Socialism is Coming

 

The Socialist Party calls upon the workers to muster under its banner for the purpose of advocating this revolutionary change and building class consciousness among fellow workers. We, the working people, are well capable of assuming control and continuing to administer and operate the essential industries and social services, without any masters above us.  It will be our fellow workers who will make the people's ownership, control and administration of the new social structure a reality. Despite  threats to workers' lives, despite the growing poverty and misery that workers are subjected to, a world of peace, liberty, security, health and abundance for all is within our grasp. The potential to create such a society exists, but that potential can be achieved only if workers act to gain control of their own lives by organising, politically and industrially, for socialism. 

 It is the division of society into property owners and propertyless people which lies at the root of the crisis of the capitalist world. Millions of workers  extract raw material from the earth. They own neither the land nor the machinery they use, nor the products they raise.

Millions of other workers manufacture the raw materials into finished products. They own neither the machinery they use nor the products they manufacture. These are the property of the capitalists and the landlords.

The vast majority of people in society to-day are thus at the mercy of the private owners. They cannot organise the distribution of the wealth which they and their comrades have co-operated to produce, because they do not possess this wealth. It is the property of the private owners.

Here is to be found the fundamental reason why the socially necessary goods are obtainable only in the market-place as commodities. The private property owners have no other means for the disposal of the goods others have made for them. They cannot give the goods to society, for that would be an abandonment of the right of private property to extract profit. They cannot distribute the goods according to the needs of the people, however vast and urgent those needs may be, because private property production is governed by the law of production for profit irrespective of the needs of the people. The criterion of all capitalist enterprise is—does it make a profit? When it ceases to make a profit it goes bankrupt—it is finished and the workers are cast on to the scrapheap of unemployment.

For the capitalist there is no other way of disposing of the goods produced other than through the exchange market, the laws of which are not need nor beauty, nor quality. It is a transaction between individuals exchanging property, however repeated, however multiplied, however varied. One can have exactly according to his means to pay. If you have £1 or its equivalent you can have £1’s worth of goods. If you have nothing, then you can exchange nothing.

 The Socialist  Party calls upon all who comprehend the critical nature of our times, and who are increasingly aware that fundamental change in our society is needed, to join us in the effort to put an end to the existing class conflict and all its malevolent results by placing the land and the instruments of social production in the hands of the people as a collective body in a cooperative socialist society. Help build a world in which everyone will enjoy the free exercise and full benefit of their individual faculties, supported by all the technology of modern civilisation.

 It is at this great moment in history when  crisis-ridden capitalism is showing its inability to solve the immense problems confronting humanity, that great progressive movements will arise all over the world. Great possibilities are urging our fellow workers forward when mankind can plan the rational control of production and distribution for abundance for all, as the basis of a class-free and peaceful society. 

 Some dismiss socialism as the alternative to capitalism because of its failure to so far as yet  to succeed.  If socialism were really to replace capitalism, why hasn’t it already done so? It would be futile, of course,  to deny the fact that socialism is still to be established anywhere. But it is not proof that socialism is impossible, nor that our efforts to achieve socialism in the future is hopeless.  Such pessimism destroys the confidence of the working class in itself, spreads cynicism, paralyses action, holds back the advance to socialism, indeed it can lead to its capitulation  The capitalist class is no longer a progressive class. It cannot lead mankind forward. It can only drag it backwards. Based upon private property, it has long-since fulfilled whatever progressive role it had to play in the development of society. Capitalism now fetters the productive forces, drags society into degradation and catastrophe. The policy of class collaboration does not help mankind to building a new social order, but its sentimental pleadings and petitioning for “better treatment” maintains the psychology of the slave bowing to the masters. The servile intellectuals of the ruling class atomise and alienate the workers, highlighting their waverings, their backwardness, the competition amongst them for jobs, and cite these things as the reason for their lack of hope in the people. They spread their pessimism like a poison into the workers.  We need to see political clarity grow, casting out of fear and the development of the firm conviction that socialism offers the way out of the crises and paves the way to the next great evolution of society.

Socialism - the solidarity of the humanity

 

The world is in crisis. Few can deny that the world today is in constant upheaval with widespread turmoil and conflict. Yet, after decades of new deals, fair deals, wars on poverty, civil rights legislation, government regulations, deregulations and a host of other reform efforts, capitalist millions who need and want jobs are still unemployed despite the official claims that unemployment is at historically "low" rates. Millions more are underemployed, working only part-time or temporary jobs though they need and want full-time work. Millions aren't earning enough to maintain a decent standard of living for themselves and their families despite the fact that they are working.  Racism is on the upsurge; so, too, is contemptible discrimination against migrants generally. 

In most nations infrastructure continues to crumble. The educational system is a mess and getting worse. The health care system still fails to meet the needs of millions. Slum housing abounds. Even the foregoing cannot give a full picture of the wide-ranging plague of social and economic problems modern-day capitalism is imposing on society.

 Working people stand perilously poised on the brink of yet another nightmare. Capitalism has caused a climate emergency. Widespread pollution of our environment continues. 

It is impossible to contemplate the horrors of capitalism and remain neutral unless one is emotionally numb.

For workers, capitalism has meant widespread unemployment, accompanied by homelessness and demands for high rents by landlords. At the same time, the exploitation of those with jobs has become more intense. Mass poverty escalates while multi-million fortunes are accumulated by the big capitalists and landlords. 

The Socialist Party adheres to Marxism as its basic worldview. Against this insane capitalist system, the Socialist Party raises its voice in anger, protest and condemnation. It declares that if our society is to be finished with for once and for all with the economic, political and social ills that for so long have plagued it, the outmoded capitalist system of private ownership of the socially operated means of life and production for the profit of a few must be replaced by a new social system. That new social order must be organised on the sane basis of common ownership and democratic management of all the instruments of social production, all means of distribution and all of the social services. It must be one in which production is carried on to satisfy human needs and wants. In short, it must be genuine socialism.

Capitalism is a system of commodity production (that is, the production of goods for sale and not for direct use by the producer) which is distinguished by the fact that labour-power itself becomes a commodity. The major means of production and exchange which make up the capital of society are owned privately by a small minority, the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie), while the great majority of the population consists of proletarians or semi-proletarians. Because of their economic position, this majority can only exist by permanently or periodically selling their labour-power to the capitalists and thus creating through their work the incomes of the upper classes.

 Under capitalism, social production replaces the individual production of the feudal era. It is based on the ever-greater socialisation of labour. However, although production is social, ownership is private. The working class produces the commodities which constitute the wealth of capitalist society, but it does not own them. They are appropriated by those who own the means of production – the capitalist class. 

The contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation is the basic contradiction of the capitalist system, impelling its development and giving rise to the motive force of capitalist society, the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

It also manifests itself as an antagonism between the high level of organisation in the individual factory or enterprise on the one hand, and on the other, the anarchy of production prevailing in the social economy as a whole. Anarchy of production is the tendency of capitalist producers, in general, to produce to the maximum without regard to their competitors or to the capacity of the market to absorb their production.

Technological development under capitalism, stimulated by competition, together with other conditions favourable to the concentration of capital, leads to the steady growth of larger enterprises at the expense of many small ones. At the same time, it reduces the employers’ demand for human labour, which lags behind the supply, resulting in the development of a large pool of unemployed, a ’reserve army’ of labour, and intensified exploitation of those in work. The existence of such a reserve army enables capitalism to expand rapidly in ’normal’ times, providing a ready-to-hand supply of extra labour in boom times which can be laid off whenever it suits capital.

By replacing private ownership of the means of production with social ownership, by transforming the anarchy of production which is a feature of capitalism into planned proportional production organised for the well-being and many-sided development of all of society, the proletarian socialist revolution will end the division of society into classes and emancipate all of humanity from all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another.

Thus, fundamentally, capitalism is a system of exploitation of the working class (the proletariat) by the owning class.  Governments cannot get rid of the evils of capitalism or solve the problems of the working class. Rather, it intensifies them. Only socialism, which results from the class struggle of workers against capitalists, can solve them.

Social Revolution and Socialism

 

We’re fighting an information war. Arm yourself with knowledge to be free. The Socialist Party came into existence in 1904. Since that time the Socialist Party has expanded and has become firmly established. The principles upon which it was founded, and has consistently adhered to, have won it the recognition of being the only genuine socialist party in Great Britain.

The Labour Party and the other left-wing organisations are parties of social reformism. Their election platforms are made up of capitalistic reforms, calculated to catch the votes of the petty bourgeoisie and the capitalistic-minded workers. Although they claim to have for their object the ultimate establishment of a new social order, their immediate aim is reforming the present social system. Their appeals are mainly made to those workers who desire to improve their lot within the confines of the capitalist system.

The Socialist Party is not a reform party. Its purpose is the abolition of the present social order, the ending of the exploitation of workers by a parasitic class. It appeals for the support of the workers as propertyless wage slaves. It points to the necessity for the conquest of political power from the capitalists and the reorganisation of society upon a class-free basis. The Socialist Party has pursued the policy of reaching as large numbers as possible with a sound education of socialist principles.

The economic principles, or laws, as laid out by  Marx, furnish the workers with the requisite knowledge to fight effectively. In a capitalist society, that which the worker sells — labour-power — his or her physical and mental skill, takes on the character of a commodity. Certain economic laws govern the capitalist system, which is a commodity-producing one. A knowledge of those laws is imperative if the workers are going to participate in the struggles against their exploiters. A knowledge of history is useful to the worker. The mode of interpreting history, as taught by the Socialist Party, the materialistic conception, the Marxian mode, clarifies historical research. It is only through studying history from an economic and class viewpoint that the real facts reveal themselves.

The State upholds the power of the owning class, the capitalists, and represses (when necessary) the producing class, the workers when they resist the rule and robbery of their masters. The State, or government, is the real organized force that confronts the masses of the people, the exploited.

The internationalism of socialism is much more than the globalisation we hear so much of in the present day. There are many forms of internationalism such as world trade agreements. Ours will the harmony of humanity towards which all mankind should strive, developing solidarity and mutual aid, ending borders, recognizing our shared fate and committing ourselves to work together for the common good.

Global warming is accelerating, bringing the world close to the edge of the abyss.  Record-breaking extreme weather events caused by a climate catastrophe are happening with a regular frequency that, until recently, even the pessimistic climatologists believed were still two or three decades away in the future.  

It appears that the world is losing the battle against global warming.  We are in deep trouble and it is time to panic. Irreversible tipping points are ominously closer than the experts thought. Is it conceivable to what we are already experiencing will shock and awaken people to a recognition of the horrors that capitalism is creating?  Is what we are seeing happening right before our eyes going to trigger people to take the logical course of action and jettison the capitalist economic system. Perhaps there is a clue in how the politicians responded to the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Too little, too late. Preventative measures were politically inexpedient and effective actions were backed away from. Scientific advice was either rejected or twisted. There will no doubt be similar denialism regards the worsening environmental destruction. Responsibility will be shifted and a better world rejected. It is overlooked that it is the small, very affluent minority, most of them in the rich countries, who are overwhelming the culprits in the criminal environmental crisis. They divert the blame onto the lifestyles of the rest of us.

Men and women, as free equals, must work together to achieve our goal: the abolition of wage slavery and thus prepare the ground on which better and happier humanity can and will grow. In the socialist social system, the production and education of healthy and capable people will take precedence over the production of dead goods. 

War is not due to the arbitrary actions of certain sociopath personalities nor the racial hatred of the peoples, but rather due to world economic, i.e. world capitalist profit needs. Class-conscious working people fight capitalism as the mortal enemy of the socialist liberation of the working class.

One Law for the Rich and one for the Poor.

 A tenant, in Toronto, who took her landlord to court two years ago, was awarded $50,000 dollars in damages. This was after a year and a half of bedbugs, raccoons, frozen toilets and even a break-in. 

The court’s decision was the good news, the bad news is she still hasn't been paid. 

To quote, ''I am in awe of how there is so little enforcement in terms of tenants’ rights. If I owed my landlord $50,000 in rent I would have been evicted in an instant.''

 One law for the rich and one for the poor.

S.P.C. Members.

The Fiery Effects of Capitalism

On June 30 a fire propelled by 50 km. an hour winds swept through the village of Lytton, B.C. leaving a trail of devastation. 

Lytton, home to 250 people and 2,000 indigenous in the surrounding area, had to be immediately evacuated. 

One resident said, ''I was relaxing in my living room when I looked out the window and saw my lawn on fire. Fortunately, in view of the speed of the fire, only 2 people died. 

At the time of writing, it hasn't been determined what caused the fire, but we do know if the effects of capitalism, had not caused global warming, hence the excessive heat in western Canada it would not have happened.

S.P.C. Members.

Their agenda or ours

"For most of my adult life I’ve railed against “corporate capitalism”, “consumer capitalism” and “crony capitalism”. It took me a long time to see that the problem is not the adjective but the noun." - George Monbiot

Only with world socialism, a society without borders will human beings be able to deal with the damage that has been done to the planet by capitalism. The heart of the matter is that capitalism does not produce things to satisfy human needs. It produces “commodities” to be sold in order to make a profit for the capitalists. It is an eternal infernal cycle of endless growth for the accumulation of capital. No matter how many people change their lifestyle and declare consumer boycotts there is no way forward to a sustainable steady-state system without first getting rid of capitalism and that will happen the working people end wage slavery, organising production communally to directly provide for human needs. Private property will disappear and money made redundant.

Capitalism gives us waste production for the pursuit of profit at all costs, no matter the social price paid, and today we all experience the consequences. we have to get rid of capitalism, abolish national frontiers and create a system of world governance that starts from people’s real needs and not the quick fix of some immediate palliative reforms enacted by corporate-friendly governments. It’s time to abolish the long-expired system of world capitalism. Of all the numerous capitalist projects which claim to be a solution, none of them has worked. We must overthrow the very law that is the basis of capitalism — the law of value. Capitalism does not produce things to satisfy human needs. It produces “commodities”, things that can be sold. Indeed capitalism’s whole history has been about inventing needs which it turns into commodities. If a product can be commodified/monetised then it becomes a priority for the system, but if it fails to meet that criteria, it is ignored and neglected. The only solution is to abandon the law of value. It is the root of the climate problem.

"Our choice comes down to this. Do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?" - George Monbiot

Socialism - The Do-It-Yourself Movement

 

In these times of disease pandemics and economic and political plagues, there is fear, dread and anxiety that is triggering discontent and unrest among both right and left wings.

 

Unlike many Catholic theologians in regard to the Pope, the Socialist Party claim no infallibility for Marx. We claim only that he discovered a set of laws in the materialist philosophy which describes the changes which have occurred and will occur in man’s evolution. Marxism is not laid down only in the books and writings of Marx and Engels but is above all incorporated in the movement of the class-conscious workers’ movement. Mankind has been transformed many times in the course of history. From barbarism to conditions that existed under feudal society, to what we can see today. 

 

 Socialism is not a dogma but is a system of ideas that tells of world society without classes, a society of abundance. The changes in the mode of production, and with it the change in the relationships of men, will eliminate greed and the other driving motive forces under present-day society and replace them with entirely different ones. With that, man will begin to undergo a great transformation.

 

In practically every country, city and community, there are people involved in issues and struggles to improve their situation or stop injustices that they face. These struggles involve not just socialists or political activists but many different people, ordinary working people. These various struggles are important and can make a big difference. While reforms are important, we believe that no amount of reform of the present system can offer any lasting improvements, security or stability for the working peoples or fundamentally alter their position in society. While some fight for the immediate improvement of the people’s well-being, the Socialist Party has the long-term interests of the people and the long-range goal in mind which is to build towards revolution.

 

By revolution, we mean the overthrow of the capitalist ruling class and the basic economic system of society. We believe a revolution is necessary because the problems of this society – the economic problems of inflation and recession, social ills – are all the product of the capitalist system itself. The basic nature of capitalism is that while the vast majority of people work and produce the wealth of society, a handful of owners control all the wealth – the factories, mines, transport and farm fields, and all the profits that are produced. The ruling class prosper at the expense of the vast majority of the people, and their constant drive for profit and more profit results in only more problems and suffering for the people.

 The socialist revolution will take the basic means of production from the hands of the capitalists, and turn these into common property. Working people will hold economic power and political power, and will use it for the benefit of the working people and not their detriment. Exploitation will be eliminated and production will serve the needs of the people. The profit motive of the capitalists will no longer determine everything, problems can be handled in a rational way according to the actual interests of the majority.

What does socialism mean? Among the many written and spoken statements and explanations about socialism, one encounters very different answers, each according to the attitude which the author takes to the socialist movement.

The people who oppose socialism attempt to imprint on it all possible folly and horror, in order to scare people away from any serious study of socialism. Covering up capitalist exploitation is precisely the main job of reformism. They slander the advocates and adherents, to the best of their ability.  If you meet someone, who is anti-union, who is anti-worker and anti-socialist, you can guarantee, that person will turn out to be racist,  turn out to be an anti-semite, and turn out to be anti-foreigner. 

They depict a distorted picture of the socialists and their aim, socialism. It is pointless to quarrel over who invented the word other than very quickly it entered the language as the name for a certain form of human economic activity, for a particular mode of production.

To business owners, working people must sell their labour-power. To these business owners belong the products which are produced by the propertyless wage earner and which in the end will be consumed by those who are in a position to buy the commodities. So today it is precisely the private ownership of the means of production that gives to the owner the possibility to take hold of and turn to account the product of others' labour namely that of the actual producer. 

The means of production have become capital and their owners' capitalists. Hence the powerful class divisions in the world: the class of wage earners, who to maintain their poverty-stricken existence have to produce, day in and day out, for the capitalist class, the owners of the means of production, who with the growth of the productive powers of human labour accumulate ever greater wealth. The accumulation of capital must, out of an inner necessity, drive capitalism into its crises.

This capitalist mode of production shall be replaced by the socialist model. With socialism, the means of production, land and soil, quarries and mines, raw materials, tools, machines, transport, will be transferred to the common ownership of society. They shall no longer serve individuals as a means of living off the labour of others, no longer be the means of the economic enslavement of the propertyless. Commodity production of independent private producers is changed into a planned social production by the people and for the people. And through it will be engendered the greatest possible wealth for the enjoyment of life and the cultural development of all members of society.

 Socialism will bring about the greatest possible good for all members of society, the most wonderful cultural blossoming. It makes impossible all forms of exploitation of man by man, but, on the contrary, secures for each individual the maximum all-round development of talent. So cannot socialists be described as the "true Christians" in the sense of the genuine brotherhood of mankind, loving thy neighbour as thyself?

Socialism today is in the main the description of a social order which is founded upon the common ownership of the means of production. Socialism is indeed that of a world outlook. Liberal intellectuals will at the most accept certain views from Marxism, yet treats Marxism as a patchwork, an isolated scientific phenomenon to cherry-pick particular passages. Marxism or socialism is a universal science. No cloud-cuckoo-land speculation over mystical and supernatural ideas, but rooted deep in the world outlook of historical materialism, by which mankind seeks clarity about nature and the development of the visible world around, not as fixed and unalterable, but as a process of change.  The liberation of the working class - is a distinctly political task and consequently, we have the doctrine of class struggle.

The Highland Clearances

 A socialist talks about the Highland Clearances

Alwyn Edgar, 16th July 2021

The Highland Clearances pt.1
The Highland Clearances pt.2