Understanding Socialism

 “The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not you and I.” - Karl Liebknecht

If the working men and women took half as much interest in politics as they do in football and tennis or other pastimes we would have a different kind of world. Many people don’t understand the problem of concentration of income and wealth because they don’t see it. People just don't understand how much wealth there is at the top. The wealth at the top is so extreme that it is beyond most people’s ability to comprehend. Most people have not investigated socialism for themselves and accept whatever is said about it, usually by those who oppose it or wish it to be something different from what it is.

 Socialists believe that socialism, by abolishing the profit making system in business, and by establishing the co-operative commonwealth, will remove, more than anything else proposed, the causes of economic wrongs, without destroying individual liberty or the incentive to worthy effort. The means of production and distribution of wealth that are social and public in their nature shall be owned collectively and each person may possess individually as much non-productive property as she or he can earn by an honest labour of hand or brain. This would include your home, automobile and all other private personal effects not used for exploiting purposes.

 Socialism requires that the process of production and distribution shall be regulated, not by competition with self-interest for its moving principle, but by society as a whole, for the good of society. Socialism will abolish wage slavery and its oppression. It will cause the labour-saving automation and technology to fulfill its greatest possible good. It will give employment to all workers during their productive years. It will remove the fear of want and poverty. The production of an overabundance of commodities for life and comfort will not, inside socialism, cause distress and need as now, by closing down mills, workshops and other industries. The more wealth you produce the more you will have available for your use, instead of adding to it, as now, to the capital and exploiting power of a master class. Socialism will end strikes, lockouts, lost jobs, and the ever constant war that is waged between capital and labour. It will end the deceptions of a hundred kinds that are practiced for profit-making. It will eliminate disease to a large degrees by bringing within each reach of all those chief conditions upon which health depends––plenty of pure air and sunlight; enough good food and healthful drinks; cleanliness, proper clothing and shelter; regular periods for sufficient rest, sleep and exercise. Socialism will start the human race on the way to the attainment of physically, mentally and morally well-being. Socialism stands for co-operation and the benefit of all.

The idea that capitalism can be reformed to become charitable is not at all a realistic prospect. Capitalism needs to constantly accumulate and operates on the basis of constantly expanding production. The present world order is driven by the striving for profit. The entire system of production based on wage labour and capital needs to be replaced with a system which produces for human needs. All the half measures of converting aspects of capitalism to socialism, while the fundamentals of capitalism remain in place, are just wishful thinking; and to pretend they could solve our problems is pure deception. The means of production need to be converted from capitalist class property to social property. Instead of the present system in which workers are alienated from the means of production and from the products of their labour, a free association of producers producing for the needs of humanity, is required. We call this type society of property owned in common by freely associated producers, producing for human needs, “socialism” or “communism”. It will be a world in people will give of themselves according to their ability, and take according to their needs. A world where the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all. Such a society will differentiate itself from capitalist in a myriad of ways, but the principal differences will be that it is a society without state, without money, where the mass of humanity participate in the planning and running of society. It will be a society without wage slavery and commodity production and without classes. It will be possible to democratically and collectively plan the future of the human species. Humanity will have a common interest and will be able to work towards achieving it. Working time will be reduced and the mass of the population will be drawn into the running of that new society. All will have a common interest in solving the ecological problems inherited from capitalism. With the abolition of capitalist society, all its waste, its cruelty, its wars, and all the misery it inflicts on the working people, will be ended. Socialism will draw on the abilities of all and produce for the needs of all. It will be able to balance these needs with sustainability. It will then be possible to roll back and repair the dreadful damage capitalism has inflicted on the planet in the few centuries during which it has been the dominant system of production.

luxemburg

If we are to survive as a species we must take a radical step, we must break once and for all with capitalism. Capital can never stand still. It exists in order to expand, through accumulation, and as it expands it extends itself across the entire globe and into every sphere of life. If there is any hope for humanity it must come through the realization of socialism. It is essential that the perspective of a total rejection of capitalism emerges and is adopted as the only solution. Humanity faces a crossroads. The turning we take and the direction we travel depends on each one of us. Do we continue down the road of destruction towards possible extinction or organise for our survival as a species with a new society?

Curtailing Freedom Of Movement?

Paris is a city that is often equated with romance but not so much nowadays. Residents and visitors are much too busy coping with pollution. According to Airparif, the city's air quality monitor, the concentration of particles called P10 and P2.5 are so thick they are as bad as in Beijing, a city world renowned for bad air. Lowering the particulate matter to World Health Organization recommended levels would avoid four hundred and seventy-six hospital admission a year and one hundred and twelve deaths. It would also add six month's to residents life span but the problem is that the cost would have to come out of profits. On the capitalist scales of justice, the tipping is towards the profits, of course. Mayor Anne Hidalgo has responded by banning heavy trucks, allowing free rentals of the city's fleet of electric cars and bikes, and limiting driving to alternate days. The environmental minister had criticized this arguing that it curtails freedom of movement. Death also curtails freedom of movement. John Ayers.

Socialism is natural

There are many people who think socialism is impossible not because the capitalist class is too powerful or the world’s resources are too limited but because “human nature” will not allow it. We are “too lazy,” “too greedy,” “too violent” they tell us. Folk are born to be racist, sexist, and homophobic, they can’t help but hate people from other countries, cultures, and religions. People “can’t think for themselves” and “need to be told what to do”. It is natural for some people to climb to top of the ladder and, it is also natural for others to remain stuck on the bottom rung. You can’t change human nature. Capitalism is a social system that tries to legitimise itself as one that is based on what human nature really is, not what we'd like it to be.  Greed is good, say the defenders of capitalism. Were it not for greed, we're told, the baker and shoemaker and candlestick maker would have no incentive to make their wares, and we'd all go shoeless and hungry. Inequality is also good, in fact necessary, we're told, because the sole reason people work hard and smart is to get richer than others. In a society where everybody who contributed reasonably to the economy shared with each other according to need as equals there would, according to the capitalist view, be no reason for people to work and hence the economy would stop producing things. Those who rule our world, whose chief aim in life is the greedy pursuit of money, and who enjoy power and privileges that money makes possible for the very rich in an economically unequal society--this capitalist class of people justify it all with a Big Lie. The Big Lie is that selfishness is the primary human motivation, always has been and always will be because it is simply human nature. Capitalists argue that there is no difference between the motives and values of ordinary people and those of the richest families in society. The only difference is that the rich ones were more successful than the others. The Big Lie about human nature is used by defenders of capitalism when they tell us that there is no point in trying to create a better world that is more equal and democratic. Even if we succeeded initially, they say, it would just revert back to the same inequality we have today because human nature would remain the same. People would compete against each other, there would be winners and losers, and inequality would re-emerge. Greed, inequality, competition for self-interest: it's all just human nature. The wisest thing to do, say the defenders of capitalism, is to recognise the fact.

The reason many people falsely associate ‘human nature’ with greed and selfishness is because the current mode of production encourages these features. Those who are wicked, ruthless and selfish do well under capitalism. Those who aren’t are usually disadvantaged. Because capitalism is the only system most people have ever experienced, they are lead to believe, wrongly, that greed and selfishness are the only human characteristics we can harness in order to run an economy. Attempts to organise society in a different way are simply “utopian”. The ‘human nature’ argument is being raised now as much as ever. And it’s even more ridiculous at a time when working people are being asked to “tighten their belts” and sacrifice their living standards to pay back the debts of private banks. The fact is, only a relatively tiny number of people actually benefit from capitalism. How does it benefit anyone to work 60 hours a week for minimum wage just to pay their bills? How does it benefit anyone to have a boss? How do you benefit from capitalism when you are constantly threatened with unemployment? How would paying a high rent to a landlord for a run-down, inner city hovel benefit you? Wages for the vast majority of people have stagnated over the past three decades. How does capitalism serve the interests of these people? Even more serious and disturbing is that more than 30,000 children have died over the past 24 hours because of preventable diseases. Another 30,000 died yesterday, and the day before that. They died because the capitalist market could not provide for even their most basic needs. Is dying from starvation or preventable disease in childhood just part of “human nature”?

Human nature is not the same as capitalist nature, no matter what the capitalists want us to believe. Human beings create cultures. Cultures embody values about how relations between people ought to be. Being selfish or sharing is a behavioral choice determined in large part by one's culure. Socialists say that human nature is flexible and that the behaviors of human beings are shaped by their social circumstances. True, we are capable of greed but we are equally capable of generosity. In different circumstances, people behave differently. But this doesn't mean that people are simply unalterable products of their society. People have the capacity to change the circumstances in which they live. In the process of doing so, they change themselves. There is nothing about human nature that makes socialism impossible, but there is also nothing that makes it inevitable. We can change our circumstances and create new and different social relations and then adapt to them. Human beings have basic physical and emotional needs--for food and shelter, for social contact and affection--which all too often go unmet under capitalism. But we also have a need to exercise control over our own lives and to engage in activities that make use of our creative abilities. Capitalism, like other forms of class society, frustrates these needs, leading those who are exploited to fight back against it. Socialism means not just a new form of society, but a new form of human consciousness, free from the distorting pressures of capitalism.

If there were a human nature that dictated some particular form of behaviour, then all human societies would be fundamentally the same, or at least have the same values. But they aren’t, and they don’t. Each form of social organisation has its own norms of behaviour, and it comes to regard these norms as part of human nature. Understood in this way, human nature is not something absolute and determined only by genetics. It is a changing product of history and social conditions, and as it evolves it can in turn alter those social conditions. If this were not the case, the entire human race would still be living in the same sort of society as our neolithic ancestors. Capitalism teaches us to relate to others primarily through economic relations: to seek a return on anything we extend to them. In pre-class societies and those in which class divisions are not highly developed, it is often the norm to welcome total strangers into the home and treat them as guests, with no thought or possibility of recompense. Capitalism has a contradictory interaction with this human characteristic. Compared to pre-capitalist society, it greatly multiplies the scale of social production, driving ceaselessly to incorporate the entire planet. On the other hand, it alienates society’s producers from their own activity, because their product is the private property of the capitalists, who use it to exploit them. Moreover, the values of selfishness and greed that it maintains are in conflict with the solidarity and selflessness that are necessary for expanding human cooperation both quantitatively and qualitatively. The impact of these contradictions is what creates the effort to make production social in all aspects, beginning with the abolition of capitalist property. When socialism is brought about, human nature (i.e., behavior) will adapt itself to these changes, and anti-social attitudes such as greed, violence and criminal inclinations will be all but excised from the public mindset.

The capitalists need to work very hard to keep people ignorant about the truth of human nature. Their repeated propaganda tells us to blame the natural failings of humanity for poverty, racism or sexism. If human beings are innately selfish, there’s no point trying to build a more egalitarian society. If our brains are programmed for xenophobia, there’s no point trying to fight for a world without racism. If we believe these falsehoods, the ruling class can sit back safe in the knowledge that the world is in its rightful place. Every ruling class in history has justified its own existence with some concept equivalent to the human nature argument. This is the divine right of kings, repackaged. We should dismiss it with the contempt it deserves. The arguments against socialism are the arguments against social progress generally. With modern technology now able to produce an abundance for everyone, and not just a fortunate few, thus making it possible for everybody to contribute to the advancement of society, the ruling class has now become obsolete, and has now become a parasitical class that is no longer socially useful for the benefit of society. Contrary to what is popularly believed, most people have a lot to gain from the replacement of capitalism with an economy based on common ownership. They will not have to labour half of their working lives to bankroll a class of idle rich. They will be able to run their own workplaces according to how they see fit and they will not be threatened with the destitution of unemployment. Socialism is not about charity. It’s about the majority of humans taking control of their own lives. It would provide a massive increase in living standards for the majority of humanity and aims to promote the more positive human traits, rather than selfishness and greed. Certainly, it would be true to say that socialism is the political self-interest of all working people.

THE CAPITALIST RAT RACE

Public Meeting Reminder

What We Mean By Socialism

An economic system run and controlled by the government is not socialism! Socialists clearly distinguished between state ownership of the means of production and social ownership. We oppose the very existence of the state. State ownership means the continued existence of a governmental power over and above the people themselves; it signifies continued class rule. Social ownership means that the people themselves, collectively and democratically, govern the use of the means of production. Marx and Engels described socialism as a society run by "associations of free and equal producers."

The old Soviet Union was never socialist. At no time did the Soviet Union ever have 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. In the Soviet Union the party/state bureaucracy was the ruling class. Therefore the demise of the Soviet Union proves absolutely nothing about the viability of socialism.

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. Socialism would be administered by active organisations of workers, determined to keep economic power in the only safe place for it to reside - in the collective hands of all. All persons 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. People themselves would determine the general goals of social production, based on their own needs and wants. Socialism's elected delegates would have no special privileges nor any power to possess means of production and exploit others. And they would be subject to the control, and to the power of immediate recall, of the union body that elected them.  They would have no opportunity to become bureaucratic rulers even if they wanted to. And once a society of security and abundance for all is established, the motivation to even want to be become a bureaucratic ruler would soon be disappear.

Much of what is believed to be "human nature" is actually the product of the material conditions and social environment under which people are raised. 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 become too greedy and competitively crave power and wealth above all else. But such behavior 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, to 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. Sooner or later, a majority of workers can and will come to the realisation 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 behavior and nullify selfishness, greed and the desire for power over others.

In a genuine socialist society, workers would have strong incentives to work conscientiously and improve the means and methods of production. The moral and social incentive to be a productive and responsible member of society would be bolstered by the knowledge that one's efforts would truly be benefiting all society, and not merely an idle class of social parasites. The material incentives to be productive, and to improve productivity, would be strengthened as well. With capitalist exploitation abolished, workers would receive the full social value of their labor. The rewards of their own labor, and of improvements in efficiency, would accrue to them, and not to a separate class of owners. Thus, they would have "the possibility" of becoming well off materially -- a far greater possibility than they have today -- from their own labour. And the more efficiently they produce, the more they could enjoy, with a shorter and shorter work-week. In sum, workers would have strong incentives to be productive in a socialist society because they would be working for themselves and the social interest, simultaneously. With no ruling class in existence, the workers' interest and the social interest would be one and the same.

The foregoing proposals for social change may all sound too idealistic or utopian but that is not the case. 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 realising 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. Thus the modern working class has both a motive and the potential power to replace the present system with socialism. 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. Properly organised, they can rectify that, and build an economic system that will truly serve the social interest. And given the serious and growing problems that the capitalist system has created, socialism is not only realistic, it is essential to human survival and social progress. To build socialism, workers must organise independently, for themselves,  both  politically and economically.  

Class war for Scotland's land

432 people own half of Scotland’s private land, while 0.025 per cent of the population owns 67 per cent of Scotland’s rural land. In terms of distribution of ownership, Scotland is one of the most unequal countries in the world.

Islay - off the west coast of Scotland - is home to 3,000 people but most of the island is owned by just a few wealthy men. Lord Margadale of Islay Estates owns around a third of the island. The neighbouring island of Jura is owned by Lord Astor, whose step-daughter Samantha Cameron is married to the prime minister David Cameron.

Under the  Scottish Government's new Land Reform Bill ministers say they want to encourage more community ownership and ensure land is used in the public interest. The Bill also includes plans to create a land register, aiming to increase transparency over ownership. Private trusts are reckoned, in property and land, to be worth £500bn in Scotland, according to the Scots Law Commission,

Holyrood also plans to scrap tax breaks for shooting estates in Scotland. 

Landowners and lairds have accused them of waging "a class war".

Answering the Questions - What Happens After The Revolution?

People are capable of running society themselves but we cannot fully control what we don’t own. It is the aim of the Socialist Party to create a society in which poverty will have disappeared, wars will be but evil memories, a society in which, and in which democracy will have become the prevailing order of society for all, a society of peace and abundance. We in the Socialist Party believe that this can be attained peacefully. Nor do we need to go green to save the planet - the people need to go red.

Capitalism in the past was a relatively progressive system, which developed science, technique and labour: the means of production. The engine of the system was the creation of profit through the labours of the working class. However, capitalism reveals today that it has reached a dead end. It is no longer a progressive system as capitalist ownership of industry, and thereby the domination of society, exercises an enormous drag on the further progress of society. Capitalism cannot fully utilise even its own creations, such as new technology. In other words, capitalism today has become completely parasitic. Capitalism means the blind play of the productive forces and is, by its nature, incompatible with real planning. Like inequality, which is woven into the very foundations of capitalism, the chaos of the system cannot be magicked away or fully controlled, even by the government, not even by Cameron or Osborne. They are slaves, forced to carry out the demands of the capitalists. The capitalists, no matter how some may be ’sympathetic’ to the plight of the working class and poor, in the final analysis, seek the maximisation of ’profit’ as their central goal. Occasionally, in an economic upswing, they can then allow a few crumbs from their rich table to trickle down to some sections of the working class. Now, however, is not one of those periods.

Profit is “unpaid labour”, that portion of the wealth which working people create but that they don’t receive in wages. This ’surplus value’ is then divided into rent for the landlords, interest for the bankers and the rest pocketed by the industrial and other capitalists. We are permitted to work only so long as a market exists for the goods we produce. When there is no profitable market for our products, plants close down, and we starve. In socialist society there will be no private ownership of the land and the industries. When we say this, we are not talking about; your house, or your clothes, or your car, or any of your personal belongings. What we are talking about are the factories, the mills, the mines, transport - in short, the means of production and distribution of goods. We say that these must belong to society as a whole. In socialist society since we shall collectively own the factories and means of production, we shall have full and free access to the means of wealth production and distribution. In socialist society, there will be no wage system where the workers receive in wages only a fraction of the value of the goods they produce. Instead, we shall produce for use, rather than for sale with a view to profit for private capitalists. We shall produce the things we want and need rather than the things for which a market exists in which the goods we produce are sold for the profit of the private owners. We shall collectively produce the things we want and need for full and happy lives.

The world is a mess with poverty, exploitation and war now part of the daily lives of billions round the globe. At the root of this suffering is the economic, social, and political system of capitalism, a system of cut-throat competition, where corporations single-mindedly pursue short-term profits, power, and resources, regardless of the human cost.

Capitalism stifles the innovation and creativity of the majority of the population. There is nothing less motivating than being forced to do the same repetitive job for 8 or 12 hours a day, day after day, just to pay the bills. People do not shrink from work, but from wage-slavery. Shortening the working-week, sharing out the work and providing for people’s basic needs would liberate women and men to finally take control over their lives and pursue all forms of creative and intellectual endeavors, unleashing humanity’s vast creative potential. Decisions would be made democratically by working people making decisions themselves through mass meetings and direct elections. People with power, such as administrators and spokespersons, would be elected, delegates who are accountable and can be recalled. In socialism the appeal to work with diligence is based on the justifiable ground that it is society as a whole which benefits. Not so under capitalism. There the result of extra effort is not public benefit but private profit. One makes sense and the other doesn’t; one inspires the worker to give as much of himself as possible, the other to give as little as he can get away with; one is a purpose that satisfies the soul and excites the imagination; the other is a purpose that entices only the simple-minded. The objection is raised that while this may be true of the average worker for whom the incentive of profit has been largely illusory anyway, it does not hold for the man of genius, the inventor, or the capitalist entrepreneur for whom the incentive of profit has been real. There is little evidence to support that opinion. On the other hand there is ample evidence to support the argument that inventive genius seeks no other reward than the joy of discovery or the happiness that results from the full and free use of its creative powers. The day of the individual scientist working alone has long since gone. Men and women of ability in the scientific world are hired by the big corporations to work in their laboratories, at regular salaries. Security, a dream laboratory, the gratification that comes from absorbing work—with these they are content, and these they frequently have—but not profits. Suppose they invent some new process. Do they get the profits that may result? No, they do not. Additional prestige, promotion, and a higher salary, maybe—but not profits. The patents, copyrights and the intellectual ownership remains with the corporation or university.

The ruling class would have us believe that capitalism or class society is the inevitable result of human nature. The people who argue that "you can’t change human nature" make the mistake of assuming that because man behaves in a certain way in capitalist society, therefore that’s the nature of human beings, and no other behavior is possible. They see that in capitalist society man is acquisitive, his motive is one of selfish greed and of getting ahead by any means, fair or foul. They conclude therefrom, that this is "natural" behavior for all human beings and that it is impossible to establish a society based on anything except a competitive struggle for private profit. The anthropologists say, however, that this is nonsense—and prove it by citing this, that, and the other society now in existence where man’s behavior isn’t anything like what it is under capitalism. And they are joined by the historians who say also that the argument is nonsense. While biology determines certain aspects of our behavior, human nature is not a permanent, unchanging thing that magically fell from the sky. How we act, and how we relate to the world and each other, develops in response to the changing material conditions of society and our relationship to the natural world. There is a difference between selfishness and self-interest. There is absolutely no doubt that human beings look out for their self-interests, and the struggle for socialism is completely in line with this tendency. It is probably true that all human beings are born with the instinct of self-preservation and reproduction. Their need for food, clothing, shelter, and sexual love is basic. That much, it may be admitted, is "human nature." But the way they go about satisfying these desires is not necessarily the way that is common in capitalist society—it depends, rather, on the way suited to the particular culture they are born into. If the basic needs of man can be satisfied only by knocking the other fellow down, then we can assume that human beings will knock each other down; but if the basic needs of man can be better satisfied by cooperation, then it is also safe to assume that human beings will cooperate. Mankind’s self-interest is expressed in his desire for more and better food, clothing, and shelter, in his passion for security. When he learns that these needs cannot be satisfied for all under capitalism as well as they can under socialism, he will make the change. But self-interest is not the only thing that guides us. Take a look at the amount of people doing voluntary charity work. For millions of years, people lived in egalitarian hunter-and-gatherer societies. Food, shelter, and the necessities of survival were equally shared throughout society. By harnessing modern technology to provide for everyone, socialism would create the material basis for human culture to change in the most fundamental way. Instead of a society that rewards the most vicious and greedy, a socialist society would develop a new culture based on equality and justice.

Our society can function perfectly well without a capitalist class. Five hundred years ago, in Europe, the question was: Can our economic system function without feudal lords? One hundred and fifty years ago, in the United States, the question was can our economic system function without slave-owners? Society found that it could do without barons and slave-owners, so it will find that it can do without capitalists. To say that we could not work without a capitalist is false. The fact of the matter is that we have reached the point where society not only can but must function without capitalists, since the power which is theirs as owners of the means of production must be used in such a way as to lead to unemployment, insecurity, and war. Most corporations are not run by the owner-entrepreneurs. They are not run by the owners at all—in the main they are managed by hired executives, CEOs, who work, not for profits, but for salaries. Their salaries may be large or small paid, they may include a big bonus or no bonus. In addition there may be other rewards—praise, prestige, privilege and power. But for most of those who manage business the incentive of profit has long since wilted away. Will people work for other incentives than profit? No need to guess. We know that people do.

OWNERSHIP AND POLITICAL POWER.

From the June 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received an Edinburgh journal called "The Proletariat," the organ of the British Section of the [International] Socialist Labour Party. This is a body which has "existed" since 1912 and broke away from the now defunct Socialist Labour Party. Why they call themselves the British Section it is hard to judge, because the other Socialist Labour Party (in America) repudiate them.

"The State of the S.P.G.B." is the title of an article purporting to deal with us. The state of this British Section of the S.L.P. may be judged from their criticism which we quote:—

"To show far misconception dominates the S.P.G.B., Engels, in the closing chapters of Origin of the Family points out that the State derives all its substance via taxation from the economic factors. These dominate the State which includes the Army and Navy. In a word, condition them in the fullest meaning of the term. And, further, the capitalist class to-day, who are the economic masters of all wealth, mark you, the civil power, subject that military thing to their requirements, increase or decrease it as the case demands. The owners of the economic wealth factors are masters of the situation. The S.P.G.B. position that 'dispossession necessitates disarmament,' suggest that it is the armed force that dominates the situation, and consequently, from the Marxian position, must be ruled out."

Can criticism be more idiotic?

Ownership depends upon power to maintain possession, therefore the capitalists depend upon their control of political power, which gives control of the armed forces. As Marx says in the Communist Manifesto, the first step in the emancipation of the working class is the winning of political supremacy.

Engels, in his "Retrospect," points out the all-importance of political action for the purpose of wresting control from the hands of the employing class.

The recent general strike completely justifies our position that those who control the armed forces dominate the situation. Hence a capitalist victory.

Our critics quote from the January, 1925, issue of the "Socialist Standard" on disarmament. Let us give the full statement from that issue:

"Ownership to-day consists not in occupation but in mere legal title, meaningless, unless recognised and upheld by the forces of State. The overthrow of the capitalist ownership, therefore, and the establishment of common ownership, involves the capture of the State by the working-class. Dispossession necessitates disarmament. The organisation of the working-class must, therefore be a political organisation i.e., a Socialist Party."

Like all other species of Anarchists the so-called S.L.P. of Edinburgh offer no alternative to political action.

Adolph Kohn

You can't kill a revolution

"You can kill a revolutionary but you can't kill revolution...you can jail a liberator but you can't jail liberation." - Fred Hampton (1948-69), Black Panther

Why is the socialist movement so small and so clearly wanting in numbers and influence? This is a crucial question. One answer, of course was that for many people for a long time, the old Soviet Union model regarded nationalised property and the 5–Year State Plans, under the control of the “vanguard” Party, as socialism,(or at least stepping stones) to socialism. The words ‘socialism’ and ‘socialist’ are odious to many people chiefly on account of principles and practices of political parties prominent in the history in certain countries with whom we have no sympathy at all with. Why then do we continue to use these terms, which must confuse us with them in popular opinion? Would it not be good policy to drop these terms, and to substitute others less obnoxious to popular prejudice? Nothing would be finally gained by such a policy. "Speak the truth and shame the Devil" is a good maxim. The truth is, we really are socialists; we support the socialist idea and we strive for the day socialism is accepted by mankind. We remain convinced its day is coming; and it is not an aim that for honest men and women to be ashamed of. As to justice from the critics and opposition, no revolutionary ever received it.  Reformers only betray their cause in the end when they resort to a timid, evasive policy. No matter how determined and principled, the few socialists are, they are drowned out by the power and pervasiveness of the dominant ruling class and their control of information by a manipulated media and biased education system. Socialist websites on  the internet may have opened a window to reaching mass audiences but (even if one is successful in locating them) cannot substitute for the indispensable work of organisational outreach, of people making direct contact with others, of physical face-to-face debate and discussion, and of well-orchestrated, highly visible mass action.

Socialism in its essence is a society in which all people work cooperatively as equals for the common good of all. In recent times people who hold this principle have been describing this principle as democratic socialism, to distinguish the principle from authoritarian and undemocratic states which have wrongly described themselves as socialist in character. This label is used to distinguish democratic socialists from people who improperly call themselves socialist and do not support the values of both equality and democracy. Certain societies have sometimes disguised themselves by using the term socialism. "National socialism" advocates a one-party dictatorial society. "Communism" has frequently been used by political parties advocating and implementing a one-party society with very limited democratic practices. However, a truly communal society would be very democratic.

Capitalism describes a state of society which accepts and encourages private ownership of the means of production. Capitalism exalts the selfish individual. In capitalism regulation of self-interest is discouraged as a hindrance to the operation of the market. At the moment, production in every enterprise is conducted by individual capitalists on their own initiative. What -- and in which way -- is to be produced, where, when and how the produced goods are to be sold is determined by the industrialist. The workers do not see to all this, they are just living machines who have to carry out their work. In a socialist economy this must be completely different! The private employer will disappear. Then no longer production is aimed towards the enrichment of one individual, but of delivering to the public at large the means of satisfying all its needs. Socialism is that social system under which the necessaries of production 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.

In socialism no person can exploit any other person. Natural resources will not be wasted. Changes in society should be made by freely and openly. Thus, socialism ought to be achieved democratically through the ballot box. Socialism is the radical idea that people should live and work cooperatively in a democratic society. A socialist society will provide for each individual's basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and health. Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole -- that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society. It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association. In a socialist society, the employer with his stick and carrot ceases to exist. The workers are free and equal human beings, who work for their own well-being and benefit.

We are living in times of unprecedented possibility and also in a period that threatens humanity’s very existence, dominated by a ruling class hell-bent on the unfettered extraction of natural resources. In response, all around the world, people are in search of genuine solutions. The nature of this historical moment makes fundamental change possible, though not inevitable. We aim to rekindle a radical and grounded world socialist movement capable of confronting the challenges and opportunities of today, based on popular participation in politics seeking to establish democratically-planned production for use that is in balance with the planet’s sustainable regenerative capacity. While we are informed by the lessons and struggles of those who have come before us, we live in unique conditions, and our struggles must be rooted in a sober assessment of our specific time, place, and conditions. The Socialist Party does not seek to replace or control the work of existing campaigns. We believe that social movements should be independent and authentic. We reject the vanguardism and the associated ‘entryist’ practices of operating within organizations, trying to control them; creating front groups; or being opportunist and leeching off social activism. Our contribution which we believe is both possible and necessary is maintaining the focus upon our goal – socialism and encouraging strategies to achieve that aim. The Socialist Party hopes to build a new type of workers’ movement with a transformative and liberatory vision that connects all the grassroots struggles to win freedom for all people and safe-guard the planet.

"We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.”- Fred Hampton

Illegal Slavery!

A recent report from an Associated Press investigation alleged that four thousand foreign fishermen have been abandoned on remote islands in Indonesia. These are men who were enslaved, forced to work on fishing vessels and then marooned following a government moratorium on illegal fishing operations. The ex-slaves described horrendous working conditions at sea. They were forced to drink unclean water and worked twenty to twenty-two hour shifts with no days off. Almost all said they were kicked, whipped with toxic stingray tails, or otherwise beaten if they complained or tried to rest and were paid little or nothing. This is an atrocity that could only exist under a money/profit system. Some may argue that it is illegal robbery, but there is enough legal robbery going on in this system apart from illegal slavery. John Ayers.

The Solidarity Economy

RECIPROCITY

Socialism is a much abused, frequently distorted and mostly misunderstood word but expressing better than any other the purpose of political and economic progress, the aim of the Revolution. The word implies harmonious relationship. Socialism is the belief that the next important step in progress is a change in man's environment of an economic character that shall include the abolition of every power whereby the possessor of privilege and holder of wealth acquires an anti-social authority to compel tribute. Socialism must be voluntary — not coerced. Socialist seek to abolish the State, and contends that government is tyranny. Those who wish to make the State, the universal employer, the universal landlord and the universal banker are mistaken giving the State control of all the means of producing and distributing wealth and giving to each only according to his or her deeds. These sort of proposal would only set up greater evils than those it proposes to remedy. Socialism is not government control of the economy. Socialists want all property to be held in common and each to receive according to his or her needs. What socialists demand is the emancipation of the individual from all economic bondage. Our political position can be described as cooperative socialism in that we recognise that socialism by its nature can only be cooperative and voluntary.

We are not advocating cooperatives within capitalism. While worker-run enterprises might very well provide a superior form of orthodox business model, in many respects they would still face much the same problems as private capitalists: if the decision-making done in a worker-managed enterprise/cooperative is done by its workers, and there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of such cooperatives making de-centralized decision-making on production (even if this involves a democratic process involving many people in each individual enterprise), then you would have decisions on investment and production made in a decentralised manner that is essentially private. If the economy uses money and has some types of financial assets as a store of value, you have exactly the same problems that exist now. The people involved would still be making decisions under subjective expectations and fundamental uncertainty, and investment would, most probably, be subject to fluctuation. Syndicalist society could so easily evolve into a state-based system not that much different from the most radical forms of state capitalism. Blanqui took a harder line than Marx on the idea of co-ops:

“As far as production societies are concerned, I take them to be the most deadly trap that the proletariat could fall into. It is clear that only a very small number of workers possess the necessary capacity for such enterprises. It is thus the intellectual elite that will take this road. Well, on this road, both failure and success would be equally bad. Failure is ruin and discouragement. Success is worse, it's the division of workers into two classes: on the one side, the great mass, ignorant, abandoned, without support, without hope, in the underworld of wage-working; on the other side, a small intelligent minority, concerned from then on only with its private interests and separated for ever from their unfortunate brothers.”

In Capital, Marx summed up the essence of capitalist relations: “The absolute general law of capitalist accumulation makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labor, slavery, ignorance, brutalization, and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.”

Pro-capitalists are desperate to divide and rule. In Victorian times the ruling class saw a division between the ‘deserving poor’ and ‘undeserving poor’. Today they still turn us against one another (private against public sector, the old versus the young, employed and unemployed, male and female etc.) through media attacks on benefits claimants, the unemployed, public service employees with pensions, the disabled, and ethnic minorities and migrants. A new vocabulary of denigration (“benefit scroungers”, “strivers against skivers” etc) has been invented.

The stakes in the fight for a survivable and a secure future are enormous. Socialism is the extension and preservation of democracy in all realms of human activity, especially the economic arena. It is a political, social, economic, cultural, and ethical project: a struggle to transform power relations within a society dominated by a tiny minority to benefit the overwhelming majority of working people. Socialism liberates human energy to pursue its creative potential. Socialism cannot emerge from sentiment or wish fulfillment. Socialism emerges because the working class, as it struggles around everyday living comes to recognise socialism as a necessity. History and contemporary reality do not yield a schematic blueprint for socialism. An analysis of experiences in social struggle, combined with a critique of objective circumstances, suggest some possible guiding principles for the transition to a socialist democracy. Socialism’s fundamental building blocks are already present in society. The means of production are fully developed and stagnating under the political domination of finance capital. The work-force, for the most part, is highly skilled at all levels of production and its administration and direction. There is a broadly enfranchised electorate and socialism will largely be gained by the class-conscious working class winning the battle for democracy in society at large. There exists as well kernels of socialist organisation scattered across the landscape in cooperatives, socially organised human services, and widespread mass means of communication to relay supply/demand data management. Our core communities – workplace, occupational organisations, neighbourhood, community centres, schools, cultural and sports groups – should be arenas to reach out to those looking for change. Coalitions of organisations can be established around the common objective. Socialism will be a society in harmony with the natural environment. The nature of global climate change necessitates a high level of planning. We need to redesign communities, introduce healthier foods, and rebuild sustainable agriculture—all on a global scale with high design, but on a human scale with mass participation of communities in diverse localities. We need intelligent growth in quality and wider knowledge with a lighter environmental footprint. Socialism does not simply reproduces the wasteful expansion of capitalism.

The Socialist Movement

Poverty, exploitation, oppression, war and environmental destruction are products of the capitalist system, a system in which a minority ruling class profits from the work of the majority. The alternative is socialism, a society based on people commonly owning and collectively controlling the wealth their labour creates. Although workers create society's wealth, they have no say over its production and distribution. The 1% — the rich capitalist ruling class - are the ones who have the power to make decisions that affect everyone else — the 99%.  This system is geared toward the constant accumulation of profits, no matter what social or environmental costs may be incurred.

Ideas about reforming this system don’t take the history of capitalism into account. The social ills we see today are not a perversion of the system, but the consequences of the logic of the capitalist system, which concentrates wealth and political power in ever-fewer hands. The problems are huge and only society-wide action will resolve them. The answer to this cannot simply be a matter of replacing people at the top. For real, lasting change to take place, political power cannot be wielded in the autocratic way the 1% has used it for so long. A different type of politics is needed, one where the interests of the 99% are at the fore. Political reforms cannot put capitalism to rights. It must be completely replaced.

Only workers themselves can put an end to the capitalist system of exploitation. Socialism is working-class self-emancipation. Given the huge scale of the problems that need addressing — centuries of environmental damage; an economic system that creates  chronic social problems linked to inequality and alienation — a democratically planned approach, using all resources available, will be vital. Some people might call this socialism. Currently the word, ‘socialism’, is mostly taken to mean state involvement in or control over the economy. Many people have quite narrow views about what socialism can and cannot be. But that is not accurate even if a number of text-books offer it as a definitive description. Socialism places satisfying human needs and the needs of the natural world as the primary purpose of society rather than producing profits for the few. Socialism is the idea that each individual should have the means to live a life of dignity, without exception. Socialists think each person should have the means to develop to their full potential. It means a society focused on restoring ecosystems and promoting sustainable human development. It means a society based on ongoing, participatory democracy. It means people-power.

In the 19^th C. William Morris said:

 “Socialism – a condition where there is neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master’s man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brainworkers nor heart-sick handworkers – in which all men would be living in equality of conditions, would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all.”

We can go further back into history to the 17^th C. when Gerard Winstanley wrote:

“Every tradesman shall fetch materials… from the public store-houses to work upon without buying and selling; and when particular works are made… the tradesmen shall bring these particular works to particular shops, as it is now the practice, without buying and selling. And every family as they want such things as they cannot make, they shall go to these shops and fetch without money.”

Or we can travel even earlier into our history to the 14^th C. to the time John Ball could say:

“When Adam delved and Eve span; Who was then a Gentleman? Ah ye good people, the matters goeth not well to pass in England, nor shall do till everything be common, and that there be no villains nor gentlemen, but that we are all united together, and that the lords be no greater masters than we. What have we deserved, or why should we be thus kept in servage? We be all come from one father and mother, Adam and Eve: whereby can they say or show that they be greater lords than we, saving by that they cause us to win and labour for that they dispend?”

To-day society is fundamentally anti-social. The whole so-called social fabric rests on privilege and power, and is strained in every direction by the inequalities that necessarily result. The welfare of each, instead of contributing to that of all, as it should, detracts from that of all. Wealth is made by the legal privilege to filch from labour’s pockets. Every man who gets rich thereby makes his neighbour poor. The better off one is, the worse off the rest are. Socialism wants to change all this. Socialism says that what’s one man’s meat must no longer be another’s poison. Socialists are the only people entitled to cite the eighth commandment, ‘Thou shalt not steal’ That commandment is a socialist principle, only not as a commandment from God, but as a condition of nature. Socialists do not order; we prophesise and predict. We does not say unto you ‘Thou shalt not steal’ We say when all men and women have free access to the world’s treasury they shalt not steal. Capitalism is doomed to make the lot of the working class more unstable, insecure and miserable. Indeed, the promises made by the supporters of capitalism have not been fulfilled for billions of people around the world. If anything, the opposite is true.

If the working class continue to accept capitalism, then the system will persist until it produces the "common ruin" of all. The socialist revolution is not a given, or something that will be reached inevitably simply through the course of history. Marx and Engels argued, "history does nothing...it ‘wages no battles.’ It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; ‘history’ is not...a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims." 

 Our conscious aim must be the overthrow of the contradictory crisis-ridden class-system of capitalism and the purposeful establishment of socialism.

Protest Against Capitalism

Protest Austerity - Choose your Path

 Glasgow branch members have agreed to meet at George Square on Saturday, June 20 from 11am onwards, where the STUC demonstrators will be gathering for an anti-austerity protest. The socialist alternative to this anti-austerity protest will be the distribution of 2000 flyers advertising the branch's meeting on Wednesday, June 24. Austerity - How to End It? 7 pm at Maryhill Community Centre, Maryhill Rd 

Capitalism is the accumulation of resources by means of exploitation in the production and sale of commodities for profit. Capitalist exploitation is an unequal exchange wherein capitalists extract income from economic exchanges solely because they hold legal title to productive assets. At all points of exchange in production, capitalists have institutionalized coercive power as employers, bosses, lenders, and landlords. Capital that has extended its influence over these new territories knows its own interests, works together in its common interests even while individual capitals compete and coordinates its goals and its strategies in its common interest. There will always be social inequality, because that increases profits; winners win more because losers lose more. Today, the richest two percent of adults own more than half the world’s wealth, while the richest tenth own 85 percent of the world’s assets. Within this small elite, a fraction embedded in financial capital owns and controls the bulk of the world’s assets and organizes and facilitates further concentration of conglomerates. Historically, warfare has been an instrument of economic conquest. This form of structural violence has led to the death of countless hundreds of millions of people, and the deprivation of thousands of millions of others.

There has been many recent calls for the British left either to “reclaim Labour” or to build a new party (Left Unity or TUSC.) What we see today is a wholesale embrace of anti-working-class reformism, with attempts to create whole new reformist parties to replace the discredited ones. In some cases, the left are already taking the logic of their shift further by endeavouring to openly collaborate with openly capitalist parties such as the SNP. They use the term “socialist” to describe the new coalitions they are forming, in order to camouflage their lists of palliatives, often phrased so broadly as not to offend. Reformism is not a moderate or slow road to socialism but a hindrance and diversion to achieving it.  Socialists need to avoid both nostalgia and amnesia

At present, more than 50% of the British public (working or not) depend on welfare benefits of some kind. That is because Britain is a relatively high unemployment, low waged and low skilled economy. An economy dominated by the principles of the ‘free-market’ but one in which the taxpayer effectively subsidises the employer to order to keep their wage bill low. British politics is influenced by various levels of liberal ideology, notions of the free market, self-interest, self-reliance and self-responsibility. Notions that also seep into the public consciousness to become the ‘norm’ that people regulate their behaviour by, and monitor the behaviour of others. We hear daily from our politicians and our media about the need to end Britain’s ‘something for nothing culture’, about ‘some’ people not being self-responsible enough, and about the need of government to support ‘hard working families’ – policies that encourage the philosophy of ‘hard work’, not erode it. While at the same time subtlety insinuating that both the unemployed and the disabled are social groups who contain certain ‘rogue’ elements that need weeding out - scroungers, spongers and layabouts. As far back as 2007, a national British Social Attitudes survey indicated that the general public believed that at least 35% of all benefit claimants were fraudsters. It is an approach while aimed solely at gathering support amongst the general public for cuts to welfare spending.

The capitalist argument is that a person should work for whatever a prospective employer wants to offer them, no matter how low those wages happen to be. That is the basic philosophy of the ‘free market’, a market place where goods and skills are not only exchanged for money, but where people compete with each other for employment. The actual numbers of unemployed benefit claimants removed from the welfare system by sanctions are reported to be as high as 500,000. Between 2008 and 2013, 76,300 sick or disabled claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) had their welfare benefits cut or stopped completely. Of course, many of these decisions were overturned as unfair after many months of appeals, and after many months of stress.

Are benefit sanctions here to stay? The simple answer is yes. Labour have publically stated that they are committed to keeping welfare sanctions applied to the unemployed and the disabled in place. However, what the Labour Party is also committed to, is the removal of sanction ‘targets’, something that the present government deny are in operation. But how can a future Labour administration remove something that at present is said not to even exist?

Despite years of global economic crisis and austerity there has been little effective political mobilization in favour of a socialist alternative. It is true that struggles have erupted with large scale protests and movements against austerity but none have posed the comprehensive challenge to capitalism as underlying cause of the effects (inequality and poverty) to which these movements responded. Hierarchical organization, and not capitalism per se, is often identified as the enemy. Suspicion runs high against the very idea of political power as necessary to advancing egalitarian and democratic values. Autonomous withdrawal into local alternative economies, and lifestyle changes are far more attractive to activists than the need for a genuine socialist party and political action. Many radicals have often not identified their goals explicitly with socialism. What some people often do not realise, when they are motivated by immediate threats to access to fundamental life-requirements like health care, is the actual opposition they are offering to the dominant institutions and value system of capitalism. There may be some self-conscious revolutionaries or anti-capitalists in the ranks of protestors, but many may have no explicit interest in politics beyond the immediate struggle. One key to building the case for socialism is to find arguments convincing to those who are concerned to preserve unpaid access to life-goods that what they are essentially defending is the free access socialist alternative to capitalism. Everything that creates well-being is being eroded by capitalism – water and sewage systems for all, roads and open public spaces without cost to use, public libraries with unpriced books and films, free healthcare and disease-prevention, security from unemployment, old age and disability, health and safety laws and environmental regulations, free primary to higher education and accessible family housing. These are the things that workers seek and socialism provides. The good life for human beings does not conform to what capitalism offers.

We know that people threatened by austerity are willing to resist its assaults on their life-conditions and resistance has sometimes delivered victories. Simply exchanging one ruling class for another without transforming collective life and individual life will lead to the same problems being repeated. A different vision must take us beyond the exploitative, alienating, oppressive, and life-destructive practices of capitalism. Revolution cannot be reduced to simple calls for redistribution and defence of public services. It has to be a different road for society.

 The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

But lets the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.

War And Its Effects

 On April 25, The Toronto Star published two similar articles concerning the plight of people in flight from violence. One focused on more than 10,000 Burundians who had fled into Rwanda from fear of the violence that would ensue if President Pierre Nkurunziza were elected for a third term. An armed group, CNDD-FDD are armed and threaten to kill anyone who does not support the president. Many remember the war that killed 25,000. In another article, The International Organization for Migration has estimated that the death toll from ships filled with refugees fleeing war and capsizing, could reach 30,000. In Africa, the UN has set up refugee camps. In the EU, money for the emergency has been doubled to help Italy cope with the problem. Both are short term solutions as there is no solution in sight. War, conflict, and refugees are a normal part of our current economic system and won't disappear until the system is replaced. John Ayers.

Climate Change

The mighty Rio Grande meanders 3,000 kilometres from the San Juan mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. It is now reduced to a mere trickle due to an historic drought in California and most of the Southwest. Ironically, as we write this, Texas is suffering through one of its worst floods in history Feast or famine, climate change is beginning to show its effects on our earth. Time to work for a system that will mitigate and cope with the problem! John Ayers.

To Be A Socialist

Some people think that socialism sounds great but will never work in practice. We are so demoralized and dejected by living under capitalism that we have become convinced that nothing as evidently sane and good as socialism could possibly ever really happen - life just isn't like that, so there must be a catch somewhere. The fact is that socialism is not too good to be true and it is a perfectly reasonable and practical way of organising society. Many of us don’t need to be convinced about the failures of capitalism — we’re convinced of that already. What we need is to be convinced of the genuine possibilities of socialism as an alternative. What we need is to have our imaginations and our minds awakened. Our vision of a better world arises from the belief that human malevolence, greed, aggression, competition, etc. are entirely the product of life under capitalism — rather than the other way around.

The defining feature of socialism is common ownership of economic resources. In socialism, there will be no wages. There will be no prices. In socialism, goods are produced for the use of people and NOT for the profits which they bring in to bosses. Labour power is no longer regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not purchased at all, let alone purchased at the lowest possible price to keep it alive and able to produce more value. People in socialism, will work and produce useful goods. But they will produce these for their mutual needs and for their mutual development. The sufficiency of goods which people and technology can create will be given to men and women to develop their bodies so that their minds can grow rich in the wealth of human knowledge, esthetic appreciation and artistic creation. From day to day, from week to week, and from year to year, the spiral of possible individual activity will widen rather than taper, as human productive and intellectual achievements increase. No longer fettered by the necessity of working not only for their own material maintenance, but for the bosses’ even more material profits, will be freed to live more fully. The time that each must work will be small, yet the goods produced for all to enjoy will be plentiful. Those who even think of “reasonable profit” will be jeered at someone out of the past dark ages. Whoever talks about money will be talking gibberish, for men who have been freed from the capitalist system will also have been freed from wage slavery and prices. In a nutshell, what we mean by ‘socialism’ is a world economy controlled by workers and devoted to the needs of humanity rather than the narrow interests of owners and investors. That is why, instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” workers must inscribe on their banner the REVOLUTIONARY watchword: “Abolition of the wage system!” Socialism is the ONLY answer!

The fundamental need for each other is too often overlooked. Human beings are social creatures and rely on each other to meet each other’s needs. But our capitalist society encourages competition over cooperation and individualism over collectivism. In this environment, it has become challenging to connect with each other. For example, most of us don’t know our neighbors. Most of us see our friends and family less but work more than ever. Most of us put our children in child care. Who belongs to social or sports clubs anymore? Capitalism has alienated us from our work, ourselves, and each other. Yet, we are more productive now than ever before — at work. We toil and sweat and work our hearts out while the employers keep what we produce. What do we get out in return? A “chance” to eke out an existence as a wage slave. Taking care of our human needs and our loved ones is becoming increasingly difficult to do. When individuals don’t have their emotional needs met, the result is often depression and anxiety and on a societal level, the consequences manifest as social problems such as violence and drug abuse.

 When you think about it, it is common sense that capitalism and humans are incompatible. Capitalism is a heartless system devoid of anything but a thirst for profits. Human beings are emotional creatures with multiple needs, wants and desires – most of which have nothing to do with profits. Sure, some needs can be met with the money that comes from wage-labour but not all. Capitalist greed has produced some of the worst economic inequalities we have ever seen, which makes it even harder to meet even the most basic human needs. Because we’re being forced to work so much for so little, we no longer have the time to meet the needs of each other, our children, and our most needy. Capitalism cultivates, exalts, and rewards those drives which sustains it — competition, greed, hierarchical display, distrust, , etc. — while disempowering other human drives towards cooperation, social bonding, reverence, nurture, etc.  Everyone is afraid. This is no way to live. Living in community instead of isolation creates a better life for us all. We enjoy being together. We want to do things together because we realize it makes things not only easier (since you share burdens and responsibilities and both “good times” and “bad times”) but because it feels better.

Feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, ending inequality and the divisive prejudices of sexism, racism and nationalism, establishing democratic planning of the economy, halting climate change, all this is possible and can move from being a possibility to being a reality. If we are serious about building socialism, it’s going to take a lot more than just dissatisfaction. Achieving a sustainable socialism that permits our planet Earth to rebalance itself will take socializing the means of production and asking the questions — production for what/production of what?

The World Needs Socialism! Socialism Requires Revolution!

The class struggle -- the conflict between the capitalists and the workers -- is at the very heart of the capitalist system. It explains how it works and where it is going. The workers create the wealth and the bosses take the lion’s share. Today capitalism is on a global offensive that is wiping out past gains. As profit margins have fallen in the system as a whole, competition between capitalist firms and nations has become ever more vicious. The “race to the bottom” in which capitalists try to outdo each other in finding the cheapest labour possible is prevalent. The needs of the ruling class to boost profit rates also dictates escalated racist and anti-immigrant attacks across the board -- to keep the working class down through divide-and-conquer methods. In their insatiable quest to maximize profits, the capitalists and their state crush everything that stands in their way; they no longer have the luxury of preserving the democratic veneer they once applied to their system.

Socialism still offers the best hope for humanity.  We aren't idealists who think people can be made perfect.  We simply think a society run by workers themselves, freed from both bosses and bureaucrats, would be far more democratic and liberatory than capitalism ever has been.  We think that a society premised upon the enhancement of life rather than the perpetuation of profit would stand the best chance of putting a halt to the environmental devastation now ravishing the globe. But we can't get there on our own.  A society that strives for basic equality and democratic participation will only come about through the coordinated activity of many people. The emancipation of humanity from capitalism will only come about when workers act in the offices, factories and streets on their own behalf.  It cannot be achieved through any shortcut, though many have been tried.

Socialists are widely condemned as utopian dreamers. But socialist society is not some dreamland. We argue that socialism is the only solution. Only the working class, through socialist revolution, can stop this nightmare. In order to fight most effectively, workers also have to understand that there can be no lasting concessions from the capitalist system. To win security and abundance for all, the working class will have to take matters into our own hands. We must dare to struggle and dare to win!

There can be no bureaucrats in socialism. It will be a social organization of the people by the people. Government over the people is replaced by the administration of things.

Marx and Engels had clarified the concept of socialism in the Communist Manifesto, where they wrote: "In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class conflicts there will be an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." In Capital, a society opposed to the "world of the commodity" is described as "an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social force." From The Civil War in France,  "if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, this taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of Capitalist production-what else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism, "possible" Communism?”  One more example comes from an essay Marx wrote in 1871 entitled ‘On the Nationalisation of Land’: "The national concentration of the means of production is the natural base of a society in which a co-operative union of free and equal producers consciously acts in accordance to a rational plan."

It is natural that from the outset in this sort of society there is no room for the existence of commodities or currency which are categories peculiar to a society founded on private property.

Socialism is thus a society in which private property is abolished so that the means of production become the common property of society. Individual labour power is consciously expended by an "association of free men" as one part of society's labour power; that is a "combination" of "large cooperative production unions" consciously coordinates production and distribution based on a rational single common plan – the cooperative commonwealth. Of course, to realise this society the highest development of production, technology and industry are the necessary preconditions.