Our aim is world socialism

 

Internationalism is a vital part of the socialist movement. It is a powerful antidote for some of capitalism's most  virulent poisons such, including racism, divisive patriotism and xenophobia, chauvinisms of all kinds. Recognition of the interest all exploited peoples have in ending the system of class rule provides a powerful bulwark against the bellicose, war-mongering propaganda. Given the current weakness of socialist movement, the global solidarity of the world’s working class remains an aspiration. Nationalism is used by the capitalist class deliberately to blind the workers to their own material interests and to to keep the working people of the world divided against each other in the name of "national interest" and to owe allegiance to the nation and not ones fellow worker.

As Marx once remarked, “The nationality of the toilers is neither French nor English nor German; it is toil, free slavery, sale of the self. His government is neither French nor English nor German; it is Capital. His native air is neither French nor German nor English; it is the air of the factory. The land which belongs to him is neither French nor English nor German; it is a few feet under the ground."

When anti-war campaigners criticise militarism yet uphold the capitalist system, they are attacking an effect while defending the cause. The only road to permanent peace lies in the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism under which goods will be produced for use and the means of wealth production will be socially owned. The workers of the world, including those in the anti-war movements, must listen to and heed the Socialist Party. We believe that the conclusion is inescapable that the only way to end the threats of war is a fundamental change to an entirely new social system. 

SOCIALISM DOES NOT MEAN government or State ownership. 

SOCIALISM MEANS common ownership by all the people of the factories, mines,transport, land and all the other instruments of wealth-production. Socialism means production of things to satisfy human needs, and not, as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Socialism means free access to and democratic management of the industries by the workers. Socialism means a full, happy and useful life. It means the opportunity to develop all your faculties and latent talents. It means that, instead of being a mere chattel bought and sold on the job market, an appendage to a machine, an automaton, a producer of wealth for the parasite class, you will take your place as a human being in a free society of human beings, and a participant in its running.

Working inside socialism will not be dependant on the caprices either of a private employer or the capitalist market. When things are produced to satisfy human needs, instead of primarily for sale and profit, involuntary idleness will be an impossibility. The "demand," instead of being limited to what people can buy, will be limited only to what people can use. Nor will technological unemployment be possible with socialism. Instead of being made redundant, surplus to requirements, the improved methods of new technology will reduce the hours of the working day and make work more pleasurable. Socialism alone can give jobs for all and open wide the doorway to economic opportunity. A job of work in socialism will be the minimum necessary to fulfil society's needs. Work is not the end and aim of a person's existence; it is the means to an end. We do not live to work; we work to live. Socialism will, therefore, strive in every way to lighten the burden of mankind and give us the leisure to develop our faculties and live a happy, healthful, useful life.

DEMOCRACY is the foundation of this infinitely better world for which the material conditions are already present. Capitalist democracy is limited to the political field. Even there it is restricted and in constant peril. On the economic field, despotism prevails. Capitalism gives to the owning class the terrifying power to hurl millions upon the mercy of charity with a stroke of the pen. Socialism destroys this despotic power and creates an economic foundation for complete democracy.

In SOCIALISM, all authority will come from the workers integrally united in associations. Such is the full-flowered democracy of socialism - ECONOMIC FREEDOM!

YOU ARE NEEDED to help bring about the promise of abundance and human happiness that this age offers. You are needed to help avert capitalist tragedies. Prepare yourself to prepare others. Help us to unite the working class politically to demand the unconditional surrender of capitalism. Join with us to consolidate the workers' power, proclaim as your goal the goal of the working class.

Capitalism must go

The Right to be Lazy

 Exploitative wage labour is the most subtle form of slavery. The chattel slave and feudal serf knew full well they toiled in bondage but wage exploitation is hidden and modern workers seldom suspect they are being held in chains. The fact is the capitalist class take possession of labour's product at the point of production in return for which workers on average get paid just enough to maintain their families and to keep themselves in fit condition. Despite the most intricate evasions invented by "economic experts" the case has long been proved that profit is simply unpaid labour and nothing but unpaid labour. 

No wonder that Marxism is everywhere hated by the apologists of the wages system. The capitalist class hires its "intellectuals" to denigrate Marx, teach the economic absurdity that capital creates wealth, and spread the infamous lie that the former U.S.S.R. represented real socialism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Socialism is industrial democracy, the most complete democracy yet conceived. Socialism is a class-free society that replaces the political state of class rule. By replacing production for sale and profit with production for the needs of the population, and by harnessing our ability to produce an abundance with a minimum of labour, socialism will end poverty.

With socialism, there will be no unemployment problem. Since, instead of being owned privately and operated to produce things for sale and profit, the industries will be owned collectively by all the useful producers and operated to produce things for use, there will be no such thing as involuntary idleness. Instead of kicking workers out of the industries, robotics will enable us to shorten the workday, work week, and work year, while at the same time it will vastly increase the basis for material well-being. Technological progress will no longer be something for workers to fear, but an unqualified blessing that will ensure abundance and leisure for all with a minimum of toil by each. Nor can there be recessions in socialism. Production for use, combined with a system under which workers will receive, directly and indirectly, all that they produce, will end forever the social idiocy of want in the midst of plenty.

Artificial Intelligence and automation can be a blessing.

It can greatly increase our productivity. It can eliminate unpleasant, boring and dangerous work. It can result in immense improvements in mankind's material and cultural welfare. It can do all this, and more, without imposing the horrors of economic distress on millions of workers and their families. But it can do all these things only if the workers of America accomplish a Socialist reconstruction of society. Only through socialism can new technology fulfil its promise of abundance for all with a minimum of working hours. Only with socialism can robots be introduced without causing a single worker to suffer economic distress. In fact, socialism will install robots as rapidly as it is developed. But, instead of throwing workers onto a scrap heap, as happens today, the new machines will make possible a general reduction in working hours. All will then benefit from robotics, both in the greater abundance that will be available and in the enjoyment of increased leisure. Robotics will solve toil and drudgery but as long as the means of social production are privately owned, and production is carried on for sale and profit it will always be a curse. When this outmoded contradiction-ridden capitalist system is abolished, when the industries are socially owned and democratically administered, and when production is carried on to satisfy human needs -- that is, when socialism is established -- automation will be a blessing for everyone.

Working people are different in many ways yet alike in so many others. We work hard. We depend on our pay to live, feel stressed out by too many working hours, or too few. We worry about our future, fret about the future of our children. We are in college or in prison; retired or disabled. Young, old, unemployed or underemployed or suffering too much from compulsory overtime. technicians and nurses. Delivery drivers and software developers. Teachers and cashiers. Designers and scientists. We are the working class.

Without us, nothing could happen, be produced, nothing grown or harvested, nothing fixed or invented. Whether we live in suburban developments or inner cities; in an apartment or a house; pay rent or owe on a mortgage or are homeless. We are just making it but worry we might lose it all. We must work for our living or suffer the consequences. As a class, as a community and as a people, we share the same basic needs and basic desires: to live in and be part of a healthy, peaceful and humane society. 

We in the Socialist Party are like so many others, looking for real change and seeking a path to get it. We look to the alternatives of the profit and competitive economic system, the way industry and society is run today. We need a strategy that can take us from where we are, to where we want to go. We believe our case for socialism is the solution.

Nationalist? Not Us

 

The SNP is to resume making the case for independence - with the goal of holding a referendum by the end of 2023.  It had previously paused its promotion on separatism and its indyref2 plans because of Covid.

The SNP's power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens means the two parties form a pro-independence majority at Holyrood.

The Socialist Party, its Glasgow and Edinburgh branches and the scattered members across Scotland have not shifted their principled position advanced back in 2014. We oppose all varieties of nationalism. 

When we speak of aspiring towards a cooperative commonwealth, we think of a confederation of free peoples united in one common bond - socialism. Not any parochial claim to nation-hood.

We aim at a new society without the State, without government, without classes, in which the workers shall administer the means of production and distribution for the common benefit of all. We advocate for a world where there is no longer any master, no longer any slave, for the abolition of wage slavery and the creation of the cooperative commonwealth.

A rather more ambitious and revolutionary goal than mere Holyrood rule.

SURVIVE with SOCIALISM or SUFFER with CAPITALISM

 

Once established, socialism will confer on the people a power far greater than could ever be ensured by such things as the United States Constitution and rights bestowed by the United Nations. Working people will determine what to produce and what not to produce. The Socialist Party holds that the very essence of socialism is inherent in the word itself -- a SOCIAL order that, freed from the economic class rule, serves the common interests of the people-as-a-whole. Socialism is that social system under which the necessaries of production [factories, technology, transport, land, etc.] are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people, and under which, accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at an end. That is socialism, nothing short of that.

 

 If society is to be lifted out of the capitalist morass it is now in, the lifting can be done only by a working-class informed of both the goal of socialism - a working-class enlightened upon the aim.  We must organise politically as a class to demand at the ballot that all the means of life become the whole property of society. We all know through experience that capitalism can't be planned and cannot endure the well-being of all members of society. Only socialism can do that by removing the capitalist ownership of the means of living [the industries and services] and by ensuring that the anarchy of production is removed by the abolition of profits and wages, prices and money. 

It is necessary for a socialist working class to gain political control, but only for the purpose of dispossessing the capitalist class and opening the way for the community as a whole to take over the means of production and distribution, and democratically use them for the good of all. The State, with its coercive machinery, will be dismantled as its function -- the custodian of private property -- will have disappeared. New social institutions of administration based on the new social conditions will be democratically formed.

 

Capitalism is careening toward eventual collapse. Socialists are in a race against time, trying to build a viable socialist movement before the catastrophes of capitalism brings about irreparable global destruction. Isn't it high time our fellow workers understood that instead of hacking at the branches of evil it had better strike at the root? Haven't decades of government band-aid reforms failed to cure or even contain the social ills we grew up with? Unemployment, poverty, pollution, racism, crime, war - who still believes that politicians have meaningful solutions for these scourges? There are no two ways about it.  The evidence is overwhelming that if society is to experience social well being instead of social catastrophe it must soon remove the root cause of the problems that afflict it.

The Socialist Party stands four-square on the solid, time tested ground that the primary and overriding cause of all the grave social problems that confront us today is not an imperfect "human nature" but economic class division. We hold that the root of the trouble is class ownership of the huge industrial complexes upon which all of us depend for our lives. Therefore let us not talk about palliatives but focus on class conflict and what can be done about it. As the wage system imperils society, society must abolish the wage system and its organ of oppression, the state. That is, the immense majority that comprises the modern wage working class must replace class possession and class government with social ownership and transform capitalist or state-run economies into cooperative commonwealths.

"Socialism" is a much-abused word; however, it is not hard to separate the true from the false. SOCIALism necessarily rejects kinship with whoever advances "government ownership," "state control" or "mixed economy". Genuine socialism completely dissociates itself from wage slavery. Socialism means industrial democracy. Socialism conveys a plan whereby any time it is so minded the working-class majority can take social possession of the socially operated industrial means of life and thus, at last, redeem mankind from the terrible outrages inflicted upon it by blind, ruthless, ruling class greed. Socialism is truly the one hope of humanity.

The Waste of Capitalism

 Scottish vegetable growers are having to throw away millions of cauliflower and broccoli heads due to a shortage of farmworkers and lorry drivers.

The East of Scotland Growers (ESG) group, a farmers' co-operative in Fife, has estimated that it has scrapped 3.5m heads of broccoli and 1.9m heads of cauliflower so far as a result of the crisis.

Managing director of ESG, Andrew Faichney, said that he was concerned that producers hadn’t seen the end of the problems already crippling the industry.

He said: “We should have started our freezing production last weekend, but, as yet, we haven’t frozen a single floret of broccoli. The delay in freezing is a result of a lack of lorries to haul frozen product out of freezer stores to retail depots.” He continued: “With a shortage of lorries, retailers are prioritising short shelf-life products - the net result being storage is now at capacity, and there is nowhere to store processed product.”

Not only are there issues finding heavy goods vehicle drivers to transport food to cold stores, but farmers are also struggling to find enough people to harvest the vegetables.

Faichney said that he was working with around 80 per cent of the required workforce on the farm, meaning staff were earning extra money for working overtime.

“The fear is that these workers will head home earlier than required due to reaching their financial target,” he said. “They are actually starting to disappear off farm already, where historically we have relied on workers finishing the fruit season and migrating over to field veg in the months of September and October.”

Scottish food and farming organisations sent a letter to the UK and Scottish governments this week calling for more action to tackle the labour crisis ahead of the crucial Christmas season. The letter said: “Both Brexit and the pandemic have accelerated existing pressures on labour availability..."

Richard Harrow, chief executive of the British Frozen Food Federation, said: “Labour shortages throughout the food supply chain are creating a ‘perfect storm’ of increasing costs for our members. While the long-term solution is to train more UK nationals, we will only avoid further disruption to food supplies and inflationary cost increases by sorting out temporary visa measures.”

Millions of vegetables thrown away as labour shortages hit farmers | The Independent

Build A Sane World

 

For years, the Socialist Party has encouraged workers to take control of the economy and use the means of production to meet the needs of the people rather than to make profits. Socialists maintain that the capitalists' profits are a theft from the working class because the working class produces all social wealth. A class of parasites is not needed for production to be organised in an efficient manner. Production will operate far more efficiently, in the social interest, when the workers themselves are in full control of production and distribution.

A state-run economic system is not socialism! Karl Marx and Frederick Engels clearly distinguished between state ownership of the means of production and social ownership. They opposed the very existence of the state. State ownership means the continued existence of governmental power over and above the people themselves; it signifies continued class rule. Social ownership means that the people themselves, collectively and democratically, control the use of the means of production. Marx and Engels described socialism as a society run by "associations of free and equal producers."

 The former Soviet Union never was a socialist country. At no time did the USSR ever have place a system in which the people owned all the means of production and in which the decisions governing production and distribution were made by democratic associations encompassing all the workers. At no time did the workers dismantle the state, or abolish exploitation and the wages system. Furthermore,  the Socialist Party pointed out in 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution was not, and could not have been, a socialist revolution. Russia in 1917 had none of the material prerequisites for socialism. It was a backward, semi-feudal country, incapable of eliminating scarcity. It had very little industry and only a small minority of people belonged to the working class.

Socialism can only be established by a class conscious, organised majority of the working class. It can only be built by workers who understand the need to prevent any individual or group from gaining the power to control production or distribution. The structure of a socialist society would preclude a bureaucratic takeover. Control of society's economic resources would be in the collective hands of the working class. All persons elected to serve in the committees, councils and congresses running industry, and administering the economy as a whole, would be responsible only for performing designated administrative tasks. They would have no bureaucratic power to dictate production or distribution goals toward their own individual enrichment.

 We live in a social system and culture that teaches us that the way to survive, and "get ahead" materially, is to compete for positions of power, gain dominance over others, and, ultimately, become an owner of productive property and exploit others. Not surprisingly, many people come to greedily and competitively crave power and wealth above all else.

But such behaviour is not a fixture of human nature. People clearly have the capability of being cooperative as well as competitive, supportive and helpful as well as antagonistic, egalitarian as well as selfish. All of these qualities are part of "human nature." We can and do choose to employ one quality or the other, depending on how our material circumstances and interests affect us, and how we perceive our own self-interest. It is also part of our human nature to think, evaluate our circumstances and change our behaviour when we conclude that doing so is in our self-interest.

Accordingly, socialism is not contrary to human nature. For the vast majority of the people who belong to the working class today, it does no good to be greedy, competitive or power-hungry; capitalism rewards them with hardship. Sooner or later, a majority of workers can and will come to the realization that their own self-interest demands the creation of a new social system based on social ownership of the industries and cooperative production for the common good. Once a socialist society is established, the material and other rewards of that system will continue to reinforce cooperative behaviour and nullify selfishness, greed and the desire for power over others.

The idea that there would be no incentive for workers to be productive in a socialist society is a myth. In a genuinely socialist society, workers would have strong incentives to work conscientiously and improve the means and methods of production-incentives far stronger than those that exist under capitalism. The ethical and social incentive to be a productive and responsible member of society would be reinforced by the knowledge that one's efforts would truly be benefiting all society, and not merely an idle class of social parasites.

Socialism is grounded in material realities. It is grounded in the reality that it is now objectively and physically possible for society to meet the basic human needs and wants of all the people -- and more. It is grounded in the reality that capitalism stands as an obstacle to society realizing this potential to meet the needs and wants of all. It is grounded in the reality that society's sole useful producers -- the working class, which includes all who do productive work, mental or physical -- are increasingly being denied their material needs and wants under the present system. 

All that's missing is for workers to recognise their true interests as a class, understand the socialist goal, and begin organising as a class to establish it. Thus, socialism is realistic. The workers already collectively occupy the industries every day and operate them from top to bottom. The only thing they don't do is own them, control them, and control their product. 

Workers' Control

 

Socialism is a product of the mass movement, and can never divorce itself from practice. Socialism is not an idle dream. Socialism is the ideal and ideology of the exploited class. It can be misleading simply to advocate seeking happiness for all humanity, as humanity is not a whole, and it is divided into two antagonistic classes. We are materialists, We understand that the arrival of social revolution cannot be determined by our good intentions. Only a social revolution can allow us to build a really free and really egalitarian society. Today "freedom” and “equality" are part of the vocabulary of each and every one of us. However, the reality is that those words mean that the capitalists can loot the common wealth of our planet and are allowed to live in peace. The people who stand most vehemently against socialist ideas are those who understand them the least.

“Reformism” is the doctrine of those who, while saying they support a social transformation of society propose to arrive at this goal by a series of reforms realised within the framework of Parliament. Those political parties who say they are of the “vanguard” and proclaim themselves revolutionary are all more or less reformist. The more reformist they are, the less revolutionary they are, and, consequently, the less revolutionary they are, the more reformist they are. There is but one plank for the Socialist Party platform - the abolition of wage slavery. It is important to recognise reformism as traps and lures to divert our movement from its aim of emancipation. The Socialist Party is frequently accused of professing the doctrine of “all or nothing.” In this accusation there is some truth, but only some. 

The Socialist Party holds that involvement in daily struggles is not inherently reformistic. Indeed, such involvement, conducted in principled, class conscious, non-opportunistic fashion is an indispensible aspect of the class war. In practical terms, the worker can, by participating in workers' daily struggles, gain first hand knowledge and experience that will aid him or her in improving strategy and tactics thus bringing socialist perspectives to the attention of the workers involved. We will not declare themselves satisfied and won’t be so until we have forever ended capitalism and substituted for it, our principle: the well-being for each and for all. All our work is aimed at this goal:  economic and social liberation, the complete emancipation of the workers, the producing class.  We seek to free those who are exploited and enslaved by the capitalist system.

Cooperatives and employee-owned businesses resolve none of the basic problems facing workers under capitalism. All the basic relations of capitalist production, exploitation of wage labor, production for sale and profit, and the like remain in effect. It isworker capitalism, not worker management. No matter who owns it, it's going to have to be run like a conventional enterprise.

Even if an individual "worker-owned" company were to be run collectively and democratically by its workers, it would still function within the overall context of a capitalist economy. "Worker ownership" does not miraculously free a company from the anarchy of the marketplace, competition, and the effects of capitalism's recurrent economic crises. In order to compete in such a climate, "worker-owned" enterprises have little choice but to intensify exploitation just as much as their capitalist-owned competitors do. They must, modernise outmoded equipment and lay off workers made superfluous by automation, and pay the market rate for wages, and no higher.

It is understandable that at times such as these of insecurity some workers will be attracted to the idea of "worker-ownership." They are desperately seeking ways to assure a livelihood for themselves and their families. But the experience of cooperative schemes demonstrates that they do not attack the cause of workers' misery. In fact, to make such schemes "succeed" in a capitalist context, workers must make more sacrifices and intensify their own exploitation.

Yet, such schemes do demonstrate that production in no way depends on the superintence of the  capitalist class whose sole function is to drain off the social wealth produced by workers' labor. But, if the concept of worker ownership is to truly benefit workers, it must be effected on a society-wide basis. To do that, a socialist revolution is needed to abolish the entire system based on private ownership and control of the means of production by a parasitic capitalist class. The potential of worker ownership can be fully realised only by replacing an economic system based on exploitation, competition, the market and the profit motive with one based on social co-operation for the common good. What workers must gain is not nominal ownership of individual enterprises, but real control of the entire economy.