Correcting the Misconceptions

Since the Communist Manifesto was written the world that Marx and Engels envisaged, has not yet been reached anywhere. The most popular depiction of “socialism” is one of state ownership and a command economy, directed by the ‘revolutionary’ party in a virtual fusion of State and party. Of course, this was never the conception of Marx or Engels.  Socialism means that the means of production and the land belong to the whole people and are organized and run democratically. The way they organise themselves depends on the kind of enterprise it is; on the general way in which the society as a whole has evolved.  This means that there is no ideal form of self-management that springs up but that it is an on-going process, before, during and after the socialist revolution. The basic issue is that real power is in the hands of working people. Workers’ self-management does not mean enterprises acting each for itself, in uncontrolled competition but an integrated social plan, which is applied and worked out democratically. This presupposes a radical rethinking of the idea of rigidly-centralised planning. The socialist economy is composed of many different ultra-modern enterprises, within the coordinated framework of democratic social planning at a local, regional and global levels. The aim is to satisfy the real social needs of the citizens, with decisions made democratically from the bottom up by a process of interaction and delegation which is constantly readjusting and adapting to execute and meet the objectives.  The world should be thought of as a combination of communities, divided not simply for the sake of administrative control but also because they are homogeneous, coherent regions to be provided for and also to provide for others. These communes self-governed by their citizens and will have sufficient means to develop their own local plans within the general framework of wider production. This authentic socialist socialization. It end the centuries-old concepts of hierarchy, authority, ‘leaders’ and the ‘led’. It is a revolution not only of property relations but of social relations. It ends the whole barbaric past of humanity based on the exploitation and the subordination of some people by others. This is the only kind of socialism which is worth the struggle and the sacrifice.

The position of the Socialist Party is that the most preferable, the most desirable method of social transformation is to have it done peacefully by the majority. That opinion is based on a study of history, the historical experiences of mankind in the numerous changes of society from one form to another, the revolutions which accompanied it. Parliament has lost much of its prestige but its control over the forces of law and order and the armed forces means that it cannot be ignored. We can achieve socialism peacefully by the ballot – if the ruling class permits it. But neither did we represent ourselves as pacifists. The Socialist Party does not shrink from using force but we consider when faced by an overwhelming majority of determined and organised workers, they will accept their inevitable fate. Socialism is the doctrine of revolutionary action. But it has nothing in common with insurrection. The revolutionary plan which the Socialist Party contemplates is the action of the working class majority. Socialism will be won and built by our fellow workers , who those who meet the needs of society. They will create a society no longer based on chaos, but proceeds according to the planned fulfillment of genuine human needs. Classes and class struggle will cease to exist. Socialism will unleash a degree of productive forces unknown before in the history of mankind. Commodity production, that is, production for sale or exchange on the market, will not exist. The system of wage labor will be abolished and the guiding principle of labor will be “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” The means of production will be held in common and private property will be eliminated. Standing in the way of social progress and socialism are two obstacles:

1. The capitalist class.

2. Socialism will be possible only when the workers decide that they are determined to lay the living conditions of mankind on a new foundation.

The class struggle is important and cannot be avoided because it marks the road towards the class-free society. With the end of class oppression, the state disappears. We can play no part in the building of the new society – that privilege must be left to those who come after us. Solidarity in the working class as a whole, coming from below, is an urgent necessity if we are to further the cause of Socialism.

Conditions Of Present-day Dishonesty

A survey conducted by Ontario's Ministry of Labour reported that victims of wage theft in Ontario have "lost out" on $28 million over the last six years. Just $19 million from the $47 million stolen from out-of-pocket workers has been recovered. Yet, only 0.2% of the guilty bosses were prosecuted - "Our study showed that the Employment Standards Acts Enforcement is still largely compliant-driven, but, that many employees face barriers, like, fear of retaliation - (Ya think?) that inhibits them from making complaints", said Leah Vosko, one of the lead researchers.

According to Ms. Vosko, "....even when violations are validated by the Ministry, penalties are rarely imposed on employers and the Dispute Resolution System provides opportunities for employers to avoid paying employees all that they are owed."

Forty-eight percent of complaints the Ministry receive are about unpaid wages, yet, only a mere 8.6 of the complainants are still in their jobs. 85% of the claims investigated were shown to be valid. Small businesses were found more likely to be in violation than big ones. Some 80% of employees at small firms were validated, these being mostly with five or fewer employees. The validations were 50% with companies with more than 200 employees.

About half of the complaints are for $1,000 or more, a huge loss to a worker. Since 2012 the Ministry has prosecuted successfully just forty-one of the law-breaking bosses.

It's understandable the bosses of small businesses are the main offenders, considering a small business is closer to the edge economically. Bankruptcy, even when avoided, is always a Damocles Sword for small capitalists, which makes them more intensive in their exploitation of their workers than big ones.

Nor, is this an attempt to defend them, but to understand the economic forces at work. It's easy enough to call all of the violator's dishonest jerks, but the plain brutal fact is, present-day economic conditions cause dishonesty and, as is obvious from the above, no tinkering around with complaints and prosecutions will do much good. Better an economic system where there is no need for dishonesty. 

John Ayers.

Socialism or reformism

At some level, perhaps not always too well articulated, socialists have been around for a long time. A lot of us came to socialism by searching for a word/term/phrase which would begin to express all of our concerns, all of our principles. The trouble with taking a label is that it creates an instant accusation of sectarianism. How does a socialist look at the world? Every socialist knows that capitalist society is characterized by inequality and this inequality arises from processes which are intrinsic to capitalism as an economic system. A minority of people (the capitalist class) own all the factories and resources,  which everyone else depends on in order to live. The great majority (the working class) must work out of sheer necessity, under conditions set by the capitalists, for the wages the capitalists pay. Since the capitalists make their profits by paying less in wages than the value of what the workers actually produce, the relationship between the two classes is necessarily one of irreconcilable antagonism. The capitalist class owes its very existence to the continued exploitation of the working class. What maintains this system of class rule is, which in the last analysis, means force. The capitalist class controls (directly or indirectly) the means of organised violence represented by the state – police, the courts and jails. Only by waging a class struggle aimed at the seizure of state power can the working class free itself, and, ultimately, all people. Socialists expose the myths about “democracy” to reveal a system of class domination that rests on forcible exploitation.

Socialists understand that, in its search for markets, capitalism is driven to penetrate every nook and cranny of social existence. Especially in the phase of  capitalism, the realm of consumption is every bit as important, just from an economic point of view, as the realm of production. So we cannot understand class struggle as something confined to issues of wages and hours, or confined only to workplace issues. The class struggle occurs in every arena where the interests of classes conflict, and that includes education, health, the arts, etc. We aim to transform not only the ownership of the means of production but the totality of social existence. At present, the capitalist class controls mass culture. Instead of collectivity and self-reliance as a class, there is mutual isolation and collective dependency on the capitalist class.

We are Marxist socialists, not petty reformers; we are socialists, not progressive liberals. If we are socialists, what are we actually fighting for? On the most basic level, socialism is a society dedicated to the interests of the working people where the means by which society produces its wealth – factories, mines, and farms – are no longer privately owned but is transferred to common ownership, and exploitation is eliminated. Socialism unleashes the creativity of the people, who are capable of tremendous advances when not labouring under a system of wage-slavery. Socialism can only be built if the majority of the people support it and are actively involved in building it. Socialists believe that the working class will transform society because it is the most dehumanised and alienated class, but is potentially the most powerful since the functioning and the survival of society depends on it.

The class antagonisms of capitalist society give birth to socialists in the struggle of the working class to free themselves from their capitalist exploiters by wresting from them the tools and machinery with which modern work is done. Only he or she is a socialist who perceives clearly the nature of the struggle and takes a stand squarely and uncompromisingly with fellow-workers in the struggle which can end only with the end of the capitalist system and the total abolition of class rule. We count everyone who is not with us and opposed to the capitalist class, as against us, especially those chicken-hearted “reformers” who are for everybody (especially themselves,) and against nobody. They are “socialists” for no other purpose than to emasculate socialism who  dare not offend their capitalist masters, for their rich rewards depend upon their treason of the working class. We have no patience with the frauds who come up with their quack remedies for the social ills of capitalism. A socialist is someone who believes that the wage system is slavery and that commercial competition is wasteful.

Humanity needs a socialist world

In the 19thC and early 20thC, the socialist movement knew better how to talk socialism. Nobody has ever come up with— or will come up with — any policy which will change the nature of capitalism. What workers get is exploitation and misery all the time, relieved occasionally by a boom but the worsened in recession. Those who doubt that capitalist society fails to satisfy the needs of the majority of people should look at the ways in which so many of our fellow-workers cherish remote hopes of escaping from their position in it. It is natural to want to break away from wage slavery. The chances are slim, but the likelihood that one’s subject position in the present order of things will continue without respite until one’s dying day is a dismal contemplation. How many dreams, we wonder, are based upon that lucky jackpot lottery ticket? This does not mean that we should not aim to get as much from capitalism as we can. All power to the unions! It does mean though that this approach to the satisfying of human needs is a limited one. It cannot solve the predicament with which human beings are faced in capitalist society. The fact is that the working class cannot opt out of the ill effects of capitalism without deciding to get rid of it. Reformers in spite of good intentions and with the best will in the world and the support of electors, have made plain the futility of trying to obtain beneficial results from a system that is basically harmful. Success for a few at the expense of failure for most is all that this profit-motivated system can offer. In the long run, the solution for the individual is the solution for mankind as a whole: to organise the world in accord with the needs of humanity.

The working class is not only held economic prisoner by the capitalist mode of production but it shackled by the frequently unperceived but overwhelming intellectual, social, political and cultural hegemony of the ruling class , which further strengthen the chains. Socialism is a method of understanding the world for the express purpose of changing it. Socialism shows how liberation can be won, not in fantasy by pious moral persuasion, but objectively and historically by class struggle and political action. The socialist movement will not advance significantly until it regains the initiative and takes the offensive against capitalism.  Only the revolution that replaces the class rule of the capitalists by the class rule of the workers can really establish democracy. Socialism as a class-free society—with abundance, freedom and equality for all; a society in which there would be no state, certainly not a workers’ state with its monstrous bureaucratic dictatorship of a privileged minority. Poverty is inevitable so long as capitalism exists, so long as the profit-economy reigns. Capitalism, greedily demands more and more profits. Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism will unemployment be done away with. The real job today is to spread the ideas of socialism, organise the workers in their own political party that will wipe out capitalism with its waste and be able to plan production and plenty for all.

The Socialist Party realises that only with a foundation of common ownership can society create the conditions for the betterment of human beings. The Socialist Party seeks a world where we can live in harmony and peace, where the interest of the individual is aligned to that of society as a whole. Let people remember that this is the system which causes their and other people’s problems will still be there. This economic system leads to slumps and wars and sets man against man in the struggle, not only to get to the top, but to avoid being shoved to the bottom. The competition for more things, higher status, greater power, will remain with the rest of its ill effects. The evidence of mental ill-health indicates the high number of people unable to cope with modern life. The inability or reluctance to face the facts of life in a class-divided, money-collecting system indicates the failure of the social organisation. Let us see it for what it is and consider the positive alternative that socialism offers. For the majority of people the lower portion of the social pyramid is where they must remain until society is changed. The important thing for workers is to recognise the need for such a change. To work for that end is the most worthwhile task of our time.

Hold High Our Red Banner

Why is the working class unable to use this recession of capitalism to make, or at least to prepare, for the road to socialism? It appears as if the acceptance of this capitalist society is a fact of life that the workers mostly no longer question. We socialists are up against the reality that another new generation has to be convinced afresh that socialism does, in fact, represent a better social system for people, that Marx’s idea of the eventual withering away of the state is not a pipedream, but a realistic sketch of the future state of human society. To produce a new socialist movement it is as necessary to re-educate a new generation. Only by intelligent debate and discussion and by cogent reasoning and intelligent reasoning and demonstration can we hope to convince them. It is impossible to blindly stumble into socialism. It will have to be organised and directed by the people themselves with, at their command, all the theory, knowledge, resources, and lessons accumulated by the world working class. Its know-how and organisation in politics and action must match and surpass that of its enemies. The socialist revolution consists of an entire process, on a global scale. Nothing less than the fate of humanity hinges upon the self-emancipation of the working class.

The Socialist Party is a revolutionary political organisation which seeks to educate the workers in order that they may organise to combat capitalism in every field of its activity. We emphatically insist that capitalism’s control of the political machine must be challenged at the ballot box. Capitalism is a social system which breeds conflicts. It is a seething jungle of struggles wherein individuals, classes, nations, and empires fight against each other. Individual wage-earners vie with each other for jobs; capitalists outbid one another for markets; classes struggle against each other in the economic and political arenas, and nations are prepared to wipe each other off the map for the sake of imperial conquest. But the struggle, international in its extent, which looms larger than all others, is the conflict between capital and labour. In this struggle, the former fights with ability and consciousness of aim, while the latter fights with great confusion and without a knowledge of its own strength. Because the political weapon is used by the capitalist class against labour, and because the political State is a machine to maintain class rule, there are some who contend that working class political action is futile. The task of socialists, therefore, is to educate and assist the transfer of power from capitalists to working-people.

The Socialist Party declares that as political power is used by the capitalists to enforce its economic power, for that very reason the workers must meet the capitalist class on the political field. The Socialist Party takes the political field with one plank upon its programme—Socialism. It emphasises that only socialists must vote for its candidates. The Socialist Party is a weapon of class struggle in the hands of the working class, transforming their consciousness into a material force for the capture of state power. If we turn towards the future, we must grasp the fact of that often misconstrued conception “the dictatorship of the proletariat” simply means the democratic rule of the overwhelming majority, which means that the people themselves take the running of society into their own hands and control it in their own interests. The aim of socialism is truly in accord with the sentiment for democracy and liberty. Socialists work towards the development of democratic rights to a degree never achieved under capitalism.

Capitalism is solely a profit-making system. The capitalist has no interest in the useful quality of the goods produced in his factory; the only thing that interests him is their selling quality because profit is only realised after commodities are sold. Thus it matters nothing to the capitalist what the nature of the commodity his capital is producing, or in what part of the world it is produced. The first and last essential of production for the market is profit. Capitalism reduces the worker to the same category as other merchandise to be bought and sold on the world’s markets. He or she is a commodity. He or she is a wage slave.

With socialism we have the basis for a complete emancipation of men, women and children as the government over persons is transformed into the administration of things. Goods are no longer sold for a market but are produced for use. There being no class struggles, there is now no need for a State, and the State withers away. When all the wants of life easily can be easily obtained, the cause for crime disappears and so police disappear. The essence of the State is its function of coercion but inside a socialist society the less is the exercise of this function required. The disappearance of coercion was just what Marx and Engels meant by ‘the withering away of the state’.  Socialist revolution will accomplish the elimination of classes, class divisions and class contradictions, and the elimination of social and political inequality. Socialism means the ending of exploitation of man by man, a society without class antagonisms, in which the people themselves control their means of life and use them for their own happiness. To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation of mines, railways, steel, etc. is not socialism. Neither Marx nor Engels taught that the nationalisation of the forces of production by the State signified the establishment of socialism. That’s not stated by Marx and Engels anywhere. Such nationalisation is simply a degree of state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. In rejecting such “socialism”? fellow-workers show their sound common sense.

Quotes from Martin Luther King

"You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry ... Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism … There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism."

"The movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, who owns the oil? You begin to ask the question, who owns the iron ore? You begin to ask the question, why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water? These are questions that must be asked."

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing'-oriented society to a person- oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

"The dispossessed of this country the poor, the white and Negro live in a cruelly unjust society, they must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty."

The Law Ain't Neutral Buddy

A recent study of self-service checkout technology in the U.S., Canada and some European countries, concluded that it turns law-abiding citizens into petty thieves by giving them "ready made excuses" to take merchandise without paying for it.

The use of self-service lanes and smart-phone apps caused a loss of 4%, more than double the average, given that the profit margin among European grocers is 3%, the technology is a non-profit venture.

What the report failed to mention is the money the companies save by not paying wages to the workers that the technology has made redundant.

One million shopping trips were audited, amounting to six million items checked. 850,000 were found not to have been scanned.

Proving intent and deciding whether to press charges can be a legal and Customer Relations minefield, the report noted.

Shoppers claimed the technology was faulty, there were problems with the bar codes, or they didn't know how to use the check out facilities. The behaviour is termed "neutralizing your guilt", but, there's one thing that ain't neutral buddy - the law itself. It is the capitalists' law that exists to protect their interests, which includes keeping the wealth they've stolen from the working class who created it. 

As for workers, supposedly stealing in check-out lanes - we socialists hope you get away with it. 

John Ayers.

The Socialist Party vision for global human emancipation

"The liberty of opinion is the most sacred of all liberties, for it is the basis of all . . ." Ernest Jones, Chartist

Socialism does not aim at making people slaves of governments, but to get rid of all governments other than the ‘self-government’ of free citizens. Socialism is the recognition and adoption of the principle and practice of association as against isolation, of co-operation as against competition, of concerted action in the interests of all, instead of “dog-eat-dog” Socialism saddles upon each of us the responsibility of being our “brother’s keeper.” If a child, woman or man is hungry, socialism says there is something wrong in our social system, and upon us rests the responsibility of righting the wrong. If one family dwells in a slum, socialists say let us raze the slum to the ground and build decent homes for people to live in. If men and women are overworked from toil and drudgery, and so prevented from fully sharing in the joys of life, socialism tells us to end the toil and see to it that every man and every woman shall have a fair share of all that makes life worth living. Socialism means the complete end of the present capitalist system. Therefore those who do not believe in the necessity for and the justice of the total socialisation of the means of production should not call themselves socialists. We declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the land-lords, the industrialists, and financiers, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these monopolists as speedily as possible. Among socialists, there may be differences of opinion as to the particular kind of tactics, political and economic for the realisation of socialism, but no genuine socialist would disagree with that object as stated. Socialism is the full realisation of the collectivist ideal, where not only will the means of wealth production be co-operatively owned by the people, but when there will be no regimentation or any dictatorial ruling class of the kind we have knowledge of today when even parliaments will disappear. Socialists desire a free state of society wherein exploitation will be impossible and minus armies of officials or parliamentarians. There is an alternative: that of adequately supplying the needs of all. A future where the world is to be co-operative, and not competitive.

William Morris describes socialism:

“…the centralised nation would give place to a federation of communities who would hold all wealth in common, and would use that wealth for satisfying the needs of each member, only exacting from each that he should do his best according to his capacity towards the production of the common wealth. Of course, it is to be understood that each member is absolutely free to use his share of wealth as he pleases, without interference from any, so long as he really uses it, that is, does not turn it into an instrument for the oppression of others. This view intends complete equality of condition for everyone, though life would be, as always, varied by the differences of capacity and disposition…”

The object of the Socialist Party is to secure economic freedom for the whole community, by that we mean all men and all women shall have equal opportunities of sharing in wealth production and consumption. Humanity cannot by any possibility remain in its existing chaotic economic condition. When we can expect to see socialism realised would be speculation and no socialist possesses a crystal ball for predictions. The Socialist Party works towards the defeat and the overthrow of the rule of the capitalist class over our lives, our society, and our world. We work for social equality and the radical transformation and/or abolition of oppressive institutions by the thorough democratisation of society. We seek to unite the many against the few with the inspiring vision of global human emancipation. The Socialist Party strives to give voice to the voiceless and hope to the hopeless across our world to foster courage, trust, and solidarity amongst those who have been beaten down by the current system, to turn our collective weakness into our strength. The Socialist Party aspires towards exposing capitalism before it poisons the planet to the point where it is unlivable. As socialists, we are citizens of the world. Our roots are in our communities and in our workplaces.

Capitalism is to be condemned

 The contradictions of life under capitalism have engendered deep-rooted feelings of frustration. The wealth pouring from the factories and the farms has not assured many of prosperity nor offered security about the future prospects. Instead, of an expected welcome release from burdensome toil, the prospects of automation and robots have become a source of anxiety, producing the threat of chronic unemployment and the spectre of a new recession to follow, rather than the promise of peace and plenty. No wonder people feel alienated.

The most pressing need facing humanity is to progress from the anarchy of capitalism to the planned economic system of socialism. The price to pay for delaying this task will be more poverty, increasing hunger, mounting disease and continuing wars. To these has now been added the climate change and global warming which could make all the higher forms of life extinct. Under the impulse of intolerable pressures the working class have repeatedly initiated struggles pointing in the socialist direction but to no avail, having stopped short of actually overthrowing and replacing capitalism.  It has now become almost a life-and-death question for people of the world to construct the socialist alternative to capitalism.

Socialism will only be achieved by emerging from the struggle against capitalism when the majority of the people create democratic organs that take into their hands the means of production and subject them to democratic planning. We either learn how to live a humane and harmonious way with one another and the environment around us, or we shall not live at all. The fundamental source of resistance to life under capitalism is the working class alienation. If an academic can show that alienation can be done away with under capitalism, that workers will no longer resist their conditions of life and work, then he demonstrated the end of the working class as the force for social change. But no matter how many times we re-define capitalism it does not get rid of the presence and importance of the working class. The working class has to look beyond capitalism. A socialist is one who, having investigated the causes of present-day social discord, decides that these causes are found in the private ownership of the means of wealth production and who therefore endorses the necessity for a co-operative commonwealth and common ownership in order to eliminate private or sectional monopoly, and secure the advantages for the whole people. For sure some reformists express a certain amount of sympathy with the idea of socialism, when all that is intended by them is a kindly feeling towards those in poverty, but by no means do they endorse the collective ownership and control of the land, mines, minerals, machinery and transport, without which no one can be a socialist. By common (or collective) ownership is meant ownership of the whole people, ie the raw material and machinery of production to become the property of the public, and industry to be regulated by experts in the common interest, and the workers engaged in the less pleasant or more arduous kinds of work would probably work fewer hours on a rotational basis than those in the more agreeable occupations.

Once again then, socialism (or social democracy) involves the transfer from present day private ownership to common ownership of all those agencies of wealth production necessary for supply of life’s necessaries for the whole people. The fact is that private ownership of the means of wealth production fails most lamentably to provide all the people with the necessities of life. The fact with private enterprise there are children by the million who never experience healthy conditions. The first and only item of importance to the capitalists is to obtain profit, never for securing public welfare.  

Of course, some individual capitalists may be well disposed towards the community and possess what they call Christian charity but they are competing in the world’s market against all other capitalists in the same trade also seeking a share of the market; to compete effectively, they must place the commodity on the market as cheaply as, or cheaper than, other competitors. In order to do this, they must ever have regard to cheapening the cost of production, and the bed-rock policy pursued in purchasing raw material to be worked up into the finished commodity, and also in the purchase of labour force, is to purchase as cheaply as possible and sell as dearly as possible. Therefore they keep wages down to the lowest possible margin, there is not an exception to this rule; it does not follow that an employer will necessarily be ever trying to reduce the wages of the men, there are two conditions generally operating to make that difficult, the one is the organised power of the workers to resist encroachments of the kind, and the other is that generally speaking men who receive the best wages are really the cheapest producers, but what the capitalist ever aims at is paying as wages of the lowest proportion possible of the total product of the factory. In short, as Karl Marx long ago explained, the capitalist is always after the “surplus” ie that the largest possible amount of the total value produced in the establishment shall come to him as profits, and therefore that the least possible should be absorbed as wages, expenses of management and general upkeep of the establishment.

It necessarily follows that each group of capitalists is continually on the lookout to save wages, and therefore every new device in the way of what is termed labour saving, which is really wages saving machinery is made use of and the result is that there is a constantly diminishing proportion of the total produce of labour going in the form of wages to those who perform the total labour and a constantly increasing proportion of output going as profit to the capitalist. Not a trade can be named but confirms this contention. That is not the worst phase of the matter. It will be seen that with the ever increased power to produce commodities the market is stocked with increasing ease, and by men who have been engaged in producing serviceable commodities producing so very much more than they receive in wages and therefore more than they consume, the markets are glutted, and these same men are thrown into the ranks of the unemployed, not because they have failed to work effectively, but because they have produced so abundantly and consumed so little of it, they are therefore discharged and prevented from getting even a sufficiency upon which to live. This is the direct effect of private ownership of the means of production for the purpose of making profits for the capitalists, instead of working co-operatively in the common or public interest.

We socialists declare that the whole world bears witness to the truth of the statement as to the effects of production for profit for capitalists and that being so we declare the present system stands condemned. A more grossly unfair system than the present could not be devised.

Some opponents smugly declare that socialism has been tried many times in various countries and has “always proved a failure.” None of these attempts have been of a genuine socialist character. Every government that can be named has been brought into existence for the express purpose of maintaining the domination of the propertied class, and to keep under subjection the proletariat or propertyless class. So long as individuals belonging to the propertied and dominating section continue to exercise control and ownership of the means of production, and decide as hitherto they have ever decided the character of the law and the control of the judiciary, no country is ready for socialism. Socialism can only exist when the people collectively own the instruments and agencies of production and distribution untrammelled by sectional monopolistic power, wielded by a bureaucracy.

We Mean Socialism

The word “socialism” has been so misused for so long that it is well worth re-stating its basic principles. Socialist revolution is the most radical break with oppression and exploitation in history. Socialism is not some Utopian scheme. Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism. Today there is social production but no social ownership. Socialism will bring social ownership of social production. The Socialist Party comes before you as a body advocating the principles of socialism. We seek a change in the basis of society - a change which would end the distinctions of classes and nationalities. Socialism will mean real freedom.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, not to be confused with the Socialist Party of England and Wales (ex-Militant Tendency), can be dated back to the Social Democratic Federation from which it split in 1904. The SPGB has an inherently hostile attitude to "leadership" which predates the rise of Bolshevism and relates to their originating in a split with the Social Democratic Federation led by a certain H. M. Hyndman who was quite an authoritarian character by all accounts. An avowedly Marxist party, it eschews Leninism, nationalism and war. Its basic objective is:

“The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.”

This is to be achieved through democratic elections and presently prevailing institutions, an outcome which the SPGB admits is beyond its present capabilities at this point but which we seek to hasten through political activity and consciousness raising. The road to the new society had lengthened and become rather overgrown with weeds. Socialism, communism and capitalism are among the most misused words in the world. A clarification of terms is necessary for us if we are to obtain clear visions of the future.

Socialism would entail the free association of the world's people, with every associate a co-owner of the entire world's vast array of resources, natural and human made. The global community would collectively make decisions on matching their needs with available resources. This would mean the end of wage labour, i.e. the selling of one's ability to work in order to gain access to social wealth, an end to separate nations and enterprises, an end to money and all forms of exchange. Once such social relations were to mature, becoming an unconscious element of daily activity, earth would become a big commune, and its way of living would be known as communism.

Capital is a social relation, a relation between people expressed through things. Goods were exchanged in previous social systems although the scope of exchange was much more limited and its occurrence much less frequent. But in capitalism, labour power becomes a commodity, something to be bought and sold. Workers sell their available time in return for the money needed to reproduce themselves as workers. In return, those few who own or control the means of production and/or investment funds, be they corporate owners or state bureaucrats, obtain control over the workers' time and energy, and thus can require them to produce beyond their needs. The capitalists' control of the products means that by selling them, they can potentially draw a profit from the surplus (beyond expenses) which is thereby produced. Some of this profit is used for their own consumption and vital but unproductive expenses, such as running the government and keeping track of money. But profits are primarily for reinvestment in profit-making activity. This is how investments grow. And growth is capital's reason for living, its ultimate priority, even if growth requires war. Capitalism’s survival, as well as its potential overthrow, depend on the working class.

Our socialist theory of society is that:

1. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production.

2. The working class neither owns nor controls the means of production.

3. As a result, the working class lives by producing wealth for the capitalist class.

The working class accepts the necessity of its dependence upon the capitalist class for permission to work for it, to get wages from it, and to buy means of consumption from it in order to live. The working class rationally resigns itself to continuous exploitation under capitalism as a tamed dog rationally continues serving its master to survive off its master’s scraps.

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. Socialism is founded on the idea of equality. Production is for need, not profit. One central point is that state ownership is not socialism. Socialism will not mean government control. Nationalisation aims to reach compromises with and to make concessions to the working class while leaving the present system of capital and wages still intact and in operation: no number of merely administrative changes, until the workers are in possession of all political power, would make any real approach to socialism.  Socialism means that the wealth of society is spent on everyone.

The whole wealth of the capitalist system comes from the labour of workers. Without that labour nothing would function and no profits would accrue to the capitalists. Although we produce all the wealth of society, we have no control over its production or distribution. The people are treated as a mere appendage to capital - as a part of its machinery. To get those profits capitalists have always controlled workers in their workplaces and kept wages as low as they could. This creates degrees of bitterness and resentment. This often turns into feelings of solidarity. The Socialist Party aims  for the realisation of socialism and well knows that this can never happen in any one country without the help of the workers of all nations. For us neither geographical boundaries, political history, race, nor creed makes rivals or enemies; for us,there are no borders, but only fellow-workers whose mutual sympathies are perverted by groups of our masters whose interest it is to stir up rivalries and hatreds between those in different lands.

Whether or not socialism is destined to arise, the purpose of socialists consists of educating our fellow-workers, in making them aware of their class condition. To win for socialism the greatest possible number of supporters, that is the task to which socialist parties must concentrate their efforts, using all peaceful means.

Plants Not Found In The Palace Garden

On August 10th, the Toronto Daily Star reminded readers that it was the eight "Anniversary" of the explosion at the Sunshine Propane plant at Wilson and Keele - a blast that was heard ten kilometers away. 12,000 residents had to flee in what was described as a 'chaotic evacuation'. Over one hundred fire fighters battled the blaze. A fire fighter and a plant manager were killed. Dozens were injured and many houses were ruined. Investigators found Sunshine used to swap propane loads from truck-to-truck, instead of emptying it into a buried storage tank, then, having a second truck load up. This saved the company several minutes a load, and, in business, time equals money and to hell with the potential for danger.

The company and its two directors were convicted of nine charges relating to Environmental Damage and also, for not following Provincial Safety Orders. Six thousand residents near the plant won a $23 million lawsuit to compensate for their losses.

What was never said, was, that the plant, where there was an ever-present potential for danger, was in a working class neighbourhood. Can you imagine a propane plant next door to Buckingham Palace or the White House? 

 John Ayers.

The Siren Song of Self-Management

An 'ideal' capitalism could tolerate the self-management of the conditions of production: as long as a normal profit is made by the firm, the organisation of the work can be left to the workers." – Barrot & Martin, ‘Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement’

The most widespread image of a so-called ‘socialism’ is a regime is one of state ownership and planned economy, directed by the ‘revolutionary’ party. Ultimately, this means the virtual fusion of State and party with the unions reduced to the role of a transmission belt for State requirements aimed at the working people. Since the State is axiomatically defined as ‘socialist’ and the party as ‘revolutionary’ the schematic conclusion is that these institutions are the same thing as the power of the working people and citizens. Workers’ self-management such as co-operative production under the joint control of the workers in an enterprise, can also be achieved under capitalism. But under capitalism, it can only lead to workers driving down their own conditions (as a result of capitalist competition) or to the collapse of the enterprise. We do not advocate it under capitalism except as a survival strategy to better the conditions of a few lucky wage-slaves.

Of course, this was never the conception of Marx. However, he only offered only qualified endorsement of alternative methods of organising the economy.

‘the co-operative movement will never transform capitalist society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour general social changes are needed, changes ... never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, namely the state power, from the capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.’

The path to socialism is not through nationalisation, syndicalism or cooperatives. Let there not be any ambiguity about the use of the word socialisation – the means of production and distribution is the common property of all the people. The socialisation of private property is the foundation of a class-free society. Socialists seek to abolish the domination of capital and to construct a new society – a socialist society. The Socialist Party fully supports the idea of self-management but we are alone in demanding it to be real self-management rather than facades which simply give workers the illusion of self-management.

The State is the expression of the collective interests of the ruling class in a particular society. Therefore, to bring something under state ownership does not mean to ‘nationalise’ in the sense of ‘socialisation’, where ownership is transferred to the ‘nation’, the whole society. To bring something under state ownership, simply by having the workers get their wages from the state rather than from private bosses, is not sufficient to transform social relations in a socialist sense.

The idea of self-management is, from the very start, a confused one. What most people instinctively understand by it is a society in which relatively small groups, like workers in a single factory, organise all aspects of the running of their individual units. Health workers or teachers, for example, would thus organise at the local level in their hospitals or schools, while consumers would be organised in neighbourhoods. To restrict the concept of self-management to single factories is a pretence. If socialism cannot exist in one country, how can it survive in even one city much less one enterprise?

It is also a question of social democracy. A power station may well supply electricity to a million people and a single factory can produce enough to satisfy the needs of a million people. It is quite untenable to suggest that the control of those resources should be under the control of 200 or 300 people who just happen to work in that particular power plant or factory. The way in which its energy and goods are produced distributed are not the only concern the producers but also all the workers who are going to consume its products and their needs which must be satisfied.  There is absolutely no reason why a select number of workers should be given the right to dictate decisions which will affect millions of workers.

With the arrival of socialism, we will inherit a vast array of technological and logistic tools of capitalism, from networks of retail stores to transnational corporation supply chains. There exists thus today, in the technology that the working class will acquire on the day it takes power, tools of coordination and it would be  absolutely utopian to want to fragment economic decision-making to these levels. Decisions can be taken in a flexible centralised manner in a democratic way. Such organisation need not be a command-economy of plans issued from above.

Not only can workers not implement decisions against the operations of market laws which allows the survival of competition and imposes certain unavoidable imperatives on the units of production.

There have been many examples of workers’ self-management that went wrong, there have even been some that have ‘succeeded’ – in capitalist terms that is! All that they have succeeded in, however, has been to transform themselves into profitable capitalist enterprises, operating in the same way as other capitalist firms. There is the evidence of Bolivian mining cooperatives transforming into collectives of capitalists which even go so far as employing workers without letting them enter the cooperative, and paying low wages while keeping for themselves their shares in the prosperity of the cooperative.

For sure, we are not dismissing the workers facing redundancies occupying their factory, seizing the ‘booty’ as it were, either for leverage or simply to provide a livelihood. Or denying some workers who have been very fortunate enough the opportunity to find an escape from conventional employment.

Our case is that for a permanent solution for everyone, is to organise industry at a social level, thus allowing for an effectively planned economy consciously run by all the people as a whole.

Leninism is pseudo-revolutionary drivel

There is a class struggle going on. The national interest is not the same as the workers class interest. The working class have never had a government that cares a damn about them. It is past time they stopped looking for one.

"The workers must organise for their emancipation. They can do this, and only they can do it. I cannot do this for you and I want to be frank enough to say I would not, if I could. For, if I could do it for you somebody else could undo it for you. But, when you do it yourselves, it will be done for ever -and until you do it, you have got to pay the penalty of your ignorance, indifference and neglect." -Eugene Debs

Even Attlee's famous reforming government brought troops out against workers 8 times in the bosses’ interest.

Here is Labour's record for using troops to break strikes. 1945: Dockers. 1946: Smithfield porters. Southampton dockers. 1947: Road transport workers (including Smithfield), dockers, Tower Bridge operators. 1948: Buckingham Palace boiler-room workers, dockers (State of emergency declared under Emergency Powers Act of 1920). 1949: Dockers, Smithfield road haulage drivers, gas maintenance workers. 1966: seamen. 1975: Glasgow refuse collectors. 1977: Air traffic control assistants, firemen. 1978: Naval dockyard workers. During the so-called Winter of Discontent of 1978-9 Merlyn Rees, the then Labour Home Secretary, informed Parliament of the plans made to protect the interests of British capitalism:

The government were ready at any time to call on the assistance of the Services and to proclaim a state of emergency should that have been necessary. The contingency plans were kept constantly under review by ministers. 160 service instructors were trained and 15,000 servicemen were recalled from leave over the New Year period and kept on short notice. Detailed contingency plans had been prepared for requisitioning of tankers and restricting the use of fuel to priority purposes. To put the plans for requisitioning tankers into effect would have required a proclamation of a state of emergency. If necessary parliament would have been recalled. In the event it has not been necessary to put any of these plans into operation. (Hansard, 15 January 1979. col. 1318)

When the Labour government did eventually use the troops during this major industrial dispute it was against . . . the ambulancemen. Ambulance crews were particularly badly paid, with a minimum basic rate of 38.44p per week and the rejection of their claim for a two-thirds increase on 12 January led to their participation in the general local authority workers one-day stoppage on 22 January.  The Labour Party administration of capitalism under Callaghan replied by calling in the troops. In London 50 army vehicles and 85 police were brought into use with the police providing the first line of cover backed up by the volunteer services, and troops only being summoned when these could not cope.

Workers should not just recall the anti-working class actions of past Labour governments but should also understand why. It is the working class who produce the wealth in society and it is the exploitation of their labour-power that has created the vast accumulation of wealth represented by the means of production and distribution. These are not owned by the workers but by the capitalist class and are used to make profits irrespective of workers' unfulfilled needs and wants. This state of affairs is made possible because the capitalist class control the state through Parliament where its various political parties, including the Labour Party, now sit. The Labour Party, throughout its various terms in office, has always supported the interests of Capital against Labour because it is a capitalist party. It has never been, is not and never will be a socialist party.

Trotskyism is just left-wing capitalism in practice (state-capitalism) a top-down rule over the workers by a minority who think workers are too dumb to understand what socialism/communism is, and have to be led by a party into it. It bears no relation to what Marx envisaged but is a Leninist distortion. It is not Marxism. It is Leninist pseudo-revolutionary drivel, justifying a dictatorship over the proletariat. The task of creating the socialist post-capitalist, production-for-use, free-access, commonly-owned world is that of the working class itself. There is no short cut to this. It is time you started to educate yourself then, as to why poverty, absolute or relative and war, (which is business by other means),  are inevitable concomitants of capitalism, how capitalism cannot be reformed

Wee Matt

Online For Macy's, Inline For Unemployed.

On August 11, Macy's said it would close 100 stores next year and boost its online investments as it tries to become more competitive. This will mean unemployment for 14 per cent of their present staff. In the past year and a half sales have been down as Macy's battled competition on various fronts. People are spending more on home improvements, travel and spas. When they buy clothes they are going to T .J. Maxx or fast fashion chains, such as H & M.

It's probable that years ago, many of Macy's workers thought they had job security as many certainly did in Eaton's and Simpson's in Canada.

Under capitalism, there is no security.

John Ayers.

PEOPLE OR PROFIT

Voting for socialism means voting for yourself

With elections, the media always hype it all up as if some sort of real change is about to be in the offing, and the political party apparatchiks are out and about trying to convince the cynical and sceptical public to vote for their same old tried and tired solutions and policies. We in the Socialist Party offer something a lot different.

The world can now easily produce wealth sufficient to adequately house, feed, care for and educate the global population. Instead, we see hunger, disease and homelessness around the world despite the concerns of governments and charities. We see rising child poverty and an increasing gulf between rich and poor. Rates of depression and anxiety are becoming an epidemic. Capitalism is failing: it now acts as a barrier, preventing production being geared to human need. Rather than constantly tinkering with this system, we should start looking beyond it to an alternative: a classless world community based on production for human need, not profit.

The mainstream candidates contesting elections (whether openly pro-capitalist or supposedly socialist) are asking you to believe that they can run this society a little bit better. I’d argue that history shows that the money system actually ends up running them. Their pre-election promises usually amount to nothing. So don’t vote for them - it only encourages the idea that capitalism can be made better. A vote for the Socialist Party, in contrast, is a statement that you don’t want to live this way and that you think another world is possible.

What is apparent is the extent to which all the parties try to manage the agenda for the election. They all want to encourage the debate to be around the handful of high-profile “flagship” issues where they feel they are on strong ground.

But it’s always phrased along the lines of “knocking on doors, we keep hearing that XXX is the real issue of the day”. Funnily enough, we don’t hear the Lib Dems, for example, say “recent canvassing returns indicate that voters actually don’t give a monkey’s f*** about our policies one way or the other”. The assumption is that voters are stupid and can only remember 3 or 4 things at a time, so why give them more than that to consider. Indeed, a cursory glance at the election leaflets of the mainstream candidates suggests they premise their case on the assumption that the average person on the street is an imbecile. What it all means is that the campaign may centre around a handful of issues only. That may appear to appeal to the Socialist Party. After all, we are the ultimate single issue party - Abolish Capitalism. But while this is a single issue no-one is pretending that it is a simple case. Sure it’s not complicated, the case for putting human need ahead of profit, but soundbites don’t do our case justice.

We are also handicapped in the eyes of the modern voter by the fact that we are not in a position to make promises, and what’s more, we aren’t going to “do anything” for anyone. The other parties are falling over each other to be seen to be offering some immediate palliative

It's all very well having a vote - but are you normally given any real choice? Let's face it, if it wasn't for the politician's head on the front of the election leaflet, could you tell which party was which? It's tempting, in the absence of any real alternative, to get drawn into the phoney war that is political debate today.

Whether Labour, Tory, Lib Dem or UKIP they all spout the same promises. But it always amounts to the same thing - they offer no alternative to the present way of running society. Do you really think who wins an election makes any difference to how you live? And do politicians (whether left-wing, nationalist or right-wing) actually have much real power anyway?

OK, they get to open supermarkets and factories, but it's capitalism and the market system which closes them down. We have endless problems of poverty, poor services and all the issues politicians love to spend time telling you they can solve if only given the chance.

Socialists don't believe any politician can solve these problems, as long as the flawed basis of our society remains intact. In fact, we believe only you and your fellow workers can solve these problems. In truth, there is nothing the Socialist Party can do for the working class that it is not already capable of doing for itself. We believe that it will take a revolution in how we organise our lives, a fundamental change. We want to see a society based on the fact that you know how to run your lives, know your needs and have the skills and capacity to organise with your fellows to satisfy them.

You know yourselves and your lives better than a handful of bosses ever can. With democratic control of production, we can ensure that looking after our communities becomes a priority, rather than something we do in our spare time. We all share fundamental needs, for food, clothing, housing and culture, and we have the capacity to ensure access to these for all, without exception.

If you agree with this aim, then we ask you to get in touch with us, get involved and join in our campaign to bring about this change in society. Together, we have the capacity to run our world for ourselves. We need to build a movement to effect that change, by organising deliberately to take control of the political offices which rule our lives and bring them into our collective democratic control.

The Socialist Party make no promises, offers no pat solutions, only to be the means by which you can remake society for the common good.

 John Bisset

It’s share or die.

The sole aim of the Socialist Party is to establish socialism and abolish the right of one man to rob another of the fruits of his or her labour. This is what makes our Party different from all others. No-where in the world has socialism ever been established despite claims to the contrary. Our policy is for the people to taking the affairs of their world into their own hands, where the bankers, landlords, and profiteers no longer exist. Common ownership prevails. As a result, freed from all capitalist restrictions, there is rapid and continuous economic development with living standards and quality of life rises. Science and culture advance. Such a social system alone is the guarantee that robotics and automation can really flourish, serving the people, not the profiteer. We know we are asking a lot from our fellow-workers in organising a movement for socialism. Fellow-workers must start to find the true path to their emancipation. The independent interests of the working class must be kept to the forefront – the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. Ours is a great aim to make the working class the masters of their own destiny, to win political power, and establish socialism. Supposing, though, that the working class does not succeed in destroying the capitalist social order of misery and war, what then? A future of constant poverty, permanent exploitation and perpetual war? We cannot believe that our fellow-workers will long suffer existing conditions of misery. We are confident that before long they will grow aware of their degradation and seek to break once and for all the chains of exploitation and establish the true free society of socialism. For those who point to the pervading presence of xenophobic nationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, we say a practical demonstration of socialism would dispel such darkness. Men and women must exert their conscious influence and action.

Many media pundits declare nationalism has triumphed over socialism. They rightly recognise that nationalism and socialism are antagonistic ideologies. The Socialist Party accept that national and class divisions will persist for a long time. We possess no doubt about the outcome: The revolutionary process will inevitably abolish both class and national divisions. World socialism will triumph. Nationalism helps bind the working class to the ruling class of its nation. Socialism unites the working people of the world against the global capitalist class. The international working class will determine its own destiny and as long as the working class holds nationalist ideas, it is allowing its destiny to be determined by the bosses and politicians. Class unity must be established between the oppressed and exploited regardless of nationality and race. That is basically the same point that Marx made when he said, “labour in the white skin can not be free as long as labor in the black skin is branded.” And in referring to the need to overcome the hostile attitude of the English worker towards the Irish workers, Marx wrote: “He...turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself.” Socialists do not fan the flames of nationalism nor stoke the hatred of racism that further divides the working class.

The main difference between us in the Socialist Party and the average political activist is that we understand the identity of our aims while they do not as yet. The main tenets of socialism are, our people are divided into different classes by their economic position. There is first the possessing or capitalist class. That class as a class does not live by work but by income in the shape of rent, profit or interest. It owns the land upon which we all must live with all the natural wealth under the surface and above it. It owns the means of transportation and communication, and all the modern machinery and technology and instruments of work, the factories and farms, the offices, mines and  mills.

Then there is the working class, a class of persons who by their daily toil create and augment the wealth of the rich but barely manage to sustain themselves alive. They cannot work without the use of the modern machinery of wealth production. They must sell their labour-power to the owners of this machinery. The industries are operated for the private profits of the capitalists. Hence every capitalist concern seeks to retain the largest possible share of its income for its owners and stockholders and to pay as little as possible to the workers as wages. The industries of the world are the personal property of the capitalists and are conducted by them without responsibility or accountability to the people. When it pays them they keep “their” business going, when it does not pay them they stop operations and deprive millions of workers of their jobs and bread. Between these two classes, there is war. By “class war” we do not necessarily mean open and physical conflict, but a constant and acute antagonism of interests which mostly smolders under the surface and sometimes erupts into violent hostilities. This class war can only end with the end of economic classes and class divisions, and that is what socialism seeks to accomplish.

The Socialist Party proposes a complete and radical reorganisation of our whole industrial system. Concretely we demand that all basic industries be taken out of private hands and be transformed into common ownership operated by appropriate the democratically appointed public agencies for the benefit of the people. That implies planned production for use with the total elimination of private profit and exploitation. The Socialist Party do not expect or desire a sudden, cataclysmic change by insurrection but a rapid, transformation. The hope of the Socialist Party lies in the organization by the workers of a political party of their own, challenging the power of the old capitalist parties and electing their own delegates to legislative and administrative bodies in numbers strong enough to capture the machinery of government. That is why the Socialist Party stands for independent working class political action; that is why it is a Socialist Party. The socialist movement is a labour movement, a political labour movement. It cannot exist as anything else. If the socialist movement is weak it simply indicates that the labour movement has not yet developed sufficient political consciousness to realise that it should support its own class in politics as well as in the economic field. If the workers were organised politically and selected their own delegates they could have a working class majority.

BE REASONABLE, DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE.

A socialist society will be a classless society, in which all the means of producing wealth are owned in common. Instead of being divided into workers and employers, rich and poor, society will be an association of free people, all making their special contributions to the well-being of society, which in return will supply them with what they need in order to live full and happy lives. Such a society can be summed up in the slogan:

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

For this to be possible, Socialism must be based on abundance. Production will be organised in such a way that there is plenty of everything for everybody: not only food, houses and so on, to satisfy material needs; but also education, healthcare, and sport, so that people can lead fulfilling lives. work, instead of being simply a means of earning a living, will have become the natural expression of men’s lives, freely given according to their abilities. Moreover, the nature of work will itself have changed. Through the development of science, much of its drudgery will have disappeared and every man and woman wild develop their mental and physical capacities to the full

Socialism not something which can exist in one country, isolated from the rest of the world. On the contrary, it must eventually embrace all the peoples of the world; and in so doing it will put an end to all war. Because no wars can take place in a truly international society there will be no need for armies. Thus, for the first time, mankind, united in a world-wide family of nations, will be free to devote all its creative energies to completing the mastery of nature.

Because it will be a community of plenty, where there is enough for all and therefore no advantage can be obtained by theft or other forms of crime, all need for courts of justice and police will have disappeared. In other words, the State, which is the sum of all these institutions will itself disappear. Instead of one section of society ruling and oppressing another, men and will have grown accustomed to living together in society without fear and compulsion.

The unity and harmony of mankind is an age-old dream. Is this goal just an illusion? No, answer socialists, it can be achieved. God did not create mankind – or anything else. Man has created and recreated himself. The Supreme Being for man is man himself – not man as he is at any given stage, but man in the making, man as he can and will be. Mankind has reached the point where a truly human mode of existence is within sight. Society is not the product of human nature. Human nature, good, bad, or indifferent, is the product of society. The qualities of human beings are endlessly changeable, just as their potential capacities are boundless. Human nature is malleable. Human nature is like clay that can be moulded and re-moulded and recast into very different, almost unrecognizable, forms. Whole of social evolution testifies to this flexibility of humankind. Society makes people what they are and prevents them from being otherwise. That is why socialists say there is no such thing as human nature in general, but human behavior. Socialists assert that if society shapes men, men in turn can reshape society through their collective efforts. Society forms people – and then people transform their social relations and their selves in the process. But, add the historical materialists, the ways in which people behave toward one another and the kind of ties they have with one another, are determined, both in the first and final instance, by the productive powers they possess. And the degree in which they can change their social relations, and the directions of the evolution of their social organisation, depends upon the capacities of their system of production. The material historical conditions under which people live and labor are so decisive because they fix the framework of social action, both in its extent and in its limits, at any given time. It is possible to outgrow these conditions but it is not possible to jump out of them or over them at will.  Socialists recognise that human behavior can be changed only by altering the social structure.

The supreme task of our age is to abolish capitalism as an outmoded and dangerous system and proceed to build socialism on a world scale. This can be done only through the action of a working class majority, not because of their better qualities as individuals, but because of their position and functions in the economy. They are the principal objects of exploitation under capitalism and the fighters against it. And they become the bearers of a higher mode of production and builders of a superior social system under post-capitalist conditions. Socialists place active conscious human beings at the very centre of the historical process and social change. Mankind, as producers, have produced their own history. Unfortunately, up to now, humanity has not produced their history in a conscious or planned manner – and that is why the net result of their work has led to such contradictory and detrimental consequences.

But now with automation scientific technology and other industrial accomplishments, mankind has the chance of eliminating all relations of oppression and exploitation and then lightening the burdens of necessary labour – and other curses – imposed by the low levels of labour productivity. A socialist future will be able to achieve the total abolition of all compulsory work to become free to do with as he or she pleases. They will produce wonders. Creativity and imagination are the finest qualities of mankind. The aim of socialists is to bring about those conditions which will make both individual and collective ingenuity the rule, rather than the exception, in human life.

The Socialist Party believes in human decency and dignity. It endeavours to aid the exploited against the exploiters and the oppressed against their oppressors, and take whatever actions to clear the way to a free and equal society.

SOCIALISM MEANS ONE WORLD

Just as capitalism is a world system of society, so too must socialism be. There never been, and never can be, socialism in just one country because its material basis is the world-wide and interdependent means of production that capitalism has built up. The bulk of the wealth produced in the world today is produced by the co-operative labour of the millions employed to operate these means of production. What is needed now, to establish socialism, is a conscious political decision on the part of these billions across the world to run society in their own interests. This will be done by taking the means of production throughout the world into common ownership, with their democratic control by the whole community, and with production solely for use.

Common ownership will be a social relationship of equality between all people with regard to the use of the means of production. No longer will there be classes, governments and their state machinery, or national frontiers.

Democratic control will involve the whole community in making decisions about the use of the means of production. Instead of government over people there would be various levels of democratic administration, from the local up to regional and world levels, with responsibility being delegated if necessary to groups and individuals.

Production for use will bring production into direct line with human needs. Without money, wages, buying and selling there will be a world of free access. Everyone will be able to contribute to society by working voluntarily, according to ability. Everyone will be able to take freely from whatever is readily available, according to self-defined needs.

The motivation for this new world comes from the common class interest of those who produce but do not possess. An important part of this motivation comes from the global problems thrown up by capitalism. Ecological problems make a nonsense of the efforts of governments. War and the continuing threat of nuclear war affect us all. The problem of uneven development means that many producers in the underdeveloped countries suffer starvation, disease and absolute poverty. All of these problems of capitalism can only be solved within the framework of a socialist world. Ecological problems require the sort of long-term planning and development of which competitive, international capitalism is incapable. Converting the armaments industry (capitalism's biggest industry) from producing weapons of destruction to producing useful things to satisfy human needs will take time. Ending world hunger and poverty, above all, makes the world-wide co-operation of socialism an urgent necessity.

But this does not rule out local democracy. In fact, a democratic system of decision-making would require that the basic unit of social organisation would be the local community. However, the nature of some of the problems we face and the many goods and services presently produced, such as raw materials, energy sources, agricultural products, world transport and communications, need production and distribution to be organised at a world level.

Corresponding to this, of course, there would be a need for a democratic world administration, controlled by delegates from the regional and local levels of organisation throughout the world.

The World Socialist Movement, of which the Socialist Party is a constituent part, expresses the common class interest of the producers. Because political power in capitalism is organised on a territorial basis each socialist party has the task of seeking democratically to gain political power in the country where it operates. If it is suggested that socialist ideas might develop unevenly across the world and that socialists of only a part of the world were in a position to get political control, then the decision about the action to be taken would be one for the whole of the socialist movement in the light of all the circumstances at the time. It would certainly be a folly, however, to base a programme of political action on the assumption that socialist ideas will develop unevenly and that we must, therefore, be prepared to establish "socialism" in one country or even a group of countries like the European Community.

For a start, it is an unreasonable assumption that socialist ideas will develop unevenly. Given the world-wide nature of capitalism and its social relationships, the vast majority of people live under basically similar conditions, and because of the world-wide system of communications and media, there is no reason for socialist ideas to be restricted to one part of the world. Any attempt to establish "socialism" in one country would be bound to fail owing to the pressures exerted by the world market on that country's means of production. Recent experience in Russia, China and elsewhere shows conclusively that even capitalist states cannot detach themselves from the requirements of an integrated system of production operated through the world market.

Faced with this explanation of how the world could be organised, many would reject it in favour of something more "realistic", including some who call themselves socialist. They seek to solve social problems within the framework of government policies, the state machine, national frontiers, money, wages, buying and selling. But if our analysis of capitalism as a world system is correct—and we've yet to be shown how it's wrong—the state politics are irrelevant as a way of solving social problems, Viewed globally, state politics only make sense when seen as a means for capturing political power in order to introduce a world of free access

John Bissett