than is enough to satisfy their every comfort, and luxury? To every observer it is obvious that the life of the workers is one of penury and of misery. 

The only saleable commodity they possess  – their power of working – they are compelled to take to the labour market and sell for a subsistence wage. In return for this wage, they create value far in excess of the value paid them as wages. The difference between these two values is taken by the employing class, and constitutes the source of profit, interest, and rent. These three forms of exploitation are the result of the unpaid labour of the working-class. So long as the capitalist system of society it will not be possible for the workers to do little more than slightly modify their condition, and their power in this direction is becoming more and more limited by employers intent to defeat the working class. 

The Socialist Party is convinced that by laying down a clearly defined body of principles in accord with essential economic truths, and by consistently advocating them, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, but marching uncompromisingly on toward their goal, they will ultimately gain the confidence and the support of the working-class. Men and women of the working-class, it is to you we appeal. To-day we are a small party, strong only in the truth of our principles, the sincerity of our motives, and the determination and enthusiasm of our members.

Socialist internationalism arises from the practical experience of the workers who felt that they had to cooperate with each other across frontiers and boundaries in order to defend their interests, their wages and their working conditions. The day-to-day experience of someone standing at the factory bench next to a foreigner who, often through necessity, undersold his or her labour, brought an understanding of common interests, an instinctive kind of internationalism. Socialist internationalism is solidarity that transcends borders. Socialist internationalism is anti-patriotism and of anti-nationalism. The whole wide world is our fatherland, our motherland, our homeland. We shall neither keep ancient nationalities nor constitute new ones. For sure, workers of a particular nation in order to throw off the yoke of the ruling class must be organised nationally yet it will be unable to attain its full emancipation until there has been effected a global uprising of the workers of all lands. Any social revolution must necessarily be worldwide. 

Fellow-workers must not think so much of their country as of their solidarity with the workers of all countries. Socialism is concerned about the transformation of nation-states to a universal commonwealth.