Killing Nature

 A new report produced by RSBP Scotland has confirmed that more than 700 birds of prey have been killed illegally in the past 20 years. Records show that 468 birds of prey were poisoned, 173 were shot and 76 were caught in illegal traps. There were also 50 destroyed nests, seven attempted shootings and five cases classed as “other”. The figures include 104 red kites, 37 golden eagles, 30 hen harriers, 16 goshawks and 10 white-tailed eagles. The review also revealed that in a further 171 incidents, poison baits or non-bird of prey victims of poisoning were found, including 14 domestic cats and 14 dogs.

The RSPB revealed that in the past 20 years a “significant majority” of cases took place in areas associated with game-bird shooting, particularly in upland areas managed for grouse shooting.

The Socialist Idea

Trade unions are essential for the working class and have done much to advance its cause. Without them, workers would still be subject to the every whim and fancy of the employers and their foremen. Strikes, even when small and weak, constitute breaks of the workers with capitalism. They are living refutations of the time-worn conservative trade union slogan that the interests of capital and labour are identical. They are expressions of the irreconcilable quarrel between the workers and the employers over the division of the workers’ products. They are skirmishes in the great class war, foreshadowing the final struggle which will abolish capitalism. During strikes, workers are in an especially militant and rebellious mood. They are then highly receptive of revolutionary ideas. It is then above all that they can and must be taught the full implications of their struggle. To rouse the class consciousness of the workers and to educate them to understand the class struggle and the historic mission of the working class is always a first consideration in a socialist strike strategy. The employers are more and more giving a political character to strikes, especially those in key industries and during crises by using all branches of their state power against the workers. But unions, while indispensable in the struggle of the workers against capital, have limits as well.

 Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid of. A relatively small minority recognise this and are consciously anti-capitalist. During periods of economic crisis, the contradiction of capitalism sharpen and the possibility of actually getting rid of it arises. A substantial proportion of the population is drawn into active political struggle as they confront questions of what society is to do to get out of its impasse. There is no crisis that the ruling class could not resolve if it was allowed to, but with the masses politically active, the possibility arises of the ruling class not being allowed to, and of people taking things into their own hands. Between capitalists and workers there is no room for compromise. Reforms become impossible and even past achievements may be rolled back. “We can’t afford these luxuries any more”. Within the working class too, there is less unity as people find themselves in “hard times” where it is “everyone for themselves”. The “social fabric” unravels, consensus breaks down and capitalist society stands revealed as based on sharply antagonistic interests. The injustices of slavery and serfdom were eliminated by abolishing the social institutions of slavery and serfdom themselves, not by prohibitions against maltreatment of slaves and serfs. The injustices of wage labour will be eliminated by abolishing the social institution of wage labour itself, not by directions to employers to treat their workers better. As the Communist Manifesto argued, we should raise the “property question” to the forefront of all immediate, practical struggles. We should be quite clear that this is what we are on about.

We believe that the present system, of capitalism, is not part of an eternal “natural order” of things, not a consequence of “human nature”. It is a recent arrival in mankind’s history and its days are numbered. The problems we face – unemployment, poverty, slump, inflation, are not some “illness” of capitalism, they are an essential part of how it works. All these evils are the direct result of the private ownership of wealth, and the consequent exploitation by a few of the mass of the population, the workers who produce all wealth – and whose reward is a tiny pittance. This tiny minority of the population holds complete control of the economy and political power, and effectively controls all the machinery of the state, the armed forces, the police, judiciary and upper ranks of the civil service. The economic and political power of the capitalist class has its counterpart in the domination and control of the production of ideas, through which it maintains the repressive machinery of the state.

What do we mean by socialism? Not the phoney socialism of the Labour Party, for sure. The Labour Party has plainly shown its willingness to strengthen the corporate state. We are fighting for a working class democracy in which the producers of wealth, the working class will own the factories, the land, the hospitals, the schools, the courts etc. and will run them themselves according to the will of the majority,

Is there life after capitalism

The Socialist Party members regard themselves first and foremost as practical people dedicated to changing the world. We are rightly suspicious of those who merely talk about the injustices and the evils of capitalism and never seem to translate their words into political action. Changing the world implies knowing about it in the process of changing it, and change implies self-change and self-consciousness. In demystifying capitalism, socialists shows how humanity can bring about its own emancipation. The first step in the words of Marx is ‘to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.’

Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What are we waiting for? What awaits us? Many only feel confused because they do not know why and with what. Theirs is a state of anxiety and fear. When workers first begin to study history and social development from the Marxist point of view known as historical materialism it is as if a blindfold was suddenly stripped from their eyes. For the first time the past - and not only the past but the present -begins to make sense, and events and affairs which before were incomprehensible become clear. One can in fact begin to acquire a new insight into political and economic systems, into governments and their policies, into the origins of wars and revolutions, into the activities of nations and the social forces within them: in fact, into all of the major spheres of human activity and knowledge. One can begin to understand, almost literally, what makes the world tick. We hold that socialism is moreorless inevitable. But whether it comes in our lifetimes or 500 years hence is a matter of how much people desire it and are willing to struggle for it and by no means does it follow that mankind only has to sit on his hands and await the inevitable. The question of active work to promote socialist consciousness is decisive. Hence the need for a genuinely socialist party but it is people who are the real makers of history.

Working people throughout the world are experiencing deteriorating conditions both at work and in society in general. The capitalist system dominates our lives. What is this domination based on? It is based on the fact that the means of production – the mines, the buildings, the machines, and the land – is the private property of the small but powerful capitalist class. Workers do not own the means of production. Therefore workers are forced to sell their labour-power to capitalists in order to survive. We all know that the capitalists do not pay us for the amount of work we do. They are only willing to pay us wages for part of the value we produce, only the wages which are absolutely necessary to maintain ourselves and our families. The rest of the value we produce, the surplus value, gets converted into their profits when they sell the products, the goods and services, we produce for them. This process is the exploitation of labour...where a portion of our labour becomes their only source of profit! It is the law itself that upholds the rights of private property, especially their right to rip off part of the value of our labour. It is the law itself which upholds the oppressive authority of the bosses over us in our work. And it is the force of the police, the courts, the prisons, and the armed forces that are used against us when we resist. The entire government is a tool of the capitalist class. History has shown that ownership of the means of production is decisive in determining who has power in any society. Putting that control in the hands of those who produce the wealth, the working class, is the first step in creating the basis for real equality among all people.

The history of the exploitation and oppressive character of capitalism is also a history of the revolutionary workers’ struggles to abolish capitalism and build socialism. The history of capitalism is also the history of workers spontaneous militant resistance. At first individually and then collectively in unions, workers have struggled for a greater share of the wealth they produce. The wages and benefits we enjoy above subsistence are largely the result of militant struggle by the working class. The economic struggle has had to take on the government – police attacks, court injunctions, spies in the unions, government troops. Concessions have been wrenched from the capitalist class – the right to form unions, the right to strike, protective legislation. But concessions are never permanent and we see them being constantly chipped away. We are losing what our class has won in the past. Our understanding of capitalism shows that the interests of the propertied capitalist class are opposite those of the property-less working class. Greater profits and wealth for them means lower wages and deteriorating living conditions for working people.

Talk! talk! talk! Hypocritical cant is filling the airwaves to the confusion of many people. Young workers do the fighting and dying for the greater glory (and profit) of their capitalist masters. The world is bristling with armaments. Under capitalism war is inevitable. If you, fellow-worker, desire to abolish war, we say: Abolish capitalism with all its misery and replace it with a system of production for use and not for profit – all over the world. War calls for a radical cure, for a revolutionary surgeon’s knife to exterminate class society, and not a reformist salve to heal the ulcer and retain the body of capitalism. As long as capitalism exists we will continue to suffer wars. These wars bring profits to the industrialists. They bring death and destruction to the people. It is the propaganda of the ruling class that promotes national chauvinism, the idea that people of one nation are superior to the people of other nations. This is the same nationalism, a false patriotism, which, in effect, advocates that workers from the various nations should destroy each other for the sake of profits ... profits that go to the very people who exploit all workers! We oppose those ideas that seek to divide the peoples of the nations! We oppose all war! But only when we abolish private ownership of the means of production, only when we abolish imperialism itself, will we abolish the conditions it creates, including war. The worldwide struggle for socialism is also a worldwide struggle to end all imperialist wars.

Poverty in Scotland

140,000 children in Scotland are still growing up in poor families, warns a new Government commissioned report, The State of the National 2015 document. Relative child poverty before housing costs was 14 per cent in Scotland. Absolute child poverty before housing costs was 15 per cent. Material deprivation before housing costs was 13 per cent. 10.9 per cent of children in Scotland live in workless households.

Almost one in five employees are low paid.

There is still a very long way to go to eradicate child poverty in Scotland. In November 2014 the Institute for Fiscal Studies published projections for Scotland which suggested that the proportion of children in relative poverty would increase by seven per cent and the proportion of children in absolute poverty would increase by 20 per cent, between 2013–14 and 2020–21.

Shifting Sands

The Toronto Star October 25) brought attention to the fact that many of the world's beaches are disappearing owing to the need for sand for construction. Though the article focused primarily on Cape Verda, the problem is evident in Kenya, New Zealand, Jamaica, and Morocco. Demand for sand has never been greater. It is used in the production of computer chips and mobile phones and especially for cement making. The UN environment program (UNEP) estimates that global consumption of sand is at an average of 40 billion tons annually, three quarters used for concrete. A spokesperson said, " Sands are now being extracted at a rate far greater than renewal. This means that shorelines are being eroded exacerbating the problem already being caused by global warming. So, once again, capitalism creates a problem it cannot cure and there is zero chance that a world common sense solution can be applied. If there are profits to be made in construction, then damage to the world's coastlines can go to hell, which happens to be a good place for capitalism. John Ayers

Change the World

Commonly the word “socialism” is used as a political trick. The Labour Party is called “socialist”. Labour governments are no less capitalist than the Tories. It is suggested that countries such as in Scandinavia with large welfare programmes are socialist or that nationalised industries are socialist. This has nothing to do with the socialism dealt with here.

A socialist means a man or a woman who recognises the class war between the worker and the owning class as the inevitable historic outcome of the capitalist system and of the direct economic and social antagonisms which it has engendered and fostered. Those antagonisms can only be resolved by the complete control over all the great means of production, distribution, and exchange, by the whole people, thus abolishing the class State and the wages system, and constituting a co-operative commonwealth or a socialism. The preliminary changes which must bring about this social revolution are already being made, unconsciously, by the capitalists themselves, and is anxious to use political institutions and forms to educate the people and to prepare, as far as possible, peacefully for the social revolution which must result in national and worldwide socialism. Socialist change should be completely democratic in every respect. The logical outcome of the fight to extend democracy is to weaken and undermine the power now held and exercised the capitalist class and the winning of political power by the working class. Without such a revolutionary change in society socialism cannot be built. Without such a revolution every advance that has been made in living standards and democracy will be threatened again and again. It is in the best interests of the working people, of the vast majority of the nation, that this mass struggle for political power should be carried through by peaceful means, without violence or civil war. When a socialist majority in Parliament is won it will need the support of the mass movement outside Parliament to uphold the decisions it has taken in Parliament. Conversely, the Parliamentary decisions will give legal endorsement to popular aims and popular struggles. The strength of the mass movement will be felt in Parliament, and the strength of the socialist movement within Parliament will strengthen the movement outside. The one supports the other. In this way, by political action, Parliament can be made into the effective instrument of the people's will and replace capitalism by socialism.

The class struggle may well have reached a turning point. The working class is looking to regain its fighting strength after years of setbacks. There is the mood and the feeling of a radicalisation taking place. There is a growing debate going about how to make a revolution, about who is going to make the revolution and change the world. However, there are people who are reformists, who think of themselves as socialists—the classic reformists who think that we’re going to get socialism by an accumulation of reforms, of gradualism. They’re not revolutionary socialists even if they believe themselves anti-capitalist. The Socialist Party are revolutionaries talking about a Revolution.

The hope for all mankind depends upon the determination and courage of the working people; let us rise to our task. The future lies with socialism

Eraducation A Must

The daily effects of stress can cause people to do incomprehensible things. Jian Ghomeshi, the former host of the CBC Program, Q, was recently fired after allegations of sexual abuse of several women. Apparently, according to The Stratford Herald, he keeps a stuffed teddy bear to help him deal with anxiety, similar to his childhood bear. Again, it might help to deal with the effects but its cause must be eradicated. John Ayers

One Change Can Do It All

I walked into the food bank where my wife works. Among the leaflets and brochures there was, "Are you homeless, are you almost homeless?…call the Region of Peel outreach team…we can help with Ontario Works, health care, food, clothing, mental health and addiction support, advocacy for housing, emergency shelter, employment, and so on. One thing that came to mind was the amount of time and resources spent that would not be necessary in a socialist system. One change can do it all. John Ayers

Human "nature" is socialist

We are living in a time when the comforts of life, and all the material wealth needed to bring happiness to every human being, can be produced in abundance. There is no need whatever for one human being to go hungry or homeless. Man’s inventive genius has developed the tools that abundance possible to all. But between that abundance and its enjoyment by all men, women and children an obstacle is interposed. That obstacle is the modern social system, capitalism, and its defenders and beneficiaries are the capitalist class. Working people, young and old, male and female, black and white, instead of fighting the capitalist, with wealth and freedom as the prize at stake, fall to fighting each other; and the stakes in that conflict are: death to the loser; poverty, misery and wage-slavery to the winner.

What socialism proposes is the good things of life for everybody. No more poverty anymore with its filth and sickness and vice. In order to enjoy abundance for all, we must do something. Socialism proposes something very definite to do which is this: Take to ourselves the vast new technology and use it for producing new wealth for all instead of producing profits for a few. The only reason we are not all well off now is that a few people own these great inventions and refuse access to them except when they can make a profit for themselves. If we collectively owned the factories and transport and mines and mills ourselves and all of us worked at them to produce wealth for our own use and happiness, all the troubles of poverty would disappear at once. The only thing that lies between us and a positive future is this private ownership of the means of producing wealth. Socialism proposes to do, in order to get wealth for all, is to take possession of the instruments of wealth production and run them for the use of all. With the emergence of the era of abundance we have the economic base for a true democracy of participation, in which men no longer need to feel themselves prisoners of social forces and decisions beyond their control or comprehension. In socialism economic planning is to be done on a local level and the workers are to control the means and mode of production. Workers would be more motivated as they are creating products, not to fulfill the demands of a capitalist market but the needs of the community.

"Human nature" (i.e., what humans do) does vary a lot depending on social and economic conditions. However, we should not forget that we are evolved creatures and so we are not a blank slate (as some suggest). Luckily, evolution has made us co-operative, egalitarian apes which makes socialism a possibility -- indeed, we have lived as sharing social animals for most of our history as a species (property and state are relatively recent developments.) We know not what the people will do when they control the means by which they make their living, but we believe they will use them in their own interest and with a reasonable degree of intelligence. If they do, they can accomplish these results:

They can make it so no one who wants to do productive labor can be deprived of the opportunity of doing it, at any time. They can make it possible to banish want from the face of the Earth. They can make it possible for every family to have a home and to be immune from the fear of want for themselves and their children. They can make it possible for every child to have a good education, to be able to see the world, and to make its way without the least danger of losing out economically. They can make it possible for every person to support a family in comfort and security. They can make it possible for every woman to be free economically, so that she may get along whether she married or single. These are part of the ideals that the socialist cherishes. They are not mere visions, but are things that may be wrought into concrete form, whenever men shall have free access to the means with which things are produced and distributed. They have been impossible of attainment in the past, only because the Earth and its fullness was held from the people by either political or industrial masters. In brief, socialism holds as its great ideal that freedom of action which shall make the making of a living a simple, easy thing, possible to all; and beyond this lies the greater hope of being able to live, to really live.

Depressing Statistics

Statistics Canada recently issued some interesting information on young people. Only one in five children in Canada who need mental health services ever receives professional help; about 3.2. million young people in Canada aged twelve to nineteen are at risk for developing depression; One in four will experience clinical depression by age eighteen; in Canada 75% of mental disorders develop by age 24, fifty per cent by age 14; suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people, after accident, accounting for almost a quarter of all deaths among 15-24 year olds. The pressures and insecurity of life under capitalism affect parents and children. Psychologists and other mental health workers do help patients to cope with the stress of life better but removing the cause would be preferable. Socialism offers security, stability and fulfillment. John Ayers.

Past, Present, and Future (1908)

Past, Present, and Future (1908)

From the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Andrew Carnegie! Pierpont Morgan! Names not without meaning to the man in the street, but, to the Socialist, symbolic of something of far deeper significance than their mention calls up in the mind of the uninitiated.

Designative of types of two distinct orders of capitalist dominators, representative of two definite eras of industrial history, they bear inconvertible witness to the truth of our scientific conclusion anent the evolutionary nature of capitalism. They are to be cherished as invaluable aids to the understanding of one of the most important lessons the workers have to learn; as raised letters to the blind, ocular demonstration to those who cannot hear.

As far as may ever be properly said  of human kind, the men they nominate are makers of a page of history incomparably more pregnant of consequences to the world than any which chronicles the activities of royal hero or military genius—ancient lights or modern. They mark an epoch.

Their story will bear repeating.

It is common knowledge that at the end of the last century Andrew carnegie was head of the largest steel rail factory in the world, an establishment with an output so vast that to state it is to court suspicion of extravagance.

Here the famous Scot had dominion over which his rule was complete; his word was law, his whim destiny, life and death his prerogative—as was shown when he had his workmen shot down by bargeloads of armed detectives.

Came Pierpont Morgan with new conception. Andrew's method of business was based on competition—the undercutting of rivals. The very essence of Morgan's system was the elimination of competition by amalgamating the powerful concerns of an industry, crushing the smaller, and then,—why then Competition had reached the end of the strife-strewn path that history had foreordained she should traverse, and is discovered taking her ease at least, sitting in peace "under her olive," suckling a sturdy son—Monopoly.

Andrew was asked to abdicate, and, like himself, refused. He would see Morgan hanged and Wall Street sink into the bowels of the earth before he would surrender his factory.

Did Andrew speak without due reflection? It would seem so, for, just as, when he declared the disgrace of dying rich, he underestimated the difficulty of becoming poor, hurling defiance at Wall Street, he depreciated the tremendous power opposed to him.

He quickly found that Morgan had control of the railways, and was therefore in a position of dominance; for without his consent not a rail could be freighted out of the vast Pittsburg steel works. He quickly found also that the new conception did not wait upon the pleasure of the master of Pittsburg; for if he would not submit to be bought out, then Wall Street would amalgamate the remnants of the industry against him and fight him out.

Here was a situation in which all Pinkerton's army could afford Andrew no assistance. Those who threatened him were no longer working men, the natural defence against whom was the levelled rifle. No weapon existed to batter the forces of the financial monarchs, so Carnegie was a beaten man. he retired from the contest—made way for the "Billion Dollar Trust."

Now great change came o'er the land. Pittsburg became a province in the empire of the Steel Trust; the seat of government was shifted to Wall Street; the sceptre had passed from the great ironmaster, acquainted with every corner of his factory, proficient in the technics of his art, supervisor of the operations of producing his commodities, into the hands of the great financier, who knew not what steel was. The position that Andrew had filled with majesty was now the place of a hireling - a mere foreman whose only princely semblance was his salary. Great powers of direction had been given to an employee, but control had passed for ever from the overseer of the productive forces, and had become vested in outsiders, whose utility or necessity the most subtle imagination fails to conceive.

Nor did the change end here. The strife of competition gave place to the peace of monopoly. In the field of steel production there was one master instead of many; in the field of steel distribution there was one seller instead of many. So peace reigned in the steel industry as it does at times in Russia under the soothing influence of the Czar's Cossacks.

All this marks an epoch in capitalism's evolution.

Not the first, be it understood, for the merchant prince was a ruler in his generation, even as the manufacturer has been in the days now slipping into history, and the financier is to be in the days which are to come.

Type of the dying past—Andrew Carnegie; type of the youthful present—Pierpont Morgan; where shall we seek a type of the yet unfulfilled future?

For it may not be doubted that the reign of this present capitalist dominator is transient, even as the others have been. That which has beginning must of necessity have end. Capitalism has not always existed, nor will. It has been revolutionary in its time, has risen against and dethroned its immediate predecessor—Feudalism: what os to dethrone it in its turn? Long since the manufacturer seized the baton of the merchant prince and pushed him from power, only to be himself thrown down in the fulness of time by the financial upstart—who is there left under the sin to unseat this last?

The prophetic finger of Science points to him who even now stands in revolutionary opposition to the regalism of the financial Molloch and his phase of capitalism. For scientific inquiry has furnished abundant evidence that through all history power has moved in the direction of economy, of adjustment to the needs of the social organism, of ultimate advantage to humanity. The manufacturer has played his useful part in production, as did the merchant prince before him in distribution, but what necessary place, in either production or distribution is filled by the financier? The final vestige of useful function has been relegated to an employee, who, however munificent his remuneration, remains a hireling.

Irony of fate—the only use the last of the capitalist rulers can have is to prepare the way for his successor. For long capitalism has been engaged in the lugubrious occupation of digging a grave: it has at length discovered that this grave is its own. For has not Pierpont Morgan himself announced that the function of his kind is to organise production in such form that it may be taken over by the community?

Capitalism is itself to be the educator of the revolution which is to shatter it to pieces. Its latest development, by separating entirely from the productive processes the owners and controllers of the means of production, is making very clear to the worker, what he could never believe before, that he alone is necessary to the creation of material wealth. Control of production, he begins to see, has passed to an order of men who can be removed without any industrial disturbance, and the growing knowledge of this fact pronounces the doom, not only of the phase of financial monarchy in capitalism, but of the capitalist system itself.

Wherefore the prophetic finger aforesaid, which must be pointing somewhere, could indicate none other than the worker as the successor of the modern capitalist. The needs of the social organism demand his rise to power, for it is impossible for that organism to continue to flourish while the vast bulk of its component cells are ill-nourished and stinted. Logic also demands that the worker become paramount, for it is the very antithesis of logic to produce goods for profit instead of for use, to have the producers hungry and unemployed because they have produced too much and glutted the market. Finally, history demands the supremacy of the worker; for why else has it provided this last of the long concatenation of changes which, starting by depriving him of the means of life as necessary condition of their perfection to such as would afford him fuller subsistence and higher existence, end by offering him once again those means of life—radiant with their added wonders of fertility, and large with the promise of still greater wonders yet to be added unto them—if he will only stretch out his hand and take them?

The transition is so easy—merely the substitution of the old property condition for that which so long has played the usurper. Private property in the means of life must go. It has dug its own grave, it remains but for the workers to push it in and cover it up decently.

Then, with common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth the sound, sure and kindly basis of all human affairs let come what will.

A. E. Jacomb

We need a system change

The red flag for fraternity and freedom.

Socialists primarily concern themselves with analysing the capitalist system, pointing out its defects and advocating the replacing of the capitalist system by the collective ownership and democratic administration of the means of production and distribution. Socialism is the common ownership by all the people of the land, the factories, the transport, and all other means of production and distribution. Socialism means production to satisfy human needs, not as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Many people think that socialism means government ownership but socialists do not want to create an all-powerful government bureaucracy but rather, we believe that social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect. Socialists criticise capitalism, arguing that it derives wealth from a system of labour exploitation and then concentrates wealth and power within a small segment of society that controls the means of production. As a result, society is stratified, split into classes according to who owns the means of production and who is forced to sell their labour; as a result, individuals do not all have the same opportunity to maximise their potential. A capitalist society does not utilise available technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public. Instead, it focuses on satisfying market-induced wants as opposed to human needs. Socialism means genuine social equality, on a world scale. Socialism means the extension of democracy to all of society, including the economic process.

The overthrow of capitalism—that is a DEMAND—it is THE demand of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Our party is the only party that points out that there is no alternative for the working class other than socialism. The fundamental issue of our campaign is socialism versus capitalism. The working class must be taught that the problems confronting them cannot be solved except through the end of the capitalist system, trying to reform the capitalism system is like struggling to cure the symptoms and not the disease. Votes obtained by a campaign conducted on the case for socialism mean that those persons who voted can be counted on as supporting socialism. Votes obtained by offering all kinds of reform promises, if ‘socialists’ are elected, are votes of those who will vote Socialist Party today and shift to some other party with a more appetising menu of reforms the next election. They would turn their backs to us and vote for the more “practical” parties.

Reformism regards socialism as a remote goal and nothing more, and actually repudiates the socialist revolution. Reformism advocates not class struggle, but class collaboration. It develops out of faith in the fair mindedness of the ruling class. In the struggle against the system of capitalism, there can be no unity with any section of the capitalists which will only lead to class collaboration and will prolong the existing system of wage slavery and intensify exploitation.

Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production and distribution and their democratic organisation and management by all the people in a society free of classes, class divisions and class rule. Socialism is the democratic organization of production for use, of production for abundance, of plenty for all, without the exploitation of man by man. Socialism is the 'union of the whole world into a worldwide federation of free and equal peoples, disposing in common of the natural resources and wealth. Production is carried on in a planned and democratic way, not on the basis of whether or not the private capitalist can make a profit on the market. 

Socialism means abundance for all. Where there is abundance for all, the nightmare of insecurity vanishes. There are jobs for all, and they are no longer dependent on whether or not the employer can make a fat profit in a fat market. There is not only a high standard of living, but every industrial advance is followed by a rising standard of living and a declining working-day. Where there is abundance for all, and where no one has the economic power to exploit and oppress others, the basis of classes, class division and class conflict vanishes. The basis of a rilling state, of a government of violence and repression, with its prisons and police and army, also disappears. Police and thieves, prisons and violence are inevitable where there is economic inequality, or abundance for the few and scarcity for the many. They disappear when there is plenty for all, therefore economic equality, therefore social equality. Where there is abundance for all, and where all have equal access to the fruits of the soil and the wealth of industry, the mad conflicts and wars between nations and peoples vanish. With them vanishes the irrepressible urge that exists under capitalism for one nation to subject others, to rob it of its rights, to exploit and oppress it, to provoke and maintain the hideous national and racial antagonisms that cling to capitalism like an ineradicable bloodstain. Abundance for all means freedom. Where man is free of economic exploitation, of economic inequality, of economic insecurity, he is free for the first time to develop as a human being among his fellow human beings, free to contribute to the unfolding of a new culture.

Black Snow, We Must Act Fast

Scientists have just become aware of a new aspect of global warming – nearly invisible particles of carbon resulting from incomplete combustion in diesel engines. Some particles are being swept by wind from industrial centers to the Arctic. This phenomenon, called black snow, reduces the ability of snow and ice to reflect sunlight. In fact, in one month this process, called albedo, dropped twenty per cent. A team of French government scientists reported that the arctic ice cap, that is thought to have lost an average of 12.9 billion tonnes of ice a year between 1992 and 2010 due to general warming, may be losing an extra 27 billion tonnes a year because of black snow causing the sea level to rise several centimeters . To put it bluntly, time is running out, and since socialism is the only real solution, we must act fast. John Ayers.

It's The Capitalist Way

In October, Ontarians lost a high stakes bidding war over auto-manufacturing jobs. Unifor, the auto workers' union, said that Ford will build a new type of engine in Mexico instead of Windsor. The project would have meant about 1,000 jobs. The minister for Economic Development and Employment, Brad Duguid, said, " Our government is committed to partnering with business in a fiscally responsible way, but we will not invest taxpayers' dollars in any partnership that does not provide a strong return for Ontarians". Governments at all levels have been stung hard and often by companies taking the money and running away in short order. It will be, as usual, the working class that loses out with fewer good jobs while the capitalist class can still invest their money in the company no matter where it operates. Many other countries are competing for work by offering huge incentives and low labour costs resulting in higher profits. It's the natural thing for capital to do. To beat it, drop capitalism. John Ayers.

Understanding the world we live in

It is an old analogy but still serves well to make the point. Society is suffering from the rotten, cancerous, fatal maladies of capitalism and that all the best schemes for bolstering the system are, at their best, palliatives that cannot cure. We either resign ourselves to the progressively worsening malaise of the capitalist system or under-go surgery to lop of the diseased parts of society in an operation known as social revolution to allow humanity a new lease on life.

Socialism must be self-managing. The producers must hold the real decision making power over what they produce. This power must be exercised in a completely democratic manner. Socialism must be created by the majority, by every worker. Socialism is not simply about more efficient economic planning, but about what type of planning, by whom and for whom. Where the chains of capitalism are forged, there they must be broken. Only thus can socialism be created. Socialism has a straightforward attitude to the existing state, which is a state of the exploiting class. It must not worshipped. There have been many thinkers who saw socialism as simply the extension of state power and state ownership. But not Marx and Engels. Proponents of State ‘socialism’ negate of the principle of self-emancipation and deny the very possibility that the workers can organise themselves. Advocates of nationalization looks to an agency outside and above them – the existing state – to solve their problems for them. Capitalism itself was compelled, in its own development, towards some form of ‘socialisation’ of production but workers remain, as they were before, the objects of exploitation.

A prerequisite for the conversion of today’s society to socialism must be the conquest of political power by the working class. In order to be able to fulfill this task, the working masses must be fully aware of their goal and become a class-organised mass.

 To destroy capitalism, we need to understand exactly what it is and what drives it. In order not to starve, the worker, who possesses or controls no means of production, must sell her or his labour power to the capitalist. (By the way, this predicament is not an accident, but has been engineered through systematic historical dispossession such as the Enclosures)

This labour power, which will be used to produce commodities for the capitalist, is itself sold as a commodity. The price (paid as wages) is not based on the value of the commodities that will be produced with it (it is completely unrelated to that, actually), but instead it’s roughly based on the cost of its own production: the worker’s subsistence, his or her food, shelter and other necessities.

During the work day, workers produce more value than the amount of wages they receive. Let’s say that during the first hour they manufacture cars or shirts or whatever that are equivalent to the value of their wages. That means for the rest of the day, 7 hours or more, they work for free, creating new value for the economy. This new value is not paid for. In other words, their labor power is being stolen. That’s exploitation, which is made possible by the wage system.

That new value, called surplus value, is privately appropriated by capitalists, who own, control, and manage the entire process of production and distribution for the whole society.

The capitalists’ ownership of the means of production—the raw materials, factory and machinery, which it obtained through previous cycles of exploitation or outright raw dispossession through war or other means—is used to justify depriving workers of any legal right to keep the product. So the capitalist takes everything that the worker produces. 

Surplus value isn’t simply a quantitative sum. It is a social process, a class relation. The entire society is set up to facilitate its extraction, and the entire system depends on it. Surplus value is the origin of all other forms of capital and of concentration of capital. The process benefits only capitalists, never workers. The workers receive barely enough to survive, and when it’s slightly more than that, it serves as a bribe to keep quiet. The amount of wages and of surplus value is constantly contested, determined by class struggle.

This arrangement establishes the fundamental contradiction of capitalism as capital vs. labour, embodied in the conflict between the capitalist class and the working class. These two classes are antagonistic – the exploitation of one results in the accumulation of wealth for the other.

The surplus value is re-invested and becomes new capital. Surplus value is capital. If all capital accumulation ultimately depends on the extraction of surplus value, then the end of capitalism will require that this process be stopped.

What She Didn't Say

In an article in the Toronto Star (October 18) titled, "What The World Did Wrong About Ebola: Everything", Joanne Liu, international president of Medicins Sans Frontiers, said, "The reality is, we failed as an international community." 

She didn't say that funding to the World Health Organization had been cut so badly that there were large gaps in the personnel necessary to conduct health business properly. With our technology, it should have been a relatively simple matter to control the initial outbreak and save thousands of lives. But doing it properly, costs money that must come from profits and here lies the major problem with the capitalist system – profits must trump anything else in the long run. 

John Ayers.

We need socialism

In a world of abundance, we suffer from misery. The burdens of capitalism is being dumped increasingly on the shoulders of the working class. Government after government are enacting legislation to make the working class pay for the crises within capitalism.

By socialism we understand the system of society where the production of all the means of social existence including all the necessaries and comforts of life is carried on by the organised community for its own use collectively and individually. Socialism does not mean state- ownership or management. The State of to-day, nationally or locally, is only the agent of the possessing class and the government, as the agent of the possessing class, has, in the interests of its employers, to treat the employees just as other employees are treated. We seek the establishment of a political power — in place of the present class State — which shall have for its conscious and definite aim the common ownership and control of the whole of the world’s industry, etc. The entire means of production thus being common property, there would no longer be a propertied class to make a profit. Humanity must choose between the continuation of the capitalist system which leads to destruction and the organization of labour founded on solidarity and reciprocity through the socialisation of the forces of production. Therefore socialism means the, complete supercession of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money. Socialism stands for the abolition of class robbery and the abolition of poverty. The battle of the working class against capitalist exploitation is necessarily a political battle. It cannot effect the passing of the means of production into the ownership of the community without acquiring political power. Socialism, is a struggle to place the management and control of industry directly in the workers through the overthrow of Capitalism and its governmental expression in the state. Socialism is not the conquest of the state by a political party: it is the conquest of society by the proletariat through industrial and political action. Socialism, in the words of Engels, is not the government of persons, but the administration of things.

The words socialist and communist are changing their meaning just as the word Christian did and ‘heretics’ were burned by the thousands for proclaiming love thy neighbor. To-day the word socialism has become a smoke-screen and transformed to make socialism mean a “first stage” in the development of communism, thus making it possible to put over policies in the name of “socialism” that would horrify Marx who placed at the very basis of his system the assertion that the proletariat, being the lowest class in society, could not emancipate itself without emancipating all mankind, and described socialism in consequence as “the society of the free and equal,” you see how deep is the degeneration of this term.  Socialism means a classless society, and a classless society means that a privileged minority are not in a position to enjoy the wealth that the majority produced. It means an end of rent, profit, and interest on stocks and bonds, an end of “surplus value,” an end of the exploitation of labour. Socialism means that the means of production are owned and controlled by society so that what is produced can be shared out according to people’s needs. For Marxists, the fundamental aim of socialism is the creation of a classless society.

We are Marxists

The Socialist Party is a Marxist party and as Marxists we understand that the interests of the capitalist class and the working class are opposed and cannot be reconciled; that capitalism can and must be ended and replaced; that the working class, must capture the state machine so to permit people to build a socialist society. Socialism demands that political power shall be in the hands of the working class. Reformism - the acceptance of the capitalist economy and state - inevitably leads to fiasco. We are against all theories which seek to argue that some sort of “reformed” or “people’s capitalism” can abolish the possibility of slumps, guarantee full employment and rising standards, and remove the drive to war. The time has come when big changes are necessary. The past century has shown more and more clearly capitalism’s inability to serve the needs of the people. Wars, poverty, malnutrition, slumps and mass unemployment have been the lot of the common people while the millionaire industrialists have made their fortunes out of the people’s labour. The capitalists have done exceptionally well; indeed, they have never been better off. Only by the establishment of socialism can people’s problems be finally solved and guaranteed a good life, lasting peace and steadily rising living standards. We, the working class, have learnt many lessons from history, now face a capitalist class which, while still strong and cunning, is caught up in contradictions such as the climate change crisis which it cannot solve.

Socialism means an end to capitalist profit and exploitation, for it will deprive the capitalists of their ownership and control of the factories and workshops, mills and mines, banks and land, shipyards and transport, and ensure that production is organised for the use of the people and not for the profit of the tiny minority of capitalists. Socialism means peace and an end to the danger of wars, because under Socialism there are no longer capitalists who want to conquer new markets. Socialism means freedom for the people—freedom from poverty and insecurity, freedom for men, women and children to develop their capacities to the full, without fear or favour. It ends the gulf between poverty and plenty, and frees the creative energies of the people and the productive resources for gigantic strides in the economic, social and cultural advances on the basis of a planned socialist economy. Socialism means the abolition of capitalism.

Reformists do not want to abolish capitalism. Their so-called “socialism” is a screen behind which they justify their defence of the system of capitalist profit and exploitation, defend the position of the capitalists and seek to prop up the bankrupt capitalist social structure of riches for the few, poverty and low living standards for the many, and ever-recurring danger of recessions and armed conflicts. Socialism ends once and for all the robbery of the workers for the benefit of private owners and makes the whole product of industry the property of the whole people. Socialist production will thus make available for social use immense wealth that has hitherto gone to build up the capitalist profits and power of the rich property owners. The ownership and control by the people of all the productive and distributive resources will provide the means necessary for the reorganisation of society allow and the direct participation of the people in administering them. Socialists recognise the necessity of basic social change and the socialist reconstruction of society, and are prepared to play their part in the realisation of these aims— a free association and co-operative commonwealth. The potential power of the working class is overwhelming. The need is to develop the political understanding and socialist consciousness of the working people so that they use that power to put an end to capitalism.

The Socialist Party says that the working class can not only utilise Parliament in the class struggle but transform it to serve the needs of the workers instead of the capitalists.  Our advocacy of the use of Parliament and its transformation into an instrument of the will of the people does not mean that we have adopted the outlook of the reformists or mean the same thing as them when they talk of the “Parliamentary road”. We mean a mass revolutionary movement resulting in a parliamentary majority which takes decisive action to break the power of the capitalists and transfer power to the working class. Our views on the establishment of socialism differ from those of the reformists and so also do our views on the state. The whole state machine has been built up with the object of maintaining the capitalist system. For socialism to be on the order of the day, the majority of the working people must see the need not only to struggle against the individual employer but to change the state into an instrument of the will of the working class instead of the capitalist class. One of the key organs of the state is Parliament. Therefore our programme first and foremost proposes the transformation of Parliament into an instrument of the will of the working people. This transformation of Parliament would then facilitate the transformation of the other parts of the state machine. It is impossible to proceed to the building of socialism if the existing capitalist state machine is left intact and in the hands of the employing, owning class. Socialist democracy extends democracy for the working people. As Engels put it: “In England, where the industrial and agricultural working class forms the immense majority of the people, democracy means the dominion of the working class, neither more nor less.”

Growth Is The Central Value

We all know that continual growth is at the center of capitalist economics. It's nice when the mainstream press says it, too. In the Toronto Star, October 25, in an interview with a staffer, Yuval Noah Harari who wrote the book, " A Brief History of Humankind" said, " If you look at modern economic history, the most salient feature is the exponential growth of the economy. Growth has become the central value of the capitalist ideology. People today are obsessed with growth. Everybody wants their income to grow…The thing that frightens everyone is zero economic growth." John Ayers

We Can Build a Better World

The amount of pollution that individual people contribute through their day-to-day activities is relatively very small and practically irrelevant. The main perpetrator is the business interests which control the corporations which run the industries which produce almost all the pollution. Yet in the face of the activities of such companies it is an absurd suggestion to expect the governments to turn and bite the hands that feed them. There is a need to recognise the fact that the source of most pollution is business and to acknowledge that the corporations are not about to cut its profits for anybody. Business has not cut its profits to end disease or to avoid wars. There’s no reason to expect them to do such a thing in order to stop pollution. There are forces in today’s world which are anti-life — the ruling class, which is content to maintain its rule as the entire society rushes towards oblivion. Climate change is the direct result of the crazy, profit-motivated system we live in. And so long as that system is allowed to continue, environmental destruction will continue and increase. Today we must look ahead to the future where socialism, as a more advanced social system, will be built on the powerful productive capacities now thwarted by capitalism.

A system of exploitation, violence, racism and war stifles our lives. Capitalism thrives on the private ownership of society’s wealth and production – production involving the interconnected efforts of millions of working people. The rich have one basic goal in life: to make more and more profits, and they accomplish this by dominating the economics, politics, and cultural life of the planet. The capitalist class will throw workers out into the streets to starve, promote violent racism, and build military arsenals that can destroy the world several times over – anything for profits! This is an irrational and unjust system. But life does not have to be this way. We can improve our lives and society, and we can eliminate exploitation and capitalist injustice, by overturning the capitalist system. We can replace capitalism with a rational and humane system – socialism. Socialism is a social system where social wealth is genuinely controlled by society and for the benefit of society; where the common good, not profits, becomes the chief concern; where the everyday working people become the rightful masters of society. If the working people, and not the owning and employing class, controlled the great resources of our society, we could improve all our lives.

The aim of socialist industrial production is not profits but the prosperity of the people. The pollution of water, food and air is caused by the greed for profit. This could be abolished if the resources of the countries of the entire planet could be organised rationally to produce a healthy environment. It is not a technical problem as some imagine. It is a class and political problem. While capitalism remains, the resources produced by the labour of the workers will be squandered. All the resources for a world of abundance, without pollution, disease and squalor, exist at the present time in skill, technique and science. They are the same resources used to produce pollution and destruction. They cannot be used for constructive purposes till the capitalist system of profit-making is overthrown. Grim reality teaches that the alternative posed by Marx and Engels of socialism or barbarism has been transformed into a world socialism or extinction. Against this insane capitalist system the Socialist Party raises its voice in protest and condemnation. A social order must be organised. It must be one in which production is carried on to satisfy human needs and wants. The socialist revolution has become a historical necessity and possibility. There is no other choice today but for the working people to organise to struggle and, one day, win socialism.