Learn a Lesson While In Lockdown

The work of the Socialist Party requires active participation from our fellow-workers who agree with the urgent need for a socialist society. It’s no good sitting back and complaining that too few agree with us; the only solution is to carry out a campaign to tell them what is in their political interest. We need to put across our ideas to fellow-workers. The Socialist Party is only as strong as its support for it. You can agree with what we say and ignore us if you like. But can you ignore capitalism? The wages system with production for profit is the root cause of all our social ills. Reforms of the law can do next to nothing. To end exploitation we must abolish the wages system. There is no other way.

Let us make clear why it is the Socialist Party opposes the profit system. It is based upon the minority ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution. It is a class society in which a minority own the means of life and the majority—the working class— own nothing and therefore have to sell their labour power to an employer in return for a wage or salary. So the profit system is socially unequal. The capitalist class needs to employ the working class as the labour of the latter is the source of the profit of the former. The profit consists of the difference between the capital expenditure of the employer and the values created by the employee. Labour creates values over and above the value of labour-power. Because wages represent the price of labour power and not the value of the commodities produced by labour, the workers always receive less than they have produced. In short, they are exploited. The profit system is exploitative and unequal and the consequence is an unending conflict of interests between wage labour and capital. The capitalist needs profits. It is in the interest of workers not simply to increase wages, but to abolish the wages system. And the only way to get rid of the wages system is to abolish the profit system. the Left encourage the workers to go for higher wages and urge them to go for better conditions under capitalism. Only the Socialist Party opposes the profit system as such.

Socialism is a system of society that is designed to accommodate rational human beings. State interference in terms of taxation and welfare reform is not the aim of the Socialist Party. We do no advocate state-capitalism, although both Labour and Tory Governments have gone in for nationalisation. The State is the coercive organ of the capitalist class.

 The Socialist Party looks forward to an age when there will be no class divisions and therefore no State. 

Socialist ideas and organisation are crucial at this moment. We have to find ways of reaching out and involving millions of people who are starting to question the way our society operates. As we now witness no social crisis unfolds in just one sector of society. Workers have discovered not only are we the source of the corporations’ profits but are responsible for the smooth running of society. We have learned that work is organised on the collective basis of social co-operation and a division of labour.

 We are encouraged to believe that capitalism is the natural and only way for people to live. But there are alternative, more equitable ways of running society. Capitalism has given working people tremendous power, power which runs factories, hospitals, schools, transport systems. This power creates all the things that we need as human beings – and often things which we do not need, such as armamnets, but because they hold the political power, the capitalist class controls and uses this power for its own ends and its own profit. But the collective power that is used to run a factory can also be used to stop that factory, so it can be used to run it in the interests of the workers themselves. This social cooperation is on a huge scale, is precisely how capitalism is organised. How is it then, we may ask, that the people simply take over running it?

 One reason, of course, is that we are constantly told we are not capable of running things – in school, in the press, on television. The whole current of ideas in society tells us that workers work, following orders handed down from above, and that this is the natural order of things. Slaves used to believe that slavery was natural too. Many dismiss socialist ideas as Utopian. It’s a good idea, they say, but people are too greedy and selfish for it to work in practice. If they look around, they will see that each and every day we work together co-operatively on a massive scale and we can watch the living experience of co-operation and solidarity being displayed. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic we have now learned how society is run and also learned that collective organisation and action can challenge capitalist society, And how we gain confidence in ourselves by our mutual aid and self-help initiatives. Collaborating and cooperating in a consensus is central working people.

Socialist knowledge and understanding

Poverty in the midst of plenty and endless disputes over the distribution of wealth  threatens to plunge all human society into chaos and anarchy.

A system of society in which wealth does not belong to those who produce it may for a long time be borne with patience by the producers, if it does not impose any great hardships on the majority. The fact that with increased powers of production and a greater expenditure of energy poverty becomes more acute, is excused and partly hidden by the current belief that wealth cannot be produced except for markets. The imperative necessity—from the capitalist standpoint—for ever cheaper methods of production, coupled with the insatiable greed of the master class, breeds antagonism everywhere between the two classes in society. The competition between combines and groups of capitalists wipes out large numbers of smaller capitalists and leaves the bulk of wealth-producing concerns in the possession of a dwindling number of financiers.

Whether the means of wealth-production are owned and controlled by a capitalist class large or small in numbers, the interests of that class are always opposed to socialism. It is even possible that, as the capitalist class grows smaller in numbers they may be able to combat socialism more successfully because of the greater ease with which they could agree upon, and set in motion, antagonistic forces.

The growing antagonism between capitalists and workers centres largely around the question of wages and conditions of employment. The workers in the main are thus expending their energy in the struggle over hand to mouth conditions, and neglecting any study of the root causes of their poverty. The longer they pursue this short-sighted policy, which at the best can only slightly retard their downward progress into depths of poverty, the more permanent and fixed does the capitalist system appear to them, and the more hopeless does their struggle seem.

It does not follow that their hopelessness will cause them to accept socialism, which has to be understood first, and which therefore requires a certain amount of study. Until the workers are prepared to give the necessary time to its study the question of economic development is a secondary matter, and small progress is being made toward socialism. Those who pretend that anything else but the propaganda of socialist knowledge makes for socialism are only spreading confusion among the workers and encouraging them in the belief that economic forces of themselves will work out their emancipation for them.

It is no satisfaction to the socialist that the development of capitalism causes greater suffering for the workers. Suffering alone does not make socialists : it is more likely to result in desperate actions or futile attempts at reform, generally followed by apathy and inaction. Socialism must be established by the working class, therefore, until the working class perceives in these economic factors the necessity for revolution and understand how to carry it through, we are not ready for socialism. The economic factors wait on the knowledge of the workers. Without socialist knowledge, no matter how these factors intensify, socialism cannot be established. With socialist knowledge the workers can take possession and control at any stage in capitalist development.

The discovery by the workers that one reform is useless, or even harmful to them does not help them to see that all reforms are equally helpless to release them from the results of capitalist domination. Because one reform has failed them, they do not necessarily examine other reforms critically; on the contrary, they either swing back to the methods that captivated them before, or follow new will-o’-the-wisps invented by labour mis-leaders. They swing backwards and forwards like the pendulum, first putting their faith in the promises of their masters, and then just as blindly following the lead of labour confusionists. Every capitalist party deceives them in turn, and after each experiment, or reform, they find themselves no better off. With strikes, however, the workers have the satisfaction of knowing that they have at least put up a fight, tried to do something but simply to wait.

Conditions are ripe now for the establishment of socialism, without any further amalgamation of capital or nationalisation of industries. The only thing now wanting is the acquisition of socialist knowledge by the working class, and the organisation of the toilers for the accomplishment of their mission. The bigger the organisation spreading this knowledge, and the more rapidly and perfectly this other condition is achieved, the sooner shall we be ready. The obvious course for every worker, therefore, is to study socialism, push socialism, organise for socialism.

The Failure of Reformism

The Socialist Party has no connection with any other political party or group and cannot be held responsible for wrong theories and incorrect ideas held by them. In this category we include the major parties, the left-wing and the nationalists, etc. The socialist system we advocate has never been tried. It is not based on leadership, nationalization, state control or the systems operating in China, Cuba, or in the former Soviet Union, etc. The description of “socialist” as applied to these countries is a distortion of the word and arises through ignorance or a deliberate attempt to discredit socialism.

Election after election has been fought over issues which were held to be in the interest of the working class. The promises made by Tory, LibDems, Labour, and Scot Nats in the past if carried out, they say, would have removed poverty, established security of jobs and solved the housing problem. As you are aware, none of this has happened, nor could have happened. This does not prevent them again making the same promises which they will be unable to keep.

Despite their excuses, you must judge them on their record. You should enquire into the reason why these political parties cannot run capitalism in the interest of the working class. Most of you accept the world of capitalism with its wages system, price structure and private property in the means of production as a permanent condition of human existence. You take for granted that you will sell your mental and physical energy, your brain, muscle and nerve to an employer for wages. You accept the fact that you have to pay for permission to inhabit the globe through rent and mortgages. You never challenge the ridiculous claim made by politicians that poverty and bad housing and insecurity are due to circumstances outside the control of men and women.

The Socialist Party is asking you to question the whole basis of your life under capitalism. Acceptance of the wages system means submission to the perpetual robbery practised on you by a small group of international parasites who own the means of wealth production and in whose interest wealth is produced. We realize how difficult it may be for you to break with ideas held for most of your lives, but break with them you must if the problems of poverty, starvation, disease, war and unemployment are to be abolished.

There is no shortage of natural wealth in the world and no shortage of people capable of transforming that wealth into useful articles we can enjoy and freely consume. Capitalism has created a shortage because the productive powers of society can produce more wealth than the market economy can cope with. Access to the factories, workshops, mills, mines and land can only be obtained through wage labour. Goods can only be produced provided that they can be sold. These conditions are rigidly enforced and periodically, as you are well aware, millions of workers are removed from production in every field because they would produce too much. 

Consider the position in the world today where each year millions children die of diseases caused through lack of proper food and where millions more are underfed and underhoused. No sane society would tolerate these crimes against its members. Capitalism produces wealth but it produces poverty at the same time.

It is because of this contradiction that society must be reorganised on an entirely different basis. Men and women everywhere must have direct control over their means of production.

The only obstacle to the introduction of a socialist world is the lack of socialist understanding. This means that the majority of workers at the moment are unaware that socialism can be introduced simply by voting for it, based on this understanding. Capitalism rests on the political support given to it by the working class through the ballot box. Take that away and capitalism is finished. But until such times as you are convinced that socialism presents an immediate solution to working-class problems you will continue to vote for capitalist candidates.

We ask you to examine the case of the Socialist Party before you once again commit yourself and your children to yet another spell of unnecessary misery, frustration and poverty.

SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE.

Change the world

Humans are cooperative and interconnected. We have built vast cities, communication and transportation systems. Civilisation encourages attitudes such as respect and tolerance to those who we have no relation to. We reinforce these values, teaching them to our children. That’s because they generally lead to a more harmonious, mutually beneficial society. Yet xenophobia, racism, sexism and bigotry exists. 

What people around us say and do subconsciously influences the way we think. We soak up this cultural context like a sponge, and it subtly shapes our attitudes and behaviours. If we are surrounded by people that stigmatise those different to themselves, this also encourages distrust or aggression in us. Leaders with nationalist leanings are more frequently taking centre stage around the world, from the US, to Brazil, to India. When people and organisations we trust talk in such a way, it has a profound effect on our receiving minds. It can even shape our beliefs about what we might think are purely rational issues. One of the scenario is called “order from strength” and represented “a regionalised and fragmented world that is concerned with security and protection… Nations see looking after their own interests as the best defence against economic insecurity, and the movement of goods, people, and information is strongly regulated and policed”. Later iterations of the scenario have been dubbed “fortress world”, an authoritarian system of global apartheid with elites in protected enclaves and an impoverished majority outside. There seems to be a lack of empathy, a disregard and intolerance for others who were not lucky enough to be born in “our” tribe. In response to an ecological catastrophe of their making, rich countries simply argue about how best to prevent the potential influx of migrants.

Why should any person have confidence in the future of the capitalist system? The first thing socialism will do is to free the workers from the degrading, humiliating and exhausting slavery to the capitalist machine. We have to plan the economy, plan it in order to produce for use. Capitalists are in continuous conflict, always with the workers or with one another at home, or with foreign capitalists. They breathe disorder, confusion, anarchy, war. Only the whole working class and its allies organized and free of capitalist tyranny, can plan production. Only working people can emancipate themselves. Capitalism can only live and thrive upon the subordination, the division, the suppression of the people. Only the power of the workers can change that.

The Socialist Party demands the abolition of the capitalist system. Socialism is where the means of production are used for the benefit of society as a whole and not for the profit of a few. That is the socialist society. That is the solution. And all the committees of all the capitalists in the world cannot arrive at any solution, because the only solution is socialism, that is, the abolition of themselves. But, precisely because they cannot see the way out they are ready to try whatever their desperation drives them to. The workers have no reason to submit any more. The responsibility of revolutionary socialists is clear and it is to send the capitalist class go whither it now belongs – into the rubbish heap of history and we mean the WHOLE ROTTEN SYSTEM AND THOSE WHO PROFIT BY IT, AND DO EVERYTHING TO MAINTAIN IT. The time for the liberation of the workers is long overdue.

The Labour Party has a new leader

BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT