Socialism the sane alternative to capitalism

 

The Socialist Party has never made a  secret of the fact that we believe that whatever divisions exist between the various sections of the working class will have to be overcome in the struggle for socialism, whether they be ethnic, racial, sexual, sectarian, or anything else. We all need to understand our own class interests and recognise how they differ from the interests of the ruling class. Everywhere, the capitalists invest enormous efforts and resources in convincing us that we have more in common with them, on the basis of factors like race religion and nationality than with our fellow workers. We believe that the only real solution is the organisation of the class as a whole, fighting for its unified interests internationally.

As members of the working class, we produce all of the wealth and we get in return -- a wage. It is just enough to maintain us and enable us to breed replacements, who, in their turn, will surrender their fate and destiny for a wage. So long as capitalism lasts, there is no escape for us from the desperate need to sell ourselves. Our capacity to labour is all we have to sell, and we must sell it to the capitalists. That's how the capitalists make a profit -- by exploiting the working class. That is, the working class produces all the wealth, from which the capitalist ruling class takes the largest portion, in this process of exploitation, and, in return, gives its slaves a wage. 

 

The fact that some workers have an iPhone, a car, and perhaps have paid off their mortgage to own their home does not alter the fact that they are exploited. Indeed, the debts usually connected with such ownership fasten the chains of wage slavery even more securely. Every aspect of capitalist society is misery -- wars for profit and plunder, race hatred dividing the working class, the slums we live in, the ruination of our environment, expensive, poor or nonexistent medical care, inadequate education, the second-class status of women, drug abuse, riots, crime -- in short, every one of those brutal, callous, cruel, and desperate things which go on every hour, every minute, in a capitalist society, grows out of exploitation.

If we want to stop the degradation, we must end exploitation. If we want to free ourselves from wage slavery, we must abolish the profit system. If we want to live decent lives of freedom and fulfilment, we must build a socialist economic democracy. The foundation on which the capitalist system of profit and poverty is built is exploitation, and its utter, final, irrevocable abolition must be our goal. We must never be sidetracked, never be drawn aside by other, seeming more attractive goals. We must never waste ourselves on reforming symptoms. The goal, the abolition of the system of wage slavery, is ALL. Then we can reap the full abundance of our social product, realizing humanity's great dream: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

We want to live in a DEMOCRACY in which we, the people, have real control of all matters that affect our lives.

To accomplish that revolution, we must organise politically and we must use every forum open to us, from the soap box to the ballot box, to spread the idea of revolution. Since the means of operation of the ruling class, its private control over what in effect must be common property will be abolished, our socialist commonwealth will be a class-free society with no elite "Vanguard Party" leading us by the nose into a bureaucratic "Worker's State" so its cadres can climb on our backs like any ruling class, we must be conscious of what we are doing and where we're going, conscious to a degree never before seen in a revolution. Given the consciousness of wage slavery, given the knowledge of how to end it, our second task, organisation, will inevitably follow.

 

Ours is a POLITICAL PARTY with a clear platform advocating fundamental change and an alternative vision, based on grass-roots decision-making where we live and where we work. We can PEACEFULLY VOTE INTO OFFICE OUR CANDIDATES transform our economy and institutions into a true democracy - 'Of, For and By The People'- dedicated to protecting and promoting the health and well-being of all and ESTABLISH A NEW SOCIETY, replacing profit and market competition with cooperation and direct democratic ownership of all the natural resources, industries, distributions, allocations and social services.

Can You resist? The Pressure to Conform.

In its issue of Aug 7, the Toronto Star revealed that Canada's largest airport, Toronto's Pearson, is a surveillance hot-spot. 

Reporters found that faces of millions of travellers were captured using facial recognition technology (FTR).

 If a face matched with a person in a database of 5,000 deportees, the technology would inform Canada's Border Agency officers and direct them to question the individual. 

Many a reasonable person would approve on the premise that they don't want really bad dudes coming into the country, not realizing the day may come when the capitalist class consider the same person a bad dude or dudette. 

Never has there been a time where the pressure to conform has been so great and for the powers-that-be to have control they need through information on all of us.

S.P.C. Members.

The Blessings of Capitalism?

The federal government is planning to spend $321 million on native-Canadian communities and will appoint a ''special-interlocutor'' to propose law and policy changes to better respond to the findings of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential school sites. 

This comes at a time when Prime Minister Trudeau has called an election in which his government's record on Indigenous matters will be an issue. National Chief Rose Archibald, though welcoming the news said, ''Residential schools were institutions of assimilation and genocide and the Canadian government along with the churches, committed crimes against humanity at those facilities.”

 History shows that the genocide of native people was committed everywhere Europeans brought them the blessings of capitalism.

S.P.C. Members.

Understand the World to change it.

 In order to make the everyday decisions as well as the long-range planning decisions for the economy as a whole, we must have a decision-making system in place. There will need to be town meetings and community assemblies, community. At work, there will be elected management committees and workers’ councils, to coordinate the economy as a whole. It is essential to ensure that a new economic system operates as it's supposed to - to direct human resources to meet human needs, with the least waste and damage to the environment as possible.

Politicians have no useful talents for industrial management, only a socially destructive knack for bamboozling working-class citizens, to help enrich a handful of corporate owners. They are easily done without, as are the capitalists they work for. We can do away with the old system of professional leaders.

The workers' movement must organise politically. Until the majority agrees to change society along these lines, a change cannot take place. A socialist party with a straightforward revolutionary programme will rally the people behind it. Its vote will indicate the level of support reached for their platform, and encourage others to support it. And once it has won a majority of the electorate, the vote will be the legal mandate to transfer ownership of the industries to the people. At that critical point, the socialist party will be in possession of the State and will be in the most strategic position to prevent the political powers - the police and military - from being used against the new government. Political action is thus essential to minimise violence and bloodshed. With the new government secure, and in control of the nation, the old State powers can be dismantled, and, with them, their potential for future mischief.

Most people today discount the possibility of capitalism ever being dethroned. Capitalism, they say, is here to stay. After all, hasn't capitalism already vanquished socialism? The claim of efficiency for capitalism is pure nonsense. Capitalism has given us traffic jams and grid-lock rather than efficient mass-transit systems; a high percentage of potential industrial output standing idle; the incredible waste of planned obsolescence and duplicated effort; dependence on fossil fuels instead of renewable resources; the destruction of our nation's soil and aquifers; depletion of wildlife and fish stocks; the burning of the rainforests; the massive production and use of weapons which destroy wealth rather than create it. The list could be extended almost indefinitely. If some believe capitalism is the best we can do, they should take another look. If they understood capitalism better, they just might learn to hate it more. Many people think that the word capital is just another word for "money" or "wealth." For instance, a person might say something like, "I don't have enough capital to buy a new car. But capital is not just money. In fact, capital doesn't need to be money at all. Capital is wealth that its holder uses to get more wealth. If a company takes a certain amount of its money, its assets, and buys a piece of machinery, has its capital gone down? No. The new machinery has replaced the money as part of its capital. But the machinery is no more capital all by itself than money is. Your car is machinery, but it's not capital. The thing that makes the machinery a company buys into capital is its relation to labour, the workers who operate the machinery. When the workers go to work, they use the machinery to make things. When those things are sold, they are sold for a certain value, all of which has been created by the workers. But the workers don't get all the value their labour adds to the things they make. If they did, there would be no monetary value for the owner of the capital, no profit. It's this social relationship of owners and workers, the relationship that says the workers have to fork over part of the value they produce to the owners as the condition for being allowed to work, that makes wealth into capital.

Capitalism is not a type of government. There are capitalist dictatorships, governed by military strongmen, as well as capitalist republics, governed by elected representativesý of the people. The thing that makes them both capitalist is not the particular form of political machinery each has. What makes them capitalist is the economic relationship between the people who work and the people who own the workplaces. Under capitalism, those are two different groups. With socialism, they are one and the same. Under capitalism, those who do all the work are only allowed access to the workplaces and the chance to earn a living on condition that they fork over most of the value they add during the production process to the people who own the workplace. Thus, a person who adds $30 each hour to the product or service he or she works on may only be paid $10 for each hour she works. The rest goes to capital: the owner of the workplace, his banker, insurance company, marketing consultant, etc. To maintain this cosy state of affairs the capitalist class uses its great wealth to control the electoral process and screens out any political candidates who might interfere too much with the very undemocratic running of the nation's workplaces. Whatever the political government does, it is forbidden to really interfere in the economic relationship between workers and owners, or to do anything, however sorely needed by the vast majority of the population, against the basic interests of the owning capitalists.

 Socialism, on the other hand, the workers collectively are also the owners of the economy. All the goods and services created by the people who work belong to the working people who have a democratic say in the running of those workplaces, which is a major advance for democracy. In fact, democracy is the defining characteristic of true socialism. Socialism cannot be given to the workers by a political or intellectual elite, however sincere it may be. Socialist self-management can only be built by the informed and united action of the workers themselves.

Toronto and Vancouver awash in gun violence

 And it is getting worse.

 The gun-control group PolySeSouvient have their panties in a twist because they think the federal government is not doing enough to implement gun control laws. 

When Bill C-71 was passed in 2018 the feds said it would require sellers to verify the validity of a firearms licence before selling a non-restricted firearm. This was to prevent buyers from using stolen, borrowed or counterfeit licences. 

The problem, they claim, is that there is no obligation on the part of the seller to provide this information to the government. Though Poly-.etc. are mad about it they don't seem to realize that under capitalism everything can be had for a price. 

The feds can pass any law they want, but if someone wants a gun, they'll find a way to get one, hence we have cities like Toronto and Vancouver awash in gun violence and getting worse.

S.PC. Members.

Sky High Cost of Homes in The Toronto Area.

The cost of homes in Canada's major metropolitan areas has gone sky-high. The average price of houses in Vancouver increased 14.5 % to $1,117 million from June 2020 to June 2021. In the second quarter of this year, home prices in the Toronto area rose 18.2 % to a median price of $1.03 million. A June poll by the Vancouver polling firm, Research Co. found in B.C. and Ontario, 19% of respondents said housing issues were their main concern.

For those who cannot afford a house in the city, the choice isn't very nice; they can live out of town and pay fares to commute to work there or pay big city rents, which ain't cheap.

 Boy, what a system we live under.

S.P.C. Members.

Against Sham ‘Socialism’

 

The intellectual apologists and pundits of capitalism assure that socialist ideas are long dead and Marxism is no longer relevant in today's world. What they fail to acknowledge is that the vast part of Marx's writing was not about socialism, but about capitalism, and how this system affects our lives. And what he revealed and explained has not fundamentally changed.

Marx held it necessary for the attainment of socialism were production for people's needs and use, not for sale and profit; abolition of the wage system; and the replacement of the nation-state. Marx showed by historical analysis that the nation-state is founded on private property and private control over the means of life. The state, from its origin in the ancient world to govern slave-labour economies, to feudal and finally to capitalist society, has been an instrument of class rule. The state "is but the executive committee of the ruling class," Marx wrote, and "the existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery." He held that under socialism the political state must die out and some other institution, which he did not describe, would replace it. Whether it is argued that the former Soviet Union or the Scandinavian welfare state had socialism what will be found in Marx's basic principles are absent. There are many reasons why the USSR never achieved socialism, but the most important was that Russia was a feudal society in 1917. It had neither the economic base nor the political experience to organise a socialist society.

Economic democracy requires that we, as a society, gain control over the most important parts of our lives. Production and distribution will be planned to meet the needs of society. This will be a society of cooperating interests rather than conflicting material interests. People's priorities, their attitudes about life and their fellow humans, will change in an atmosphere of cooperation. The needs of the environment and consideration for all forms of life will be paramount. 

Under capitalism, all workers are economically exploited, although this robbery is well-hidden in the phrase, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work." To understand the robbery, you need to study Marx. In our new society, we will receive the full product of our labour. Our compensation will be direct, as individual consumers of food, clothing, shelter, recreation, etc., and indirect, as social consumers of roads, schools, parks, and the repair and replacement of the tools of production that we cooperatively own. Socialism will abolish the wage system and thereby correct the imbalance between production and consumption that creates such catastrophic problems under capitalism. Under capitalism, almost everything that is produced is produced for profit. The needs of humanity, and the needs of all life, are subordinated to the bottom line. As capitalism gained ascendancy in the world, everything was turned into a commodity to be bought and sold.

Marx showed how the introduction of new machinery and labour-saving methods by one capitalist requires industry-wide imitation by others and results in ever-increasing unemployment. He explained the process by which wealth concentrates into the hands of a few and how small capitalists and independent producers lose their property and fall into the ranks of the working class. In Capital, Marx shows us that labour is the source of all social wealth. Capital is wealth that has been stolen at the point of production from previous generations of workers. Capitalists, the biggest recipients of government welfare, are not the slightest interested in laissez-faire capitalism. Major corporations benefit from government-funded research and product development free and gratis. Military spending has provided them with a steady market for years. The only time capitalists promote laissez-faire capitalism is when they are trying to take away social programmes. They are only interested in eliminating the pittance that goes to their worker victims so they can keep more of the wealth they've robbed from us.

Was Marx correct? Today, 90% of us work for someone else, and only 5% own all the means of production. We now talk of the 1%, the 0.1% and even the 0.01% controlling and directing the wealth of the world. Not only is the relative position of the great majority falling as opposed to the tiny mega-rich minority, the absolute real wages of the bottom 80% are falling, resulting in a declining standard of living for the average worker. Anyone wanting to defend capitalism could have made some sort of case if the economic pie were shrinking. But for poverty and homelessness to be growing at a time when we have more real wealth in goods and services than ever before indicts capitalism as a criminal, or at best, a criminally inefficient system.

Claims that CEOs increase operational efficiency and create wealth thus deserving of their privilege and rewards is conflating the creation of wealth with the creation of profit. These increases in productivity are generally made by automating, speeding up, or otherwise reducing the amount of labour time spent on each article produced. Then the company can lower its price to take markets from the competition, forcing the competition to lower its costs in the same way or face going out of business.

 

Building an economic democracy is a major undertaking that will require both political and industrial action. We will need to set up a labour party whose sole platform will be a demand for economic democracy, and at the same time organise a new union movement. We must end the system. We need an economic democracy now!

Against our capitalist enemy

  

"My friends, never put your trust in, and never follow after, men who pretend to be able to manufacture a revolution. A revolution, a rolling away of the whole from evil to good, from wrong to right, from injustice and oppression to righteousness and equal rule, never yet was manufactured, and never will be manufactured..." - Rev. Joseph Rayner Stephens, Chartist  

The objective of socialists is the abolition of man’s exploitation by man. Socialism is as staunchly opposed to the conquest and exploitation, by whatever means, of race by race, nation by nation, or state by state, as it is to the exploitation of man by man.

Socialism is conceived as a society without exploitation, organised democratically for the common good. Socialism would mean the end of economic anxiety and insecurity for all. The ruling class does not like reasoned rational thought; it prefers regimented minds. Capitalism has shown that it cannot advance civilisation, but only drive it further along the road of conflict, human degradation, barbarism and ruin. It simply makes no sense to us when we are told that approaching capitalist barbarism diminishes the prospects of socialism and it is better for us to give up the fight. That is the talk of demoralised wage slaves. It is precisely the fact that capitalism is a growing threat that we should redouble our efforts to bury it. We reiterate our trust in the working people and dedicate our organisation to socialist emancipation.

Economic democracy means the end of the capitalist market, whose only goal is to gain the highest profit through the maximum exploitation of the working class. Labour-power will no longer be a commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. Workers will no longer be exploited. Workers will collectively own and run the workplaces. Workers will democratically control all of society. Production will be based on the needs and wants of all working people, taking into account environmental protection, conservation of resources and the needs of workers of other countries. Because we will be working and producing to meet our own needs and not for the profit of others, and because we will own and control the technology and use it to meet real human needs, we will be able to provide everyone with a comfortable and secure livelihood working far less than we do now. The workweek will be reduced and leisure time increased for all workers. We can't know exactly how the revolution will take place. But we do know that without organisation -- both political and economic, it can never take place.

Marx used the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" to mean control by the working class and excluding the property-owning bourgeoisie. He did not mean dictatorship as the word is often used today, as one-man rule or the one-party state.

All social wealth is ultimately the product of labour and labour alone. This includes the factories, technology and all other means of production, which are the product of past labour.

Capitalist development has placed the modern facilities of production under the lock and key of private ownership. As a result, the working class majority suffers from growing privation and all the social ills emanating from that maldistribution.

The only solution is for the working class to organise and establish economic democracy. In doing so, it can reestablish and reclaim possession of the wealth that past generations of workers created.

Since this wealth was created by the collective labour of society, it rightfully belongs to all society. The fact that it today is privately owned by a few is the result of it being "legally" stolen from the working class. Society thus has the right to reclaim the property in the name of human survival, social well-being and progress.

When a majority of society asserts its inalienable right to reorganise the structure of society, it must break the bonds of the old system's precepts. The new society will not "compensate" any capitalist, large or small, for taking over the means of production that rightly belongs to all society. In liberating society from all the constraints and evils imposed by the system of private property. Former capitalists need not lead deprived lives under economic democracy. They will be free to join former members of the working class in the community of free, self-governing producers. Like everyone else, they will be able to enjoy a life of material abundance and security, with a shortened workweek and under improved conditions. They will enjoy all the other numerous social benefits of life under a sane, healthy and peaceful social system and will enjoy the fruits of economic democracy.

Capitalism: The Real Enemy

 

Economic, social and environmental problems cannot be solved under capitalism. Working for a new system is the only practical course of action.

What is fair about the conservative mantra, "A fair day's wages for a fair day’s work..."? What is fair about a pickpocket economic system wherein capitalist profit derives from labour that the capitalist does not pay for? Socialism will harbour no such paradox as poverty in the midst of plenty. This is because workers will have united on both the political and industrial fields to inaugurate social control and worker administration of all industries and services, thus ending capitalism and wage slavery. What is more, it follows that in so doing they, the workers, will have also dumped into the garbage-bin of history the very thing that they are today struggling to get more of! MONEY. No more money? Are socialists mad? Not so. How, then, will a money-free society make available goods that are necessary for life and well-being? 

Disregarding a possible need for rationing in the immediate aftermath of a socialist political victory, the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties of the World Socialist Movement advocate free access.   We believe that deprived of the minority ownership of the means of production, the drudgery of work (and even within such a system, our natural creativity shapes our workday into as pleasurable and challenging an endeavour as possible) will be replaced by harmony between our product and our relationship to it. In short, we will all want to work as much as possible because the distinction between work and art (or free time) will have been eradicated. 

Today we have no problem with one-quarter of the workforce engaged in socially necessary products and services while the remaining three-quarters either produce unnecessary services such as accounting, banking, ticketing or policing, or are unemployed, or are being massacred in wars, or are dying of illnesses secondary to malnutrition. If a relatively small percent of workers' labour is able to maintain the millions of unemployed, "socially unnecessary" workers, starving workers, or murdering workers, then it will hardly be such a bad thing if all of humanity, now liberated of wage labour forever, sustains an ongoing percent (perhaps even half of the population at a time would be a realistic figure for all we know) whatever class they were in before. In fact, laziness, as Paul Lafargue once argued, should be the ethic replacing the current workaholism. We want socialism to be free, don't we?  Socialism will not be founded on the principle of "who does not work, neither shall he eat", also known by the distorted Marxist principle to make it "from each according to ability, to each according to work", a principle used to justify big salaries for civil servant bureaucrats,  a principle that says nothing about the needs of those who are unable to work -- the sick, the disabled, the old, the young. 

Capitalism has already solved -- potentially, at least -- the problem of scarcity, so that rationing would not be needed in a Socialist society. But, to be realistic, Socialism may be confronted by serious problems from time to time -- earthquakes, epidemics, crop failures, etc. -- which would put temporary and unusual pressure on a system based on 'free access.' Then, there may be local situations where some form of rationing might be necessary on a temporary basis. In such a situation, if the Socialist principle of "to each according to their needs" applied, priority would be given to those most in need, and -- if their need was less not necessarily to those who work hardest. 

Our goal seeks to bring the entire economy under the ownership and control of all the people. A democratic economy will provide useful and satisfying jobs for all workers. It will end production for-profit and will produce to meet human needs. By eliminating the profit motive, will end waste and pollution and will make the conditions of work as safe, comfortable and gratifying as possible. the workers will need a political party to spread the idea of social ownership, and to gain the support of the majority at the polls. When this is achieved, the workers will assume control of their workplaces, and manage them democratically. Socialism is not state control from the top down. It's a state-free democracy from the bottom up. A workers' political party with a single demand -- The Workplaces to the Workers! -- will educate and rally the majority for a revolution at the ballot box, the people's mandate for economic democracy.

Create a good society for the World. Replace bosses' economic dictatorship with a peoples' economic democracy

 

Two Very Sick Symptoms of Capitalism.

Last month you read about the devastating fire which destroyed Lytton B.C. The residents are dealing with confusion about where to go for support. It's a problem some of them think could be solved with the support of the provincial and federal governments. There have been fundraisers, but how many of them are trustworthy is a moot point.

 Patrick Michell, chief of the Kanaka Band in the area said that determining the legitimacy of fundraisers has been a huge problem for the community.

 To quote,''...I am concerned about scams, wasted donations, profiteering and ensuring sustainable supports given the time it’s going to take to get the Lytton 1200 homes.'' 

So, we have two very sick symptoms of capitalism at work here: governments who don't care and those who seek to profit from others’ misfortune.

S.P.C. Members.

The Capitalist Class Don’t Give a Damn.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford want to increase greenhouse gas-fired power plants by 300% by 2030. To help fuel this massive increase in fossil fuel electricity and climate-damaging pollution, Ontario Power Generation recently bought 3 gas plants for $2.8 billion. 

Obviously, Ontario will not be able to meet its climate target for 2030. 

This is just another instance of the capitalist class not giving a damn about the well-being of the population.

S.P.C. Members.

Imagining Socialism

 

The poverty afflicting the world’s people is not due to moral defects in its victims. It is not due to "laziness" or "." Nor because of too many babies. It is due to the capitalist system under which goods are produced for sale with the aim of making profits. Capitalist profits come from the exploitation of the mass of workers who have only one thing to sell -- their labour-power. The average price they get for this in the jobs market amounts to a so-called living wage. And millions of workers get far less than the minimum necessary to make ends meet. But the chance to earn even a meagre "living wage" is periodically denied to numerous workers. This happens whenever their employers can't sell the goods their employees produce. At such times, workers who have been living from hand to mouth while employed are soon destitute. Worse yet, capitalism has reached the stage where millions of workers are permanently doomed to unemployment and pauperdom. And the increased use of automation is steadily swelling their number. Poverty is a consequence of the normal functioning of capitalism. It is an evil that persists under this system despite constant increases in productivity.

Our natural environment and resources are rapidly being destroyed: Our atmosphere is choked with toxic fumes. Our water systems is poisoned by industrial pollution. Our forests are being razed to the ground and ashes. Our soil is being contaminated and our food is adulterated by chemical additives. What is responsible for the suicidal destruction of our natural heritage? It is the rapacity and greed of the class that owns the industry. Driven by a hunger for profits, and by the pressure of competition, capitalists operate with a wanton disregard for our health and safety. To lower their production costs and boost their profits, they wilfully use our air and water as their private sewer.  But the destruction of our natural environment will not be stopped by blaming particular individuals or corporations. It is the capitalist system that is at fault. The laws of economic survival inherent in this system dictate the actions of the capitalist class. And the capitalist who hesitates to engage in the same antisocial acts as his competitors soon faces bankruptcy. There is no room for human considerations in the capitalist system. It is time we returned the compliment by forming a society in which there is no room for capitalist greed.

People born into the working class are fated to stay wage-slaves, with very few exceptions. While some may rise to supervisory or acquire professional positions, even there they remain hirelings subject to the capitalist will.  Capitalism is a most unfree system. It is, in fact, economic slavery because it compels that majority to toil for the benefit of the capitalist minority. The situation is not improving. The trend is definitely the other way. More and more small businesses going bust squeezed out by their much larger competitors, more and more employees becoming gig uber workers without steady hours or even contractual conditions. New automated technology is displacing workers. Capitalist exploitation is the breeder of poverty, racism, corruption and crime. It is the underlying cause of wars. There exist ample reasons to condemn this economic system.  

Capitalism is a despotic, anti-social power, political as well as economic, that places ownership and control of industry in the unaccountable capitalist minority's hands. The capitalists make all the momentous decisions affecting our lives. They decide whether the industries are to run in the first place or are to be shut down or moved to another region. They decide what is to be produced, how much, and where it is to be marketed. They decide what laws are to be enacted, what policies are to be followed, what changes are to be made in our environment. And, naturally, every capitalist decision is shaped by the aim of maximising profits. Since we, the working people own no property other than their personal possessions (which obviously is not the kind of property that confers power and influence), we are excluded from participation in decisions on which their lives depend. We are mere passive onlookers. The political process, though ostensibly democratic, simply masks the decrees of the handful who compose the ruling class. The vast wealth of the capitalists gives them political ascendancy and assures their control of the government -- a government that has become inherently disposed to foster capitalist interests no matter who holds its offices; and that is as ready to crush rebelling workers as any police state.

These are the economic and political facts that characterise capitalism as a social system. One thing is certain: This system cannot be made to work in the interest of everyone. No reformers, however sincere, can possibly reform it. For capitalism feeds on human exploitation, and inequality is its breath of life. More than ever before, the events of recent years prove that material facts, not men, determine the course of history. The material facts of capitalism are rushing this nation from crisis to crisis. If these crises are to be overcome and our society made to serve the interests of all, capitalism must go.

 The Socialist Party rejects capitalism in its entirety, proposes a new form of society, socialism, that can serve the needs of all people in this modern age. World socialism means all power to make social decisions will be vested in the people. The means of producing all goods and services will be owned collectively by all the people. Production will be carried on to satisfy the people's wants, not for private profit or any government’s profit.  Rationally used, our planet’s resources make possible the production of an abundance that will wipe out every vestige of poverty. We will make use of our natural resources intelligently, using every pertinent science to keep our land bountiful and beautiful.

Use the ballot to affirm our revolutionary right to replace capitalism with socialism.