Socialism cannot be postponed.

The private ownership of the means of production and distribution of wealth has caused society to split into two distinct classes with conflicting interests, the small possessing class of capitalists or exploiters of the labour force of others and the ever-increasing large dispossessed class of wage-workers, who are deprived of their due share of their product. Capitalism is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the ever-growing majority of people. The same economic forces which have produced and now intensify the capitalist system will compel the adoption of Socialism, the common ownership of the means of production for the collective good and welfare of all people, or it will result in the destruction of civilisation. The Cooperative Commonwealth is our goal. In order to be understood, this idea must be carefully scrutinised. If you wish to oppose it, study it. No man or woman has a right to be a socialist or to criticise it without understanding the subject.

The Socialist Party declares its object to be the establishment of a system of cooperative production and distribution, to be administered democratically in the interest of the whole people, and the complete emancipation of society from the domination of capitalism. The capture and control of political power by the Socialist Party will be tantamount to the abolition of capitalism and all class rule. The capitalist system of production, under the rule of which we live, is the production of commodities for profit instead of for use for the private gain of those who own and control the means of production and distribution. Out of this system of production and sale for profit spring the entire problem of misery, want, war and poverty that, as a deadly menace, now confronts civilisation.

Socialism is an interpretation of the past, a diagnosis of the present, and a forecast of the future. Socialism is the science of human association reduced to a practical proposal, based upon profound study. It recognises that social life in society as well as in the natural world is constantly passing through a process of evolution. The Socialist Party declares that labour is the sole creator of value and that the labourer is collectively entitled to the full social value of the things he or she produces. The Socialist Party teaches that the only way to attain the just distribution of wealth to those who produce it is by the common ownership, control, and operation of the means of production and distribution, such as lands, mines, factories, transport, communications a, etc., etc. It asserts that this production should be for use and not for sale or profit, thus doing away with all private, sectional or state ownership of the means of subsistence.  Socialism would protect and not abolish the personal ownership of possessions as distinguished from capital. Thus homes and all personal belongings not used to produce more wealth would be individually and not collectively owned.

Socialism, based upon the planned organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is the abolition of all classes. Without production, society cannot survive. The first step in a future socialist society will be directed toward assuring continuous production so as to satisfy the needs of the people. The social property of the capitalists will be confiscated without compensation. The whole system of capitalism is based on confiscation. The original accumulation of capital, as will be recalled, was accomplished for the most part by an elaborate system of confiscating (expropriating) the wealth and resources of small producers, independent peasants and farmers. Day-in and day-out capitalism exists only because it confiscates the surplus-value produced by the worker over and above the wages he or she receives for their labour. Capitalism has developed confiscation to a forcibly-maintained, scientific process of exploitation. If we understand the fact that the value of all the products of society has been produced by labour, it would be perfectly proper for labour to appropriate the appropriators without further ado. As stated earlier, we are concerned not with personal possessions but with the capitalist private property, that is, privately-owned means of production and distribution, that is, with capital, or wealth used for the creation of more wealth by exploiting the labour of others. We do not have in mind such things as the family house, automobiles and other items of purely personal nature. If anything, the aim of socialism is to make such things available in larger quantities to millions who have never enjoyed them. The basic problem of society is related to such property as is represented by the means of production and distribution. It is these that must be turned into communal property.

Nor will daily life be centrally organised and planned. The purpose of planning is to assure the harmonious expansion of industry and the systematic raising of the standard of living. The raw materials, machinery and labour power worldwide will be brought together into an integrated whole. The waste of capitalist competition and the stagnation of capitalism would be overcome. Production would not be organised on the basis of the blind push and pull of the capitalist market but in accordance with the needs of the people. Production for profit would give way to production for use, as already said. Democracy in socialism will continually be expanded, not merely because it is a desirable ideal, but because it is indispensable to the planning of production for use. Capitalism’s motive of production was, is, and always will be profit. It is not the needs of the people that dictate its production. So if production was carried on for use, to satisfy the needs of the people, the question immediately arises: Who is to determine what is useful and what would satisfy these needs? Will that be decided exclusively by a small board of government technocrats? No matter how high-minded and wise they might be, they could not plan production for the needs of the people. Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, continual control and direction by the people. The democratically-adopted decision of the people would have to guide the course of production and distribution. Democratic control of the means of production and distribution would have to be exercised by the people to see to it that their decision is being carried out. Otherwise, we would have a benevolent regimentation of the people for their own good. A government which declares itself to be “for” the people, but is not a government “of” and ”by” the people. Instead of being regulated by the blind market, as under capitalism, production would be regulated by the autocratic, uncontrolled will of a bureaucracy. Economic distortions, social conflict, exploitation and oppression would inevitably result. Production for use, aimed at satisfying the needs of society and of freeing all the people from class rule, would be impossible. Democratic control, the continual extension of democracy, is, therefore, an indispensable necessity. Socialism is not a utopian ideal, a blueprint for society that exists in the minds of some people. It is a social necessity; it is a practical necessity.

People cannot rid themselves of their sufferings without abolishing the domination that the machine has over them. They can do this only if they gain control of the machine itself. In doing so, they must destroy capitalism and proceed with the complete reorganisation of society. Only the working class can emancipate all humanity from exploitation, class distinctions, class privileges, class conflict, to establish social equality for all. No other class is capable of doing this historic task. The working class is thus the bearer of socialism. Mankind will no longer be the slave of the machine. The machine would be the servant of humanity. Every increase in productivity would bring with it two things: an increase in the things required for the need, comfort and even luxury of all; and an increase in everyone’s leisure time, to devote to the free cultural and intellectual development of humankind. People will not live primarily to work; we will work primarily to live.

Even today, with all the restrictions that capitalism places upon production, there are experts who declare that industry, properly organised, can produce the necessities of life for all in a working day of four hours or less. Organised on a socialist basis, even this figure could be cut down. As the necessities and comforts of life become increasingly abundant, and the differences between physical and mental labour, between town and country, are eliminated – the need for tolerating even the last vestiges of inequality will disappear as a matter of course. This may seem impossible to a mind thoroughly poisoned with capitalist prejudices. But why should it be impossible? If everyone knew that there is an ample supply of bread today, and there will be just as large a supply tomorrow and the next day, there would be nobody trying to hoard an extra loaf in order to make sure of eating the next day. If society could assure everyone of as ample and constant a supply of bread as there is of air, why would anyone need or want a greater right to buy bread than his neighbour? Bread is used here only as the simplest illustration. But the same applies to all other foods, to clothing, to shelter, to means of transportation and so forth.

A planned, rationally organised society, efficiently using even our present technology with better still to come, could easily assure abundance to all. In return, society could confidently expect every citizen to contribute his or her best voluntarily. In the midst of abundance for all and of the high cultural development that will accompany it, there is no reason to believe that coercion will be needed to make people work. What need is there for compulsion? And robbery and burglary? What will there be to steal in the midst of abundance? The state, itself, will prove to be not indispensable and will die out for lack of any social need or function. The transition from class society to socialism will be completed. There will be the simple administration of things, but no longer the rule of man over man.

Such is the choice the Socialist Party presents to our fellow workers. Freedom for all. Abundance for all. A society without governments. Impossible? We say, think again.

Today for revolution, not tomorrow

The question always before us is what next? “What is Socialism, what is Communism, what is Anarchy?” ask those weary of the cruelty and waste of capitalism and desirous of an alternative. For an answer, they receive only denunciations of existing things and a silence upon a hopeful vision of the new life which political activists are promoting, so many turn away, discouraged. Manifestos and platforms are published and treated as holy writ, yet in their contents, there is little to what the aims really are.  Little is defined so that they may be understood by others. Men and women call themselves socialists, communists, anarchists, and what have you, thinking they thus explain their views to others. Yet quiz them and you will discover how few of them have any clear conception of what they mean by their labels.  Advocates for free-market capitalism, for instance, call themselves libertarians, though capitalism could not be maintained a day without the power and coercion of the State, which protect private property and prevent those who have not enough to satisfy their needs from commandeering from those who have something to spare. Capitalism necessitates law and its forces to protect the property-holder from being dispossessed.

People today face a future of low wages, intensified exploitation and domination of our lives. To secure any sort of decent life, we need to organise. We need to educate ourselves about how this whole system works, and what our interests are as workers. We seek to clarify the real economic interest of workers and expose this system that they used to enslave us. There is an alternative to capitalism and it is called socialism. A socialist revolution has to mean control of production by the producers. A socialist revolution has to mean production for the use of those who need it. A socialist revolution has to mean a society free of classes where the antagonisms and divisions between classes, races, and genders are eliminated so that people can develop cooperative relations, relations which are now possible today as never before because there need no longer be any problem of scarcity of material goods and services. All the problems of scarcity which up to now have required the exploitation of workers have now been made outmoded by the technological advances of production. The working class are still the means to replace capitalism with a free and socialist society. The road to revolution may be long and hard. If it was easy they would not call it struggle. We believe that if the confidence and ability of our fellow-workers. The socialist society must be built by the working class itself through its own institutions

Socialism is a theory of life and social organisation. The goal of socialism is not political, but social. Its purpose is not to reform capitalism and the State. It is to create a life in which property is held in common; in which the community produces, by conscious aim, sufficient to supply the needs of all its members; in which there is no trading, money, wages, or any direct reward for services rendered. The Socialist Party aims at the abolition of Parliamentary rule; but we emphasise the interdependence of the members of the community; we emphasise the need that the common storehouse and the common service shall provide an insurance against want for every individual. We aim at the common storehouse, not the individual hoard. We desire that the common storehouse shall bulge with plenty, and whilst the common storehouse is full we insist that none shall want. We aim for relationships based on reciprocity; we desire that all should serve the community. We believe that a public opinion can be treated which will produce a general willingness to serve the community. The exception to that general willingness will become, we believe, altogether a rarity; we would not have the occasional oddity who will not join the general effort disciplined by law; the disapprobation, even the pity of his fellows will ensure his rarity. Let us produce in abundance; let us secure plenty for all; let us find pleasure in producing; these thoughts must pervade the community. In the future socialist society all will share the productive work of the community and all will take a part in organising that work.

Japan and socialism (Book Review 1988)

Book Review from the November 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Kilt and the Kimono by Ian S. Williamson

How deceptive appearances can be! This book, with its banal title and dust jacket, looks extremely unpromising yet is packed with valuable information about Japan as well as containing more socialist arguments than any book published for years.

Ian Williamson is a Scot who has lived and taught in Japan. He is an ex-member and longtime supporter of the Socialist Party and what he has set out to do in this book is to explain Japanese society, with its unique culture and customs, through its history and to dispel the myths and prejudices which most people in the west have about Japan.

Ever since the end of the second world war many western writers and commentators, particularly American, have been trying to explain the complexities of Japanese society by using western standards as their guide They have assumed that the lifestyle, morality, values and even physical appearance of people in the west are the correct ones and criticise the Japanese for not measuring up. Williamson rejects this idealistic approach and easily demolishes the claims made by the "experts" that the Japanese are especially militaristic, conformist and subservient by pointing to the existence at one time or another of all of these traits in the west.

Nevertheless many Japanese attitudes do differ greatly from those held in the west. According to Williamson there is a much greater emphasis placed on the importance of group activity and decision making as opposed to western individualism; there is little or no interest in the concept of life after death or any metaphysical thought, and there is not the clear-cut distinction which most western people make between work and leisure or art and nature, but Williamson shows how all these differences and more can be understood through looking at Japan's history Why, for instance, is politeness such a feature of Japanese life?

“In old Japan people were required to sit, sleep, eat, dress and greet each other in a certain manner according to their social position In fact what they ate and how they dressed was severely laid down by law. Anyone who violated the law or rules of etiquette in the days of the Samurai was severely dealt with. To touch a superior, or even to sit in any other than the prescribed way in his presence resulted in a painful reminder that proper behaviour must be observed.”

So observing the correct form of behaviour has become an ingrained characteristic of the Japanese which has persisted to this day.

History also explains why Japanese workers apparently show such loyalty to their employers. Because aspects of feudal relations have persisted into modem capitalism in Japan a paternalistic, hierarchical system is still strongly entrenched. This means that besides the guarantee of a job for life for many workers, seniority is very important for promotion prospects. Workers who have invested a number of years in a company know they would have to start at the bottom again if they were to leave and get a job elsewhere, so they tend to stay put and make a virtue out of necessity by being loyal to "their" company.

No opportunity is missed by the author to put across socialist ideas. Our views on class, leadership, war, crime, human nature, nationalism, etc. are featured throughout the book. So besides giving workers here the opportunity to learn about Japan. Ian Williamson has, more importantly, provided Japanese workers with an excellent introduction to socialism. They just might be able to read elsewhere as sound a condemnation of capitalism as the one he provides but where else will they see this description of socialism?

“A classless system, where goods are produced for use. not for sale, and because there will be no buying or selling so there will be no need for money, banks, insurance companies, salesmen, ticket collectors, cash-register operators, stock brokers and all the rest of the cumbersome junk and paraphernalia which involves people in soul destroying, non-productive, non-creative activity so necessary in capitalist society.”

And to round things off the Socialist Party and its companion parties are mentioned as the advocates of such a system of society!

Vic Vanni

The World Needs Socialism

It should be no surprise that a growing number of people have begun to question capitalism. Many now know only economic instability and environmental degradation. Each new day brings additional burdens to the already bleak prospects for the future. For young Americans they are more likely to live in poverty or low wages than their parents, they are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed even though they are most educated than the previous generation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the wealthiest 10% of families owned 76% of all family wealth in 2013. Those in the bottom 50%, by contrast, owned just 1%. Where did all this "wealth" come from? What are the legal and social roots of this "ownership"?

There is no real solution to the problem of poverty until we abolish the capitalist system. This goal — the abolition of capitalism —is shared by all the members of the World Socialist Movement (WSM). Poverty, war, and racism are not separate problems but caused by the same economic social system – capitalism. The task of the WSM is hopefully transforming the presently small socialist movement into a mass movement for real change. The appetite for social change is widespread. There is a hunger for an alternative to capitalism. Our job as world socialists is now to educate, agitate and organise, to make the struggle for socialism the immediate demand, to make the revolution a political reality. Capitalism cannot be saved. Our system doesn't require a rebooting.  What our system requires is to be replaced completely. It's up to us to create a new system which works fairly for all of us. It's time to move forward and introduce the next economic system. Socialism really is the only permanent solution to the world's problems. When production is driven by profit, then we get shoddiness in the product and misery in the producers. People need to do is rise up, revolt, and take the people's stolen back from the elite ruling class.

A world socialist society is the only solution for the contradictions in present global society. Only a socialist society can utilize rationally the natural resources and productive machinery of the earth in the interests of the peoples of the earth. Only world socialism will remove the causes of wars that under capitalism now seriously threaten to send mankind into barbarism or complete destruction. Many persons are now starting to understand that it is more than incompetence, stupidity or corruption of politicians but that the system itself cannot work properly any longer whoever is in charge. People are beginning to realise that the present system of society must itself be done away with and a new system substituted, not just a change of personnel nor palliatives, but a fundamental change in the whole structure of society.

The World Socialist Movement claims to know the nature of the revolutionary change that alone can save our society from continuing and increasing degradation. We call upon fellow-workers no longer willing to suffer exploitation and injustice, who have chosen not merely to complain or even protest but to change things to join us. The WSM proposes to capture the state machine, not to assume office but to do away entirely with the state and instead establish a future co-operative society. Studying the past is only meaningful for the WSM inasmuch as it enables it to better orient their work in the present to act in the interest of the workers, to use this understanding to achieve the better society to which mankind aspires. The WSM believes that advances in science, technology, and civic life have already created the material conditions necessary to set up a free society without classes, exploitation, and oppression, i.e. a world socialist community. 

The worker in capitalist society is a slave (a “wage-slave”) in the sense that while he or she can govern the disposition of his or her labour power, but in the end must sell it to some member of the capitalist class, in which case the wage and working conditions are in the end determined by the law of value. Engels said that the modern proletarian is “the slave of no particular person but of the whole property-owning class”

End the Power of the Boss Class

We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority to oppress and exploit the great majority of humanity. We live in a world rife with misery. It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities, starts murderous wars, steals the resources of lesser countries and causes the destruction of our environment. Hunger, poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and repression are still the fate of the majority of the people of the world.  Either we get rid of this system or it will destroy mankind. The only way forward is a class-free and state-free society on a world scale where people live in harmony with one another and with nature. The working class must depose the capitalist ruling class and establish socialism, a system of real, popular democracy that sets about the reconstruction of society.  These are crucial times for working-people at a time in which it is necessary to make a sober assessment of the present situation and perspectives.

It is through such a free association when labour in all its aspects becomes controlled by the workers themselves that production will rest not upon decisions of the planners, but of the freely determined wishes of the producers themselves. Socialism will have no need of the irrational remnants of a past age of exchange, such as prices and money. Humanity has reached a turning point in its history. The dreams of the past have become real possibilities for a future that can already be foreseen because the material conditions necessary for achieving them have arisen. Only a socialist revolution can put an end to the capitalist relations of exploitation that are now the fundamental obstacle to further progress for mankind to a society of abundance, of justice and of freedom. Socialist revolution is the only way that the working people can ensure the abolition of all exploitation. The working class cannot free itself without freeing all of humanity at the same time because the ultimate goal of its struggle is not to replace the power of one class with that of another but rather to abolish all classes. This is the only way to put an end to all the social divisions and inequalities that have characterized class societies thus far. The expropriation of the capitalists and the socialization of the means of production will lead directly to the abolition of a society divided into classes with opposing interests. The abolition of classes will, in turn, lead to the withering away and elimination of the State

The fundamental interests of the working class are the same throughout the world. The socialist revolution in one part of the globe is inseparable from the world revolution elsewhere. People say that we socialists are utopian because we hold to the view that we could run our lives in a much more harmonious way. We are called utopian because we dare to suggest that a new society is the only solution to the mess we're in. Socialism stopped being utopian once the level of technology brought the potential to produce an abundance of goods to meet everyone's needs. There's certainly nothing utopian about suggesting that we could organise a better world now. In a socialist society, we shall work because it is useful to do so. People will contribute according to their abilities. In return, they will take freely from the common store of wealth in accordance with their self-determined needs. Women and men will have free and equal access to the wealth of society. Free access to all wealth will be the right of all people in a socialist society, regardless of whether they perform visibly caring work or less obviously important work or if, as a result of age or illness, they are unable to work at all. In a wage-free society, the sole rewards for work will be the satisfaction of utilising your mental and physical faculties and the appreciation of others. By describing how socialism would operate we simply point out how our potential could be realised if we used current knowledge in a different but more appropriate way. It isn’t utopian.

The Socialist Party stands in hostility to the boss class. We are out to end their power. There is nothing utopian about that. 

Our Goal is World Socialism

The rebellion of working class people against the rotten conditions they live and work under is an inevitable result of capitalism. Low pay, long hours, increasing unemployment, rising food prices, and slum housing all are the targets of the increasingly militant working class movements around the world. Equally inevitable, however, are capitalism’s schemes to divert workers’ anger, to get people to view themselves rather than the system as the source of their problems. All sorts of theories have been conjured up by intellectuals and academics to justify the oppression and repression of the working class. Socialists, however, look at capitalism with the eyes of realists. They see that it holds no future but of more havoc and more devastation. Socialists are fighting to sweep capitalism off the stage of history, to make way for a new world based on human needs and aspirations. Unity is what is needed now between employed and unemployed, between men and women, between black and white, among all those who want to end the horrors of war and halt the ruination of the earth which capitalism is accomplishing. With each separate group fighting in a narrow one-sided way for its own interests, all will be defeated. The lesson is clear in the class war. The army of labour fights well only when it is conscious of its aim. Its aim must be clearly stated; the reasons must be given as clearly and precisely as possible. Every related event, every important development must be made known and publicized as broadly as possible, especially to those who carry the burden of the fight, in order to keep them aware, to keep them alert, and to maintain the necessary confidence. That is why publicity by and for the workers becomes the life blood of struggle. It is one of the workers’ best weapons.

Socialists often hear the comment that "Socialism is a good idea but it’s not practical." But today it’s becoming more apparent than ever that it is the present system — capitalism — that is impractical and unworkable. We stand for a socialist society where ownership and control of the means of production are taken out of the hands of the tiny minority of capitalists and placed in the hands of the majority. The capitalist system is run for the profits of the few, not the needs of the majority. Workers in all lands need to stand together against the worldwide system of oppression and exploitation that is capitalism.

The real problem is not “globalisation" the spread of production across national borders and the diminution of the powers of national governments. The evil is capitalism: the domination of the global economy by a narrow elite. The IMF/World Bank are their servants. Of course, in the eyes of the reformists, socialist revolution is a pipe-dream. What is needed now, we were told, is practical accomplishments. But the anti-globalisation proposals themselves prove that it is reformism that is utopian, requesting capitalism not to be capitalist. Blaming foreigners for capitalism’s evils is a sure way to divide the working class and lead it to defeat. Why listen to leaders who embrace the Democratic Party as an answer, when fewer and fewer workers vote in each election, seeing nothing to choose between the capitalist parties? There is hope for a better world, a socialist world, but we must lose no time. It is a worldwide struggle of the vast majority of human beings against a tiny exploiting minority. In our numbers lies our strength. The Socialist Party strives for a society in which peace, prosperity, and plenty will be normal. Our aim is to build a mass socialist movement on a global scale, to replace capitalism with world  socialism.

And we’re active promoting our aims 365 days a year. Capitalism must be abolished. Working people need to throw the capitalist parties out of office. When the vast resources available to us are used to serve the needs of all instead of the profits of the few, and when we are all part of a world socialist commonwealth, then the way will be opened for unparalleled growth in culture, freedom and the development of every individual. Such a society is worth fighting for.

The alternative is socialism

There is now a tendency for the many varied strands of the workers' movement to begin to challenge the system as a whole. Today, people are coming together to discuss what to do and the potential is there for something much more significant. There is now a serious debate about how to make the world better. Out of this, a new socialist movement may be born. We cannot lead our lives looking backward and we must look forwards into a future where we can believe that we can fashion a better world that will encompass all our dreams and aspirations. We have little choice but to go forward with revolutionary hope and optimism. Capitalism remains a danger to the future of all humanity. Only the struggle for socialism can avert this danger. If humanity is to have a future our choice is to change society. There is a hope. In this world of chaos and destruction, socialism still shines with potential. Not the ceaseless, endless wars, the dictatorial brutality which capitalism promises; but the peace, the freedom, the human brotherhood which socialism alone can bring. That is our road. That is the path on which we travel. Our destination is world socialism, liberty, peace, and plenty. Sanity is possible on this earth - THROUGH SOCIALISM.

Today capitalism is in a mess. You’d expect that the Left would be weaker when capitalism was doing alright, and stronger when capitalism was doing badly and when an alternative, was clearly necessary. But, it’s the other way round. That suggests the Left is not a fundamentally anti-capitalist movement, but a progressive movement within capitalism, able to grow when capitalism is able to accommodate social progress, but with no alternative to offer when capitalism forces a retreat. The Left are even reduced to defending capitalism when trying to persuade others to become active. For example, they want people to take to the streets against the Tory government’s policies. So they say those policies are the cause of all our troubles. The Tory economists explain basic principles of Marxist political economy. They say (not in so many words) that there’s a world capitalist economic crisis and there is nothing their or any other government can do about it. In such a situation people have no choice but to put up with lower real wages and welfare cut-backs. After all, it’s happening everywhere, so it can’t be the fault of the government. Rather than agree that capitalism doesn’t work and suggest that therefore we ought to get rid of it, the Left, instead, insist that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with capitalism and it’s all the Tory’s fault, and argue that if only the government followed different policies, it would be possible to have rising real living standards, improving health, education and welfare, and what have you. They’re lying. We know they’re lying, their opponents know they’re lying and most important, the people they’re asking to take to the streets to protest know they’re lying, so naturally they don’t come.

If slaves go on demanding that their masters improve their rations, they deserve to remain slaves, because they accept having masters and they, therefore, accept slavery. We have to build a movement to overthrow our masters, and run the world ourselves, and solve its problems ourselves, instead of demanding that our masters find some solution for us. We need to present a clear alternative to capitalism, an inspiring alternative that people really want to work for, a practical alternative that can really work. The alternative is socialism.

But if that’s what we’re fighting for, why can’t we spell out (at least in broad outline), just what it means, and how we propose getting there? Why does the Left always avoid the issue and just talk about how bad things are now and propose some half-measures? Are we afraid that socialism isn’t very attractive and appealing enough?  When you look closely at the sort of “alternative” most people on the Left really want, it’s not surprising they don’t want to talk about it much and prefer just denouncing capitalism. Some environmentalists on the Left actually want to regress and go backwards to a life of low technology and “rustic simplicity”. Some others on the Left envisage a kind of authoritarian regime with their Party as the new bosses. Most though just want some of the most glaring injustices of capitalist society to be resolved. They want better jobs, housing, education and so forth, and they want some major upheaval so seek the Scandinavian “solution”.

But a few actually have a vision of a better world, with fundamentally different social relations. Being united against the Tories isn’t a great point of unity. We need something deeper. As a first step, we need to talk seriously to each other and examine and criticize each other’s ideas in a comradely way.

Beyond empty promises

Having experienced the detrimental effects of the 2007/8 Great Recession already economists are the harbingers of more economic black clouds on the horizon. The future financial and commercial conditions they are forecasting will bring another depression, unemployment for millions, with the all consequent suffering and misery. This is the reality of the capitalist world, economic crashes and widespread misery and suffering. Capitalism has played its part in the history of mankind. It is no longer workable. It must be uprooted and destroyed, and a new system of production built in its place. We are socialists who believe that capitalism — as a system centered on capital accumulation and profit — is inherently a system of inequality, injustice, and war. We seek a social system where wealth is not in the hands of the few but is owned and controlled by the people.

Our enemy is capitalism. In order to fight the enemy and win, we have to understand the enemy. Capitalism dominates our economic system. Under capitalism, a handful who own the factories, the mines, the land farms, and control the wealth that the majority of the people produce. It is this system that we are fighting. Capitalism organizes globally. Rival capitalists compete intensely for growth and profits. Under capitalism, you either destroy the competition or are destroyed yourself. This drive sends business around the world, seeking cheaper raw materials. Capitalism continuously seeks cheaper labor costs. This is why we see so many plants closing down, out-sourcing and moving off-shore.  The state – the government and the legal system – were set up and developed to serve the interests of capitalism, to uphold the rights of property over of the people. Capitalism is a system of coercion and violence. Poverty is built into its operation. The capitalist class needs to maintain its grip on the levers of power. History has shown again and again that the capitalists will stop at nothing to maintain their wealth and power. Capitalist ‘democracy’ is protected by the threat of force.

Many people are beginning to think it already too late for mankind to survive. We believe that humankind is not doomed despite all the frightful threats: nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare, the destruction of the environment the global warming from greenhouse effect destruction of the tropical forests, desertification of large parts of Africa and Asia and the epidemic-scale disease catastrophes, , not to mention nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare. That’s why we need socialism, and that’s why are socialists. Apocalyptic doom can be avoided. The problems are social ones. The solution is a society in which greed, the desire to accumulate wealth regardless of the cost do not determine economic behaviour. We need power in the hands of social forces which can prevent the ruling class and their corporations from imposing their will on society. Power needs to be in the hands of the people willing to let solidarity, cooperation and generosity prevail by democratic means over short-sighted pecuniary gain. It is not a question of awareness. The vested interests are not ignorant of the ecological dangers they risk. They even try to take them into consideration, include them in their economic planning and projection, but under the pressure of competition and profit , they are forced to act in such a way that the threat remains.

What socialism is all about is for the greatest possible number of people to decide their own fate in all key parts of their lives. It is the employing and owning class who plead for minority rule over and above that freedom – the freedom of people to decide in a democratic way which priorities to apply to production and how to produce and distribute. It is the capitalist class who argue that this freedom should be subordinated to the rule of market laws, rule by the oligarchs and plutocrats rich, rule by the technocrats, rule by the government and by The Party. Only the democratically organised self-activity of the people can achieve socialism, a social order in which the majority decide their own fate in a free way.

The task of The Socialist Party is basic socialist education and propaganda. Humanity cannot be saved without substituting for this present society a fundamentally different society. You can call it anything you want to, the label makes little difference, but its contents have to be specified, the substance of which being accepted only if it is considered radically emancipatory on a world scale without exception. There is no better way for a person in this world than to dedicate one’s life to this great cause. We urge fellow-workers who wish to fight for a better world, for socialism, to become members of the Socialist Party.

Towards a cooperative socialist society

To change the world and to create a better one has always been the aspiration of the members of the Socialist Party throughout its history, a hope that tomorrow's world can be free of today's inequalities, hardships, and deprivations, the belief that people can, individually and collectively, influence the shape of the world to come. It is a deep-rooted and unshakable belief that building a better world and a better future by their own hands is both necessary and possible. Socialism is a movement for changing the world and setting up a free, equal, human and prosperous society.

The capitalist system is behind all the ills that burden humanity today. Poverty, deprivation, discrimination, inequality, political repression, ignorance, bigotry, degradation, unemployment, homelessness, economic and political insecurity, corruption and crime are all inevitable products of this system. No doubt apologists for capitalism tell us that these have not been invented by capitalism, but have all existed before capitalism, that exploitation, repression, discrimination, women's oppression, ignorance and prejudice, religion and prostitution are more or less as old as human society itself. What is being covered up here is the fact that, firstly, all these problems have found a new meaning in this society, corresponding to the needs of capitalism. These are being constantly reproduced as integral parts of the modern capitalist system. The source of poverty, starvation, unemployment, homelessness and economic insecurity is the economic system. The brutal dictatorships, wars, genocides, and repressions that define the life of hundreds of millions of people today draw their rationale from the needs of the system that rules the world today and serve specific interests in this world. Oppression today is not the result of medieval economy and morality, but a product of the present society's economic and social system and moral values.

It is the capitalist system itself that continually and relentlessly resists people's effort to eradicate and overcome these ills. The obstacle to workers' struggle to improve living conditions and civil rights is none other than the capitalists and its governments, their parties and apologists. Wherever people rise to take charge of their lives, the first barrier they face is the armed force of the ruling class. It is the capitalist state, its extensive media, the institutions of religion and education which shape biased beliefs among people. There is no doubt that it is capitalism which stands in the way of the attempt by millions of people, driven to despair and desperation but with more or less clear vision about the outlines of a society worthy of human beings, they to change the system. Capitalism, a system of production for profit; a system of international rivalry for domination of foreign territories and trade, which produces one war after another keeps millions subjugated and exploited by its wage system. This system cannot give peace and plenty to its people but socialism will. Socialism means production for use and not for profit. The criteria for production under socialism would be – how much is needed? It means that one working man is not pitted against the other in the fight for a job. It means that one working class is not cutting the throat of the other by producing at lower wages than the other. Some people will argue that it can’t work, it’s a utopia. We can only answer that capitalism has demonstrated that it cannot work. A society organized on the basis of production for use would have more of a chance of working than our present economic system. Let us not be fooled by all of the plans for reforms now floating around. The thing to understand is that none of these plans can solve the basic ills of capitalism. They all seek to do the impossible: make capitalism work - not for the working class, anyway.

A revolution is coming brought about by replacing workers with robots. It is coming from the capitalist who utilized them to increase his profits. Profound changes that are producing a new, growing, destitute class that cannot exist within the old order. When economic change becomes the foundation for social injustice and discontent, a revolution is inevitable. When that job and the basic standards of life they provide are taken from us then we turn from protest to revolution. A socialist’s purpose is to give it direction and to enthuse it. A socialist’s task is to contact, to convince and to bring together fellow workers of like mind. A socialist is not simply fighting against injustice but also passing on a vision of a different and better world. We visualise the world where robotics make possible the material conditions and the leisure time to produce full and happy human beings? This is an era of revolutionary change. For the first time in history, humankind can produce such abundance that society can be free from hunger, homelessness, and backbreaking labour. The only thing standing in the way is this system of exploitation and alienation.  The socialists educate people about the technological revolution that’s disrupting society. Every day, the new technology throws labourers and managers alike out of their jobs. Their labour is worthless to a system that values only what it can exploit. If they cannot work, they cannot eat. Radical changes in the way a society produces its wealth call for radical changes in how that society is organised.

The ruling class cannot convince people to believe in their system while they are hungry and cold, destroying their hopes and dreams. Socialists inspire fellow-workers with an alternative: a society run for the benefit of all, a society built on cooperation that places the well-being of people above the profits and property of the owning class. Working people can reorganise society so that the abundance is distributed according to need. We see how this capitalist system attacks the very people who until recently trusted and defended it. These people are now searching for political direction and for solutions to their problems. The ruling class tries to keep people confused and to keep them from fighting in their own interests. Few can deny the upheaval the widespread anarchy, turmoil, and conflict throughout the world. Yet the beneficiaries and defenders of this chaos never tire of declaring it the “best of all possible systems.” Against this insane capitalist system, a socialist raises his or her voice in emphatic protest and unqualified condemnation. A socialist declares that if our society is to be rid of the host of economic, political and social ills that for so long have plagued it, the outmoded capitalist system of private ownership of the socially operated means of life and production for the profit of a few must be replaced by a new social order. That new social order must be organised on the same basis of social ownership and democratic management of all the instruments of social production, all means of distribution and all of the social services. It must be one in which production is carried on to satisfy human needs and wants.

 In short, it must be genuine socialism. Despite the many threats to workers’ lives, liberty and happiness today, despite the growing poverty and misery that workers are subjected to, a world of peace, liberty, security, health and abundance for all is within our grasp. The potential to create such a society exists, but that potential can be realized only if workers act to gain control of their own lives by organizing, politically and industrially, for socialism. Help build our world in which everyone will enjoy free access to the fruits of their collective labour, multiplied by all the technological inventions of modern civilisation.

Capital Grows Ever More Hatreds

The Canadian Jewish News of July 28 ran an article about the life of Elie Wiesel who died on July 2. One paragraph by reporter Sheri Shefa summed it up best: "Wiesel, a professor, a writer, and Nobel Laureate, a humanitarian and a Holocaust survivor, devoted his life to Holocaust education and to combating indifference, intolerance and injustice, while promoting acceptance, understanding and equality."

It may seem brutal and callous to speak of Wiesel's life as a waste, but the undeniable fact is he tried to eradicate indifference, intolerance and injustice within capitalism, a system which, by its very nature, creates it.

One may admire Wiesel's intentions, but good intentions aren't good enough when the ignoble root of capital grows ever more hatreds between people the world over. John Ayers.

The Common Ownership of the Earth

Socialism is yet to exist. Socialism is rarely seen as a viable alternative to capitalism. We say we want a revolution. Our challenge is explaining how. Why don’t people rebel but who do you rebel against? Socialism is as far away or as near as the working class chooses to make it. It’s up to them, not us.

Socialism is not authoritarian. It will be a free society; a society without rulers and ruled, leaders and led, masters and slaves. Socialism is not only on the side of liberty but is equivalent to freedom. Socialism is democratic control. We cannot, of course, predict the exact form that would be taken by this future global democracy. The democratic system will itself be the outcome of future democratic decisions. We can, however, say that it is likely that decisions will need to be taken at a number of different levels—from local to global. This would help to streamline the democratic participation of every individual towards the issues that concern them.

Socialism is common ownership. In socialism, there will be an abundance of everything pleasant. In socialism, the natural beauty of the earth will be uncontaminated by industrial toxic waste.

The Socialist Party does not intend to lead fellow-workers towards a free and class-free society because they are a part of the masses themselves and adhere faithfully to the motto of the First International: The emancipation of the workers is an act of the workers themselves. If the masses wait for a revolutionary vanguard to lead them to the classless society or the free society, they will neither be free nor classless. When we say that socialist society will be built by the workers, we mean just that. Socialism cannot be carried out "on behalf” of the people. The socialist revolution will be the action of “the immense majority, acting in the interests of the immense majority.”

One function of the Socialist Party is to expose opposing ideologies to open the door to the construction of the free and classless society. Its case for socialism is to detail what is basically wrong with capitalism. Our prime commitment is to the social revolution.

A socialist party is an instrument which the working class can — and should — use to establish socialism when a majority of them have become convinced socialists. It is a matter of the working class themselves forming their own party to further their interests, not of a group of socialists seeking working-class votes to do something for them. Hence we don’t think in terms of “winning elections”, “coming to power”, “forming a government”, etc. The working class socialist party will of course contest elections and ultimately gain control over the machinery of government, but only for the one revolutionary purpose of establishing socialism by their own democratic political action based on socialist understanding.

When the working class becomes socialist there is no reason to assume that this will be confined to those in one country. Quite the contrary. First, because the conditions and problems which face wage and salary earners everywhere are essentially the same. And so, of course, is the solution. Second, because socialism is the concept of a world society so that, even if it did happen that the socialist movement grew more quickly in one country than in all others, then the socialists in that country would take action to correct this imbalance by helping the movement in other countries. If a group of genuine socialists was, by some freak circumstances, to come to control the government somewhere, then it is true they would have no alternative but to administer capitalism. No doubt they will continue struggling to get what they can out of capitalism until, helped by the activities of the as-yet-only-small socialist parties in the various parts of the world, they realise the need to establish socialism if their problems are to be solved.

The basic socialist principle will be that people give according to their abilities and take according to their needs. There will be no buying or selling, as money will have been abolished and will not be necessary in a world of free access. Socialism will mean our world without any borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders, states or governments, force or coercion. In a socialist society, there will be common ownership of the Earth by its inhabitants and no minority will dictate to us that production must give priority to profit. There will be no owners. The people of the world will share the world. Production will be for use, not for sale. The only questions we will need to ask about production are what do people need and can these needs be met. Science and technology will, at last, be used to their fullest potential and in the service of humanity.

Money must go

Money is the universally accepted means of exchange. It is a universal equivalent. Instead of me giving you three toasters for your armchair, I pay in an accepted, legal currency. Sounds sensible. Who wants to return to the awkward system of bartering goods? So the alternative to money would not be a return to barter, nor even equal shares for all, but free access for all to what they needed to live and enjoy life.

Imagine that all the things you need are owned and held in common. There is no need to buy food from anyone--it is common property. There are no rent or mortgages to pay because land and buildings belong to all of us. There is no need to buy anything from any other person because society has done away with the absurd division between the owning minority (the capitalists) and the non-owning majority (the workers). We possess an advanced industrial economy so that free access is technically possible. Science and technology –scientists and technologists or technicians –have in their hands the knowledge and the wherewithal to take humanity in any direction they choose to take, but like the rest of us they are constrained by the system we live in. They are not directed by the wishes, needs and aims of society as a whole but have to follow the logic of their master, the market. Everything becomes possible when the tools are in the right hands, the hands of the producers. It becomes a matter of organisation to bring in the new society.

The alternative to monetary calculation based on exchange-value is calculation based on use values. Decisions, apart from purely personal ones of preferences or interest, will be made after weighing the real advantages and disadvantages and real costs of alternatives in particular circumstances. When you remove money out of this equation, the motivation to do work suddenly changes. Without money, people are motivated to work for each other. It essentially means that the business mentality that has shaped most societies for thousands of years will cease to exist.

Imagine all the things that you need were owned and controlled in common. By everyone. All of us—you included. There is nobody to buy food from—it is common property. There are no rents or mortgages to pay because land and buildings belong to us all. There is no need to buy anything from any other person because society has done away with the absurd division between the owning minority (the capitalists) and the non-owning majority (the workers). You would not need money. In a society of common ownership, money would have no role. No longer would money exist. In a society where the earth's resources were owned commonly and controlled democratically — socialism — wealth will not be bought and sold. Envisage a money-free world community where production is for use and access to the common wealth is the equal right of every human being.

Marx identified money as one of the two main manifestations of human alienation (the other was the state) and looked forward to its abolition in a socialist society where human values would apply: where the standard by which something would be considered ‘valuable’ would be human welfare. Marx also fully endorsed the slogan “Abolition of the Wages System!” Marx's vision of a socialist society can be fairly summed up as a world-wide system of social organisation based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by, and in the interests of, the whole community. In other words, a universal class-free, wages-free and money-free society wherein human beings would voluntarily contribute in accordance with their mental and/or physical abilities to the production and distribution of the needs of their society and in which everyone would have free and equal access to their needs. It does not mean we'll use some sort of barter system. Goods will be voluntarily produced, and services voluntarily supplied to meet people's needs. People will freely take the things they need. As Marx says it will be a “society organised as a conscious and planned association”.

In the early days of socialism, there might not be able to be full free access to everything. In which case, there would have to be some sort of "rationing" of the goods and services in short supply. Certainly, Marx considered the temporary use of "labour-time vouchers". But these should not be regarded as "money" or as any other all-purpose circulating vouchers that could be used to acquire anything (though we wouldn't be able to stop people calling it money). In these early days of change, the only point of debate might be on what basis might such coupons be distributed to the populace, such as distribution perhaps ought to be effected in a way that takes into account the inequalities which we will inherit from capitalism, for example, in respect of housing since housing constitutes easily the most important component of quality of life.

William Morris said: "One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman; two men with the same idea in common maybe foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and why only a hundred thousand?  Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth?  You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question."

Glasgow Branch 1962 election campaign

Party News from the January 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Excellent work was done during October and November in the Glasgow Woodside By-Election. The campaign commenced with canvassing the Socialist Standard. This produced good results. Some members were disappointed that sales did not reach the results of the Municipal election in Kelvingrove last April. This was probably due to the time of year and bad weather.

 However, 307 Socialist Standards and 57 pamphlets were sold. When the election campaign really got going 18,500 manifestos were distributed also 500 leaflets introducing the Party. Six indoor meetings were held in addition to outdoor meetings. Glasgow Branch were pleased by the large amount of press publicity, although they regretted that the candidate's remarks were not always correctly reported. Radio and television reportage was good although the time allowed was very restricted. 

83 votes were polled for the Socialist Party of Great Britain and a quote on the result from the Glasgow Herald (23/11/62) stated: "With 83 votes to his credit. Mr. Valler of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was not downhearted. 'There are,' he announced proudly '83 politically mature people in Woodside'".

Glasgow Branch learned much from the campaign and their experience will help them when they next contest an election in Glasgow. The Branch are grateful to comrades, other branches and the London members (who went up to help on the spot) for their financial and physical help.

Socialism is liberation

Instead of an economy driven by profit and greed, a rational economic system would be based on fulfilling human need with the least amount of effort. In this socialist economy, all individuals would engage in socially productive labor and all jobs would be recognized as equally valued and equally important. Socialists believe that for socialism to truly thrive we must establish democratic control of every aspect of the economy. Workers must begin by democratically controlling their immediate workplace. Instead of managers appointed by profit-driven corporate bosses or government bureaucrats, workers must exercise self-management. Decisions concerning everything from what is produced to how it is produced can be made in regular meetings in which every worker has a vote. In short, workers will exercise worker control.  Once democracy is established on the most basic levels, workplaces and entire industries can federate upward using a system of instantly recallable, rotating delegates to plan for the larger economy.

On a practical level, socialists, after expropriating the owning class and all its property, would seek to abolish all unproductive toil. All individuals could then gravitate toward the work they find most rewarding. If, after all of this, ‘undesirable’ work still existed, it could be democratically divided between all able bodies. Socialism will be a society where production, distribution, and consumption is collectively and consciously run with the goal of minimising necessary labour time and maximizing leisure time, in order to allow maximal development of needs, first and foremost the need of sociality.

Socialism is the realisation of a world human community in our everyday lived experience so involving the disappearance of the distinctions that exist in today’s society between 'economics' and 'politics', 'work' and 'play', 'town' and 'country'. Direct human relations unmediated by the 'commodity' form or any equivalent exchange between separate 'enterprises' (whether mutual, self-managed, worker controlled or whatever). It is the reconciliation of individual and community.

Capitalism is an inhuman force which governs and restructures social life. Socialism is about seizing back control of society from this inhuman force and initiating social relations based on human beings and our needs. Socialism means the abolition of wage labour, property, the state, the commodity form, and exchange. Everything would be held in common, rather than public or worker ownership and everything would be free, given without anything in exchange and without any expectation of any reciprocity from the particular individual(s) involved.  Socialism would be a society where we do not have money or other means of valuing goods and services, and where production, distribution, and daily life is democratically organised on the basis of our collective and individual desires and needs. Therefore the various aspects of control, power, and hierarchy we inflict on each other would be eliminated or greatly reduced.

Simply put, a socialist economy is to ensure that all people have enough of everything they need to live secure, comfortable and happy lives. Socialism doesn’t exist anywhere. It could, but it doesn’t. It is the hopeful belief of the Socialist Party that by education and rational persuasion men and women can be brought to decide on the formation of a free society. We do not aspire to be a party of permanent protest but one that seeks to accomplish our goal – socialism.

The purpose of socialist revolution is not to restore a “natural order of things”. How can the billions of people who inhabit the earth today live from hunting and fishing and gathering wild plants? It ignores the progress made by science in general and the many positive ways this progress affects man’s living conditions, even if scientific progress also has some negative effects. Despite the environmental damage and pollution, it is nevertheless true that the life expectancy today – in some of the most polluted countries of the world – is 70-plus years. It is also true that there is a steady drop in the infant mortality rate because of modern hospital rooms. We cannot return to primitive society’s way of life except at the price of a disaster worse than any of the problems that plague the world today. The purpose of socialist revolution is to provide today’s society with a form of social organisation that corresponds to the material possibilities open to us today.

Caged hamsters

The Left is and always has been a part of capitalism, albeit, in some instances a state-controlled version. Labour in government has sent troops in to break strikes, backed all of the major wars engaged in by the UK this last century (and has initiated a few of them), and has repeatedly attacked working class living standards to ensure the profitability of British industry. The welfare state was a capitalist “success”. It distracted workers with 'cradle to the grave' promises and staved off any social revolution.

There is nothing to suggest that either Corbyn or Smith, despite their radical phrases, would behave any differently in office – all national governments are there to administer their particular section of world capitalism, and as Syriza in Greece found out soon enough, have very little control over the market economy as events unfold. Looking to government is infantile, as governments exist to govern over you in the interests of the dominant economic parasite class in order that you attend to being a dutiful Uncle Tom wage slave ‘Thank you, master’. If you vote for a government over you, you will get governed over. Politicians supply demons. They supply a singular address for evil upon which you can blame everything. Where the economy is a mess, where people’s mortgages are underwater, it is much easier to find one single person or group of people to blame for all their problems than it is to analyse the extremely complex subject of, for instance, mortgage-backed Wall Street securities, which most people can’t understand. So, you blame taxes, or you blame the bankers or you blame individual politicians themselves.

People are like caged hamsters running endlessly on a proverbial spinning wheel. The media go about the business of misinforming, disinforming, and diverting the people from the source of their misery—which is the system itself. In other words, it’s all about controlling the minds of the masses.

“If those in charge of our society—politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television—can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power...” explained Howard Zinn.

Or as Steve Biko said, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

For power to be lodged in the hands of the people does not mean merely that they are to have the widest possible franchise and equal voting power. It implies that the people are to have control of all social institutions, a say in all social activities, the self-management of social life. Such a condition of affairs presupposes at the very outset the common ownership by the people of all the means of life.

Momentum activists will no doubt argue that Corbyn is a decent man with a track record of opposing wars. But this misses the point about how capitalism entraps those who seek to administer it. And while Corbyn may have opposed the senseless butchery of the Iraq War, he is a man (along with John McDonnell) who has sought to apologise repeatedly for the nationalism and terrorism of organisations like the Provisional IRA and Hamas. Men like these who commemorated IRA terrorists and who refused to condemn some of the most anti-working class atrocities in UK history (such as the Birmingham pub bombings and Enniskillen) are men whose peaceful and socialist credentials deserve to be viewed with quite some scepticism. Workers have no country or nations but the world to win for a commonly owned free access socialist society. Nationalism is a curse on the working class and leads them to the slaughter in the interest of the dominant economic class. When the slaughter ends it is back to the same old wage slavery regardless of the nationality of the employer.

What is of importance now is that people who may identify with wanting to create a genuinely socialist society of common ownership, democratic control and free access to wealth, don’t get suckered in by a radical-sounding, ‘populist’ reform movement that has yet to prove its popularity anywhere beyond the already like-minded. The attempt to reform capitalism by so-called benevolent governments has always been a disaster and there’s nothing to suggest it would be any different next time under either Corbyn or Smith.

Real socialists have always been content to leave the Labour Party to the reformists – and the more we think about it, the more they are welcome to it.

Wee Matt

Remember Maxton?

The Red Clydesider, James Maxton, accused the Conservatives of being murderers. Maxton complained, in a debate in June 1923, that cutting grants to child welfare centres in Scotland would lead to an increase in the death rates among children: "I call it murder ... a cold, callous, deliberate crime in order to save money . . .” As a notably crusty Tory defended the cuts, Maxton and three other Clydesiders were suspended. 

There was prolonged uproar in the House; Honourable Members, after all, did not expect their complacency to be disturbed so abruptly. Macdonald, the Labour leader, sat pale with anger at the outrage — not at the suspensions nor the protest nor even the cuts which were depriving the needy children but at the misbehaviour of the Clydesiders who were his supporters and who needed to learn how to behave among their betters.

Well, the Clydesiders are all dead now, with little to remember them by apart from their protests. Capitalism has weathered their disruptions, their impatience, their demands. The railways and the rest of the means of wealth production and distribution, still do not belong to the people.

There are no short-cuts

“Capital is dead labour that vampire-like only lives by sucking living labour and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” - Marx

In socialism, labour power is no longer regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not purchased at all. There will be no wages. Goods will be produced for the use of men and women and NOT for the profits which they bring to bosses. Humanity will have been freed from the capitalist system.

For the global capitalist ruling classes and  the corporate elites who actually run the system, to the extent that anyone is actually running it — things couldn’t be going much better at the moment. While for the vast majority of us, the future is looking increasingly miserable. The Socialist Party has never resorted to conspiracy theory and suggested the capitalist class consciously plan their domination and hegemony – the worldwide socio-economic-political situation is a bit more complex for the Bilderberg conferences to fix and rig. The capitalist ruling classes have imposed their control on more and more of the world, commodifying and absorbing what little is left outside the market. They are transforming the entire planet into one giant shopping mall/labour camp is. JPMorgan Chase, ICBC, HSBC, Berkshire Hathaway, Royal Dutch Shell, AXA Group, Toyota, Exxon, Pfizer, Novartis … does anyone believe these transnational banks and corporations have any real allegiance to the “sovereign nations” they nominally reside in, or to the citizens of those “sovereign” nations?  It is the interest of these corporations, and the global capitalist ruling classes (including government and deep state elites), that we do not perceive the world this way, and that we continue to believe in the sovereignty of nations, and that we think of ourselves as citizens of these nations, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

But people aren’t so easily deceived although they seek false solutions in a resurgent nationalism and divisive xenophobia. When we are marginalised, ignored and silenced, some of us become desperate and are tempted to turn on each other. Across the world nationalist parties have been making gains.  In Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Switzerland, and elsewhere such as in Russia and the Ukraine. In Germany they have their AfD (the Alternatives for Germany party) In France, it’s Le Pen and the Front National. In the Netherlands, it’s Geert Wilders and the PVV (the Party for Freedom). In the UK it is UKIP and in the US it is Trump even though the most vocal for the claim of American exceptionalism is Clinton.  None of them pose any real serious challenge to the reign of world capitalism. Nationalism grows because we fear the absence of our “identities”. The racists and patriots have been driven to extremes by delusions. Economic anxiety and inequality are contributing, as it always does, to the rise of right-wing, anti-immigrant, xenophobic and racist politics. Many of the people most hurt by austerity and the recession are turning to the very politicians who created the conditions that fostered the social problems or who wish to use discontent as a ladder to power. Despair and desperation can cause people to do things that are against their self-interest and make them resent people who seemingly are doing better than they are – public sector workers and unionized workers.

The corporate media is working hard to convince us that these is no alternative and too many of us embrace a utopian capitalist future in which each and every one of us can be a thriving entrepreneur. An alternative is unimaginable … literally unimaginable, in the sense that we are not yet capable of conceiving a credible alternative system, or a way to get there. Those of us who do have a vision of a better future fully realise our present impotence. We have been traveling very fast in an unknown direction, unsure who is at the steering wheel. Now humanity is awakening.

Today, activists are divided into dozens of single-issue campaigns. Many fail to understand the kind of power required to change society we need to build the workers’ movement into a robust force.  It is a strategy anchored in a deep belief in the capacity of ordinary people to understand the goal and to organise for it without a widespread and clear idea among workers of what a socialist society entails, it will he unattainable. The reason is simple. The very nature of socialism necessitates understanding. There is absolutely no way in which such a sweeping fundamental transformation of social relationships could be thrust upon an unwilling, unknowing majority by some minority, no matter how enlightened or well-meaning.

An understanding of socialism will not come by the spontaneous and automatic blossoming of this knowledge in the bosoms of millions of isolated workers. Mass socialist consciousness will develop out of the common experiences of workers and the interaction of ideas drawn from those experiences and through unity on the basis of socialist knowledge. This means the growth of socialist parties around the world, armed with the strength that comes from unity, able to meet and vanquish the divisive ideology of capitalism by clearing away the smokescreen it creates between the worker and the recognition of his real interests.

The job of the Socialist Party is clear—to put the case for socialism, to encourage workers to reject capitalism and start organising for the conquest of political power.

What we say

“Socialism, for Marx, is a society which permits the actualisation of man's essence, by overcoming his alienation. It is nothing less than creating the conditions for the truly free, rational, active and independent man; it is the fulfillment of the prophetic aim: the destruction of the idols.” - Erich Fromm

What will socialism be like? We cannot provide a blueprint as the precise details of its organisation will be democratically decided by the majority who in the future will establish that society and live in it. But we can make certain general statements about its nature. Socialism is exclusively the expression of the interests of the working class. Socialism is the political expression of the recognition by the working-class of their suppression and oppression under the present form of society.

We can say that it will mean the end of buying and selling, the end of money and the wages system.

We can say that, with the disappearance of such factors as cost and competition, it will mean people planning production democratically according to their wants and taking what they need to consume from the abundance of resources made available by modern technology.

We can say that it will mean voluntary cooperation, work as pleasure not toil, and all men and women as social equals.

We can say that it will mean complete democracy in all departments of life with freedom to choose one’s activities and occupations without being pushed around by decisions from above or by any kind of arbitrary authority. Socialism is not government ownership or state control of industry.

We can say that socialism will be world-wide—it cannot be anything else and anyway the world is now so closely united in terms of communications, fashions and the rapid flow of ideas that if people in one place were ready for socialism the rest of the world could not be far behind.

We can say socialism is practical. Socialism is a type of society in which all the members of the community collectively determine their conditions of life and their way of living. In order to do so, they must control, collectively, the use to which machines, factories, raw materials – all the means of production – are put. Unless the means of production are effectively in the hands of the whole society there can be no question of the collective control of the conditions of life.

We can say socialism is a 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 end.

We can say socialism is not the conquest of the state by a political party: it is the conquest of society by the working class through political and industrial action.

What we say is socialism is the future.

New Possibilties For Increasing Profit

The Toronto Star of July 21st ran an article about the latest drone technology. On July 12, in San Francisco, a patent was filed by Amazon for a "Multi-use unmanned aerial vehicle docking system." Its purpose would be to deliver packages to a docking system near a purchaser's house.

The most recent prototype weighs about 25 kilograms and can carry packages up to about two kilograms.

These would fly under 120 meters and use "sense and avoid" technology to dodge potential obstacles. The docking stations will be able to accommodate multiple drones and be located high up and out of the way of cell towers and other vertical structures. With solar panels, they could generate their own power.

All this means, so far, is Amazon has a patent on it. The Federal Aviation Administration doesn't allow package delivery. But let's look to the future and be realistic – if the capitalists can make money on it, the F.A.A. will change its rules; and if docking stations are near someone's house, (or even on a purchaser's property), it will be less people needed for delivery, hence bigger profits for the company.

This doesn't mean socialists are against new technology – we are against the system that uses it to make some rich and screw the rest. 

 John Ayers.