Where are we going?

This capitalist world totters and its foundations and pillars threaten to tumble. There is no more any stability for global capitalism. In the midst of this health crisis some of us can see a new beginning for the world socialist movement. The very people who said it could never happen are faced with so many ideological turns and twists from left and right. 

One thing is clear, the turning point are the calls for the reconstruction of society. The creation of a new society remains our socialist endeavour. We are profoundly convinced that our recent experiences has prepared us for great things in the future and it is with confidence that we expect socialism to become the rallying point of the people once more. We are not pessimistic but hold a profound confidence in a bright future. What mankind needs above all is a radical reorganisation of society. The evolution of humanity  can never be accomplished based upon economic and social inequality, exploitation, oppression, nationalism, racism and war. All of these factors militate against genuine social and human progress. We will build a new world, a world free of misery and oppression, free of the exploitation of man by man, the new world of socialism. The World Socialist Movement acts on the fundamental principle that the working class must have its own party and its own candidates and cannot combine with or support any capitalist party, whether progressive or populist. Socialism is always the issue. The movement of revolutionary socialism has a great future. The Socialist Party believes in solidarity and practices it.

The advocates of socialism are bombarded with the objections that cooperation and mutual aid among people are a fantasy. People are intrinsically individualistic, competitive, and egotistical, claim our critics. It is just the way we're genetically evolved - survival of the fittest. This robotic response is all nonsense. There is overwhelming evidence that our true nature amounts  humankind's endless efforts to make life better - for everyone. That's the way it's been since we first walked erect on two legs. Early humans lived in clans in which everybody contributed to and shared in the group welfare.

Things changed because different kinds of economic and social organisation create different kinds of behaviour. Today, in a system designed to produce profits for the few at the expense of the many, we compete with one another for money, jobs, education, food, a place to live, recognition, self-esteem, everything. That’s the way capitalism works.People think they suffer because other races, religions and countries deprive them of what is theirs. So they resort to nationalism, patriotism, bigotry and racism to compete with each other. The "me" replaces the "we". All those social ills and great evils - war, poverty, selfishness, religions, class and caste divisions - are produced by a social system that runs on exploitation, which poisons humanity.

Destruction of the environment, the spread of war and the prospect of more pandemics such as the one we are already suffering are calling the very existence of the human race into question. The campaign for socialism is now for the existence of civilisation, such a society must be based on the common ownership of the socially necessary means of production and the distribution of the social product according to need, a cooperative commonwealth.

Solidarity Without Borders - World Socialism

Ecological, economic, and health crises spill across frontiers. We must create a solidarity without borders, inspired by a vision of revolutionary change, rooted in the socialist ideals which continue to inspire us. Political freedom without economic equality is a pretence, a fraud, a lie. The Socialist Party strives for a fundamental transformation of society, the abolition of classes. Mankind is social. It is this solidarity and cooperation which makes the “impossible” becomes possible. The spirit of mutual aid gives socialism its strength. The cut-throat competition of capitalism results in undisputed victory for the strong and destruction of the weak. To the victor go the spoils. In the battle for survival in old society it is everybody for himself and the devil take the hindmost.

What does the understanding of the socialist position involve? The Socialist position involves a recognition of the fact that the interests of those who own and control the means of life (the capitalist-class) are absolutely opposed to the interests of those who own nothing but their power to work (the working-class). The first are concerned to make a profit out of the labour of the second. The second are battling for the best conditions they can get. If the second are successful to any degree to that degree the first are losers. To the extent that the first are able to use their power to coin wealth out of the labour of the second, to that extent are the second the losers.

Don’t be put off the track by good capitalists. We are not concerned to deny that some members of the capitalist-class are genuinely sorry that the condition of the working-class is so bad and would prefer it otherwise. That is not the point. The point is that as a class their interests are opposed absolutely to the interests of the class they exploit — the working-class — and under no circumstance whatever can that conflict of interest be avoided. It does not matter whether the working-class are conscious of it or not. The conflict is inevitable and unceasing. The socialist calls it the class-struggle. The ownership by a few people of the means of life is the cause of working-class misery. They say the only remedy lies in the common ownership and control (ownership and control by the whole people) of these means of life. Which is socialism.

While society is based upon the private ownership of the means of life, the worker’s position must always remain the same in its principal features, that political reforms or what not leave him or her always the exploited, always the under dog. These reforms are never achieved except at great effort ; that they are never achieved at all (except they benefit some section of the capitalist class) unless and until the workers have set on foot such a determined agitation that their demands cannot with safety be longer disregarded, as a glance at industrial history will show. Things must always be the same until the workers have fully realised where their real interests lie (have become class-conscious), and have organised their forces specifically for the complete overthrow of the present system of production and the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth.

In every part of the world today there is a growing a movement consisting of those who say that production should be for use and not for profit; that it is competition and the absence of mutual interests which make the millionaire on the one hand and the thousands of casual labourers on the other; that it is possible and desirable to abolish both by the introduction of world co-operation

A New Beginning?

What’s important to understand is what works on the ground is community; what works on the ground is cooperation. Strange as it seems but socialists have never took a more hopeful view of the future than now.

The lords of capital, by the very nature of the economic system, will fight to the last person on the planet for the last pound on planet. There can be no end to war, exploitation and disease as long as capitalism continues to enslave the mass of humanity and place private profit above all else. In fact, capitalism is holding back the progress of humanity and it is a real and deadly serious threat of worldwide annihilation.

Those of us who create, invent, explore, study, mine  farm, build, construct, teach, cook and clean, who do all the work, we’ve designed and manufactured robots that can do much of the work for us, quicker and more efficiently. We’ve made instant communication across the globe an everyday reality. We can exchange any information available with our fingertips on a key-board in a matter of seconds.

Just imagine if we used all this knowledge and technology   to satisfy everyone wants and wishes without waste of either resources or labour or polluting the environment. And then distributed them free to whoever wanted them according to a democratically conceived, worldwide plan?

We have the machinery and materials and human ingenuity to do all these things. Only capitalism stops us. Private property and capitalist control over the means of production and the accumulation of massive amounts of private wealth stands in our way. The fulfilment of people’s needs could be accomplished. The material conditions necessary to do so are available. It just can’t happen under capitalism. But the capitalist profit motive because it must come before human needs won’t permit it. The tragedy is that  competition for profit trumps people’s welfare security and safety. 

Today it is clearer than ever that the curing a disease is a for-profit business (and certainly the pharmaceutical industry is one of the most lucrative of them all), the quest for more profits will aggravate the disease and the human suffering. The need is to put profits above all other considerations. The irrationality of the capitalist mode of production for private profit comes first, and humanity’s progress is sidelined.Governments in the epoch of austerity have been the dismantling of existing public health institutions and the downsizing of hospitals and frontline medical resources.

We, the people, hold the power to put in place a socialist system of production for human need and want instead of for private profit. We have all the resources, technology and know-how to democratically redesign the whole economic system to provide for all human needs and wants without wars, oppression or environmental destruction. A society that if it cannot avoid the rise of new viruses, it can contain and limit its spread. It’s simply a matter of understanding that the planet belongs to everyone and each one of us has something to contribute toward the welfare of all. And that each of us can share equally in its fruits. Democratically planned socialism is the only rational approach to ensuring a bright future for all.

THE PROFIT SYSTEM                      OR  SOCIALISM

The Socialist Party Isn't The Same

The leaders of the political parties, in order to obtain the confidence and support of the voters —without which they cannot obtain seats in the House of Commons and other comfortable positions — have to satisfy them that they understand social problems, and possess the ability to cope with them. This, in itself, is not difficult, because working people, surrounded by capitalist institutions and taught capitalist ideals from childhood, have not yet, in any considerable numbers, questioned the basis of the system under which they live. They accept in blind faith the assertion that there must always be rich and poor, rulers and ruled, if there is to be any sort of order. The result is that, although the workers recognise the social evils from which they suffer, they are easily persuaded that those evils can be removed by legislation.

Ignorant of the conflicting interests between capitalists and workers, they believe that when due representation is made to Parliament legislators will, acting with fairness and impartiality, take steps to deal with those evils. People are all the more readily believes this fiction because the exploitation which he or she suffers from, and has suffered from for so many generations, has reduced them, both mentally and physically, to a condition of abject apathy.

This is the mistaken belief that leads the workers to support reformers. The leaders of the parties do their utmost to foster this belief, because it increases the security of their positions. But those on the left-wing go further than this, for they assert that the reforms they advocate, besides improving the conditions of the working class now, lead gradually toward socialism. Yet class ownership of the means of life would still persist as the basis of the system, and the working class still retain their wage-slave status. Wealth still would be produced for profit, and unemployment still be necessary in order that the price of labour-power might be kept at or about the cost of living — the difference between the cost of living and the total wealth produced being the extent to which the workers are robbed.

The constitutional form of government depends for its authority upon the support it receives from those it governs over. The more workers that support capitalist parties, the firmer and more stable is the capitalist rule.

Practical politics for the working class mean to organise for control of the political machine, in order to take possession of the means of life. The Government will introduce reforms fast enough when they are threatened with such an organisation. They have not yet commenced to throw any real sops or palliatives to the working class. When they do commence their concessions should be treated with contempt, for they cannot be anything else than paltry in comparison with the object the workers have in view.

Politicians deny that the interests of the workers and those of the capitalists are in conflict. To them working-class revolution is impossible: from their standpoint, therefore, socialism, too, is impossible. Like Christianity they mouth the "brotherhood of man " and denounce class hatred, posing all the while as mediators reconciling conflicting interests—regardless of the fact that reconciliation means submission for the workers. Socialism is always impossible  because to confess otherwise prevents a career politician’s personal ambitions from being realised. Seats in the House of Commons and other comfortable jobs are not offered to socialist advocates and agitators. The only  propaganda permitted is capitalist propaganda.

The working class can only achieve their emancipation when they understand socialist principles, and are determined to follow those principles to their conclusion. But they have first to learn, and the real Impossiblists are those politicians who would teach them something else. A socialist must not only be one who understands socialism but must be one who wants socialism, whose political activities, be they great or small, are consistent with the understanding of what socialism is, and with the desire for its speedy achievement. A political party is a group of people organised to achieve a certain object or objects. The duty of its representatives is simply to act as its agents. If they are sent to Parliament it is not to vote according to one's conscience, but according to the will and instruction of those who sent them there. There is but one such political party in this country; there is but one party so grounded in democracy that its candidates are but the mouth-pieces and representatives of vital socialist principles. That party is the Socialist Party, whose members are all agreed upon the overthrow of the master class and the collective control of industry by the workers, that is to say, the social revolution.

THE ALTERNATIVE IS SOCIALISM

The capitalist system creates a contrast of the conditions between the producers of wealth and those who own the wealth. The difference is maintained by an apparatus of class dictatorship in the interests of property. The law is based upon property and the protection of property interests. The organisation of the forces for the administration of the law is in the hands of the people of property. The police forces are headed with officers of the propertied class. The armed forces are officered by the elite. The media is owned by the lords of property, and they mould the news of the day in the interests of property. All their activities for the maintenance of the power of the propertied class over the property-less working class.

There are two different sorts of private property. The one is private property in the means of production: private property in a factory or a mine, or in the land. And the other sort is private property in consumers’ goods, in personal possessions and keepsakes, in houses, in cars, in gardens, in labour-saving devices, in access to amusements, in every sort of thing which we actually use and consume. It ought to be impossible to mix them up. For there is one rule for distinguishing between them. Private property of the former carries an income with it. Private property of the latter sort does not carry an income with it. The economic system which is currently called socialism involves abolishing the first sort of private property in order to increase vastly the second sort of property. Not less but more private property is needed. But it must be the right kind of property. There are two kinds of private property. Private property in the means by which things are made – factories, land, mines, gives to the owners power to control the lives of others. That must cease. It is wrong private property. Capitalism robs men and women of the fruits of their toil. Socialism has no complaint concerning such private property, save that the masses lack it. Socialism means that the means of production are owned and controlled by society so that what is produced can be shared out according to people’s needs. Socialism is founded on the idea of equality, which means that most people will get the same. Socialism is a planned economy, so that production is for need, not profit. Socialism is about democracy so that goods are produced and distributed fairly.

The intellectuals and philosophers tell us that socialism, as an idea, is a very fine thing but is unrealisable. When we look at this world of misery, and see our life is not a happy one, the Socialist Party seeks to bring your attention that the basic cause of all the ills of present-day society, which is normally attributed to the imperfection of human nature, is in fact the lack of organisation of human society. Our task is not to convert the world, we leave the evangelic preaching to others. Our task is only to point out as widely as possible what is self-evident to every sufficiently educated person that capitalism has created an unbridgeable gulf between rich and poor, between employer and worker.

Socialism means fewer officials than capitalism, not more. It is capitalism which has a huge bureaucratic machine of administrators, directors, managers, under-managers, foremen, sales managers and advertising experts. With socialism there will exist a range of more interesting, and more creative jobs in the effort to supply the demands for increased goods and services. Socialism confronts a world where disorder reigns: the chaos of sovereign states; the chaos of a world of booms and slumps, where natural resources and machinery of production are retained as private property by men who can bar the people from their only means of livelihood; chaos where vast corporations engage in trade wars with one another until real war breaks out.

The world socialist movement is advancing towards its goal. True freedom and equality begins when distribution is "according to needs" regardless of the work supplied.