People want revolution.

In order to safeguard the wealth they have robbed from us and insure more profits, it is in the interests of the capitalist class to have a divided working class A working class that is divided is one that is not capable of defending itself or fighting in its own interests. The capitalists have a vast array of tools of oppression to keep the working class divided. They continually promote discord among us to keep us weak, fighting among ourselves, fighting against our brothers and sisters throughout the world. We are an organisation that fights political delusions and ideological illusions. Only a united working class  can effective wage class war against the ruling capitalists. This unity must be based on the struggle in our own interests – political working unity – a unity in common struggle against capitalism. Only with unity can we struggle for the emancipation of working peoples and our class from a common enemy.

The World Socialist Movement is an organisation of men and women committed to building a socialist society. Only within a socialist society can we take control over our own lives and bring an end to war, economic insecurity and sexual and racial inequality. Only within socialism can all people fully develop their potential and capabilities. We must bring about the end of the present capitalist economic and political system that is imposed upon our lives. It is a system which is inherently based on misery and exploitation. It profits a wealthy few at the expense of the vast majority of working people throughout  the world. It generates war. It keeps people weak and powerless by fostering racial, national and gender divisions. 

This system is controlled by a small number of extremely rich ruling class who use major institutions, including the government, to protect their interests and wealth and to maintain their control over our lives. In a class society, the dominant economic class makes and enforces the rules to ensure the actual rule of those who own and control the means of production. They own and manipulate the media. They purchase the political parties office-holders whose role is to serve those whose campaign contributions put them in their lucrative positions. 

At the workplace, it is clear that democracy does not exist. Working people exist under a system of wage slavery. In order to survive workers have no choice but to sell their labour power at a price determined by the capitalists. 

As long as capitalists exist on the profits from the sale of this labour power by vast numbers of working people, working people will have no freedom. The appropriation, by a small minority to be used for personal gain and profit, of the wealth produced by labour power must be stopped and replaced by new relations to production where the workers own and control the means of production, and their labour is for the good of the vast majority. We must change the basis upon which the exploitation and enslavement of people exists by abolishing the capitalist system.

It should be clear that the trade unions are absolutely necessary to the workers under capitalism. The workers’ trade union is the only organisation which stands between them and the capitalists. The trade union defends the workers, winning higher wages, better working conditions, and a measure of job security and dignity. 

Wherever capitalism has developed, trade unions have emerged as the major institutions of economic defence of the working class. Trade unions teach workers that the bosses must be fought in order to make gains in the worker’s standard of living, and they do teach workers that the working class must be united, and that its interests are inevitably opposed to the bosses. But it should be noted that trade unions, even at their best, are of limited benefit. Trade unions do not teach workers that the whole government is a front for the employers. Presently, no trade union talks about the need for socialism, or explains that ultimately it will be necessary to overthrow the state which is controlled by the employing class. Without socialism, the working class is reduced to a constant struggle against the effects of capitalism because without socialism, the foundation of capitalist exploitation remains intact. It remains the job of the WSM to explain these things and convince our fellow-workers of the need to overthrow the whole capitalist system altogether. 

Socialism is not just an ideal but a workable alternative system where political and economic power is held and used to benefit not a handful of people, but all people. We shall always attempt to present our ideas in the clearest way possible. It will be working people who will make socialism a reality.

The exploitative system ofcapitalism in direct conflict with the interests of the vast majority of the people throughout the world. The wealth of this society was and is created by working people, yet our human labor is expropriated by  profiteers and elites to enrich themselves at the expense of those who make the products and deliver services. Working people are exploited when a portion of their human labor is stolen from them by the capitalists for the sake of profits. The relationship of the capitalist class to the working class is inevitably exploitative. This is the essence of class society. We have no common ground, no basis for friendship, no reconcilaition or peace with the ruling class as long as it exists. The working class in their fight for socialism will lay the foundations for their own liberation. The WSM fights for the complete social, economic and political equality for working peoples. We see the way to fight the capitalist ideology and culture is to educate ourselves as to the contradictions and oppressiveness of the capitalist system. In so doing, we strengthen the class movement against capitalist exploitation. An essential part of building a revolutionary working class movement to end capitalism and build socialism is the development and furtherance of a socialist party. Right now there are many groups claiming to be socialist but there is just one which is dedicated to overthrowing the capitalist system and not reforming it - the World Socialist Movement.  

May Day - Our goal always remains the same

We have said many times that socialism is the sole solution for the problems of the world. The Socialist Party did not invent humanity’s aspirations for a just, egalitarian and free society; mankind have cherished such a dream for a very long time. Socialism is a movement based upon the historic evolution of the past and the economic conditions of the present. It is not, therefore, something that has been hatched in the brain and the imagination of some idealist philosopher. Socialism builds upon reality. It looks upon society as an ever-changing category, and it is able to explain why society has changed in the past and why it must change in the future. The reason why socialism is able to explain the past and the present and to foreshadow the future is because it establishes itself upon the facts of history and the truths of economic science.

Sadly socialism has lost in actuality and immediacy by the fact of being postponed to a far-off future. We believe that the emancipation of humanity from the age-long thraldom of the class rule will be achieved in our own time. When we talk about the inevitability of socialism we assume that our fellow-workers will continue to struggle for their rights. Were they, on the other hand, to fatalistically remain tamely passive wait till socialism came to them, they would soon lose all the rights that they have now and become more. slaves. When workers grow so class conscious and so well organised as to make their exploitation impossible then capitalists would have reached the end of their reign. That is what we understand by social revolution. The spirit of the revolution is stirring once more. Society is changing more rapidly today than ever before in human history. Capitalism is rushing civilisation to its doom. Capitalist society is today clearly treading the road to the abyss. Socialism proposes the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution, the operation of industry in the interest of the whole people, the application of every machine to reducing working hours, the equality of all races and sexe, the abolition of poverty, the end of war, the economic freedom of every human being — and thus emancipated from the cruel and degrading thralldom of the capitalist system.

No Population Explosion in Scotland

5.46 million people living in Scotland as of 30 June 2019, an increase of 25,200.

30,200 more people moved to Scotland than left the country in the year to mid-2019, arriving from both overseas and the rest of the UK.

There was no natural growth as deaths outstripped births over the same time. There were 5,600 more deaths than births.

Three-quarters of council areas experienced population grown, but eight areas saw declines. Most of the population growth was in Edinburgh and Glasgow and neighbouring areas. Population declines affected mainly rural areas, some islands and other areas in the west of Scotland.

Scotland's population is ageing. In mid-2019, 19% of the population were aged 65 and over, compared with 17% a decade earlier in mid-2009.

Work in Socialism

Work in socialism will be on the basis of voluntary co-operation and the democratic administration of society. The production and distribution of wealth will be controlled by the whole of society. 

Socialism will also involve the rational use of resources and areas, using those resources and areas for the activities to which they are best suited. In socialism there will be various sorts of worldwide administration systems which will assess people’s needs and organise production accordingly to maintain adequate supplies to all areas. The production and distribution of wealth will be controlled by the whole of society. The social organisation of socialism will be under the complete control of society’s members. There will probably be delegate assemblies. However the exact form which democracy in socialism will take, cannot be presently determined other than in general terms because , the very form must itself be the result of a great and serious democratic debate. Also we are in an information revolution where the development of new technology which could aid democracy keeps advancing. One thing is certain, however, socialism will be the most democratic form of society possible, and, as the means of living will be owned in common, no minority will be able to enforce its will upon the majority by threatening to withhold their livelihood. Because no one will be in a position to coerce others, all work in socialism will be voluntary. 

Work will not take place under coercive or exploitative conditions. Instead, each person will contribute to society as much of their talents and abilities as they are willing to give. Due to the fact that the producers will no longer be exploited (robbed of the full fruits of their labour) in the course of production; nor forced to work in conditions which are sometimes detrimental to their health; nor deprived of creativeness in work; nor forced to compete with one another for pay and promotion; nor forced to labour in circumstances which they don’t fully control; nor forced to divide their activity between employment and “leisure” (neither of which are fully satisfying)—work in socialism will be more pleasant with increased work satisfaction, a definite end and need in itself. 

Mankind will, for the first time, be in complete control of its circumstances, it will create and recreate its circumstances, it will venture to the very limits of its potentiality, it will continually extend itself to an extent that could never be achieved under the present social organisation. 

Mankind, in socialism, will be revealed as the supreme creative artist, we shall constantly beautify and redesign our world, we shall continuously acquire more knowledge, liberating itself from the restrictions. Socialism requires human action for its achievement. What is needed, is for all those desire a new society must unite with like-minded people to change society.

Capital and labour can be described as interdependent only in the sense that they are opposite sides of the class struggle of capitalism. This does not imply a unity of interest; the two classes have interests in opposition, over the division of wealth in capitalist society and finally over the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism.

Capitalism came into existence after a bitter, and often bloody, struggle in which one side was protecting its privileges and property rights while the other was seeking to assume the position of social domination. Perhaps both sides can be described as “greedy” but this judgment does not fill the bill historically; it ignores the reality of social change and revolution, which is a process of social adaptation to developments in the mode of production. “Motivation”, in terms of human desires, is secondary to that.

Class society is then part and parcel of social evolution; capitalism, which is the final form of class society, has as one of its essential features the drive to accumulate capital, to amass and invest wealth with the object of producing more wealth for sale at a profit. The privileges which go with being a member of the dominant class in society, and the accumulation of capital, are not examples of “greed”—they are unavoidable features of a necessary phase in the development towards a class-free society.

“Greed ' is in any case a factor relating to its conditions; it can exist only in times of shortage and restrictions and becomes more evident as scarcity develops. When wealth is freely available, as it will be in socialism, greed will not exist—it will be an attitude so archaic that it will be almost beyond understanding. This illustrates the fact that “ethics” are not eternal and unchanging; each social system has its own, in a sort of superstructure of ideas and responses which rest on its economic base. Capitalism’s ethics are those of division, of panic, of destruction and competition. Socialism’s will be those of co-operation, abundance and efficiency.

Capitalism has brought about a tremendous increase in the “material powers of production”, to the point where society is now technically capable of producing an abundance of goods and services. But this abundance is not produced under capitalism, because its highest priority, profit, acts as a fetter on the productive forces. The socialist revolution will usher in new relations of production — common ownership and production for use—which will enable this potential for abundance to be realized and will no longer hold back the development of the forces of production. Common ownership will be linked with democratic control of the means of production to resolve another of the contradictions of capitalism, that between social production and class monopoly of the means of production.

The establishment of socialism requires a revolution carried out by a working class who have come to understand the nature of capitalism and the desirability of socialism, and who are willing to run a socialist system and make it work. The material conditions for socialism already exist. The Socialist Party exists to spread the idea of socialism and to act as the political tool of the socialist working class who will carry out this revolution.

Ill-Gotten Gains

Gadhafi's close associate Ali Dabaiba, who was part of an elite circle known as "companions of the leader," reportedly squirreled away $7 billion while on a salary of only £12,000 and a 2018 investigation alleged he invested some of it in prestigious property across the UK. 

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project said that included Scotland's most significant stately home still in private hands, Taymouth Castle.