The proletarian commonwealth.

Capitalism is synonymous with violence, and it is the handmaiden of chaos. Capitalism is based on wage slavery. The capitalists hire wage workers to produce wealth, give them part of that wealth in the form of wages and keep the rest. We do not sell our labour to the capitalists; we sell our labour power. But capitalism is only a passing stage in the economic development of mankind. As capitalism spreads over the earth it produces the working class the great class whose historic mission is to end the exploitation of man by his fellow man. Workers want to escape from wage slavery. Some soon learned that reforms are either economically unsound or politically impossible. That the workers can get only what they have the power to take. If they have the power to take, and begin to exercise that power, the capitalists will often try to get ahead of them and give, hoping to get credit that they do not deserve and deceive the workers into the belief that the benefits do not come because of their own organised powers but because of kindness in the hearts of the capitalists. Rest assured, that if the workers allow their organised power to weaken, the hearts of the capitalists will harden accordingly. We, the workers, are many, though divided because of ignorance. They, the capitalists, are, few, but strong organisationally, ruthless in policy, grimly determined to increase in power and to perpetuate their dictatorship over the hopeless existence of a robbed class.

The employing class, organised in business associations, know that if one group of workers fight and win, other workers will be encouraged to do likewise, and the more they get the more they will want. So, no matter how much the capitalists fight among themselves, they are as one against labour. This resulted in the grand idea of solidarity of labour, a solidarity that knows no race nor country. Class systems are not eternal. Everything in the universe, from atoms to solar systems, is continually moving, changing, transforming, developing; likewise, the history of the human race is nothing but a ceaseless change, a continuous development. In the course of its history classes are formed; these classes continually struggle for supremacy and, after prolonged struggle, one class succeeds another in the dominating position. The struggle continues until class divisions themselves are dissolved and a new, classless society results. When the power of workers becomes greater than the power of the capitalist class, then comes the revolution! Every class system in society has ultimately been overthrown by revolution. The old power will disappear before the greater power of the new. Capitalism based on production for sale will give way to production for use. Thus will end the world’s last class struggle in which the workers will be the only class, embracing the entire human family, with ownership and control of the means of life in the hands of the collectivity. This is the final solution of social problems—industrial democracy. The age-long exploitation of man by his fellow-man will cease forever, and this will be the crowning achievement of the human race. The necessity that gave rise to classes in society has passed. The social economic structure‘s capacity to produce wealth has increased to a point where it is more than ample to provide sustenance for all. Production has been socialised. It remains only to socialise control of the economic structure and eliminate expropriation.

We have reached an era where action may not much longer be delayed if we are to escape an environmental collapse unprecedented in the annals of mankind. Workers of the world, unite. You have the world and life itself to gain!

Even the churches condemn the Tory cuts

A UK benefits cap that has just come into force is "indefensible", church leaders in Scotland have said. The Church of Scotland, the Baptist Union, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church said the cap would hit children the hardest. The churches believe the number of Scottish families with capped benefits will increase by more than 10 times. The churches said the cuts were "manifestly unfair".

Rev Dr Richard Frazer, convener of the Church of Scotland's Church and Society Council, described the cap as punishment for hundreds of children and said those who carried the heaviest burden were the "least able to suffer it". He explained, "We cannot tackle poverty by making people poorer and we cannot leave families without enough to meet their basic needs."

Paul Morrison, policy officer for the Methodist Church, said: "Over 2,000 single parents with babies under a year of age had their housing benefit cut because of the cap each month. Does the government seriously expect that cutting housing benefit will make it easier for them to find work?"

Socialism is coming

WORKERS UNITED

The Socialist Party indicts capitalism as a threat to civilisation. The present political struggle is a struggle to the death; either capitalism, with its wealth and power for its owners and the brutal, degrading struggle for existence for its workers, or else the capitalist class will surrender to socialism and people will progress to undreamed heights and establish a civilisation far in advance of capitalism. The Socialist Party challenges the right of capitalism to exist and proclaims socialism as its legitimate successor.  The Socialist Party appeals to the world’s workers upon the basis of their class interests. Capitalism is founded upon production for profit. Socialism is going to be planned production for use.

Whenever the employers fail for any reason to make a profit, it is in their power to end production for they dictate the terms upon which their privately owned factories are used machinery. Their workers have naught but their labour power, of hand or brain, to sell upon terms dictated by another. We are wage-slaves. We are asked to fight and die for a better world, and the better world they promise is only enough to keep body and soul together. The thing to observe is that the ruling class has been unable to solve the basic ills of capitalism. They all seek to do the impossible: make capitalism work. Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid off. This vast and resourceful planet should be free from the scourge of poverty and the blight of ignorance. If this system cannot give peace and plenty to its people, socialism will.

Common ownership is when products socially produced by the workers are be owned by those workers and ordinary people. Production is no longer guided by the profit of the handful of owners but by the requirements of the community, who now own the means of production. This is production for use and not for profit. The old coercive state apparatus of the exploiters is ended. This is the basis for socialism. Socialism must be the aim. The social producers become the social owners. Marx and Engels described this process and showed that capitalism had called into being its own gravediggers – the working class. This is the essence of socialist change.

Socialism means that one working class is not pitted against the others in wars. It means that one worker 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. The criteria for production under socialism would be – how much is needed? 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 organised on the basis of production for use would have more of a chance of working than our present economic system.

It is not to reform the evils of the day but to abolish the social system that produces them that the Socialist Party is organised. It is the party not of reform but of revolution, knowing that the capitalist system has had its day and that a new social order, based upon a new system of production must soon replace the old one we now have.

He who controls my bread, controls my head

The capitalist system prevails not only by brutal force but by ideas which it instills into the heads of the people. The schools, the media, and the church are all the means by which the thoughts of people are shaped. They are used by the ruling class that controls them to argue that the society we live in is fundamentally good and correct. By and large, the working class accepts these ideas. If it did not, capitalism could not exist very long. Because he or she is stuffed full of these ideas, the worker will usually accept that it is the normal state of affairs.

It is perfectly right that if a person who has genuine talent and applies diligently to study and practice, rises to prominence as a violinist, a painter, a writer. If someone with no talent and is lazy, he or she  cannot rightfully complain if I am not recognised as a prominent artist. But the great artist who has risen to the heights cannot be compared with the capitalist. The artists entertain us and enrich our lives. They do not employ us, exploit us or oppress us; nor does they have or claim to have the power to do so. They cannot and does not bequeath his skills and talents to their heirs. The social consequences of “being at the top” are in no way the same as in the case of the capitalist.

It is also clear that the whole working class, which numbers tens of millions, cannot become capitalists, who number only thousands. If ten workers rose, by one means or another, to the ranks of the capitalist class, that would change the social position of ten persons but would leave the fundamental division of society unchanged. If worker Dick became a capitalist and capitalist Tom was forced to become a worker, that would change the social position of two persons, but everything else would remain the same.

It is plain to see we see many capitalists who do not lift a finger to do work of any kind and yet remain the wealthy and powerful owners of industry and finance. Others do perform a useful task, but their tremendous incomes and powers do not correspond to their labour but rather of their mere ownership of capital. Still, others never did work of any kind in all their lives, or haven’t a trace of ability or a functioning brain cell in their heads, yet they are wealthy and powerful and part of the ruling class only because of the accident of birth and the law of inheritance.

Wherever we look we can see workers by the millions who sweat and toil at their job, who are skilled in their trade or profession, who prudently save every penny they possibly can, and yet do not become capitalists.

The worker is interested in production primarily in so far as it is production for use, that is, in so far as it makes it possible for him to have the things needed to preserve and expand life – food, clothing, shelter, comforts.

The capitalist is interested only in production for profit. He will produce whatsoever yields a greater profit. If he cannot, he suspends production. He closes down his plant and hard-working employees are thrown out of a job.

The workers’ interest in production is not based on whether or not it yields a profit to the capitalist. It is based on their needs. The capitalist, on the contrary, will produce only if it is profitable to do so. Capitalism cannot reconcile these two conflicting social interests. To repeat, the capitalist produces only if a profit can be made. When there is no profit, he does not keep his plant working but closes it down or disposes of it to someone else.

Let us always bear in mind that capitalism is based on commodity production, that is, production for the market. For capitalism or a capitalist, to provide an article, it must, therefore, have exchange value. That is nothing but the quality of an article, of a product, that makes it possible to exchange it on the market for other commodities, usually through the medium of money.

The exchange value of the commodity known as labour power is received by the worker in the form of wages. With his wages, the worker buys other commodities which enable him to maintain and renew his ability to work. But while it takes him only a part of the working day to produce the value represented by his wages, the capitalist has the use of his labour for the whole of the working day! A shirt is worth more on the market than the cotton originally used to make it. In transforming cotton fabric into a shirt, the worker has added to its value. But if the worker is to be paid in wages to the amount of the value he has added to the cotton fabric, the employer, as in the illustration above, has not advanced an inch. He does advance if the worker adds a greater value than he receives in the form of wages. That is exactly what happens. During the first three or four or five hours of the working day, the worker adds enough value to equal the wages he receives. But he contracted to work a full day. He continues to create value during the balance of the day. This additional value is known as surplus-value. It goes, not to the worker who created it, but to the capitalist who hired the worker for the full day (or week, or month, as the case may be), and who pockets this surplus-value in the form of profit. It is only because the worker can create this surplus, and only because the employer can pocket it, that labour is hired and capitalism can produce.

That is the basis for the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class. The ownership of the means of production as the private property of capitalists makes it possible for them to exploit the workers, to squeeze out of them surplus-value and thereby profits. The capitalists give every explanation possible for their profits, except the real one. They talk about “ business risks,” about the “entrepreneurial skills ” about their own “hard work from the bottom up” and a thousand other things. But if they were a million times more enterprising than they are, and took a million more risks than they do, and if they cheated each other and everyone else a million times as much as they do – there would still be no other way of making profit under capitalism than by exploiting labour, by forcing labour to create a surplus-value above that which is represented by wages. And the methods they use to reduce labour to the position of a wage-slave rests on the private ownership of the means of production and exchange.

That is why capitalists always seek to reduce wages. The lower the wages paid, the higher the profits made. That is why they seek to intensify the working day and cut out unproductive time so that the worker devotes more hours to producing surplus-value. That is why they always seek to speed-up the worker, to introduce more and more machines to do the work of more and more workers. The more intensely the worker labours, the more value he or she creates; therefore, the more surplus-value; therefore, the more profit. Profits can be obtained and increased only by a constant intensification of the exploitation of labour, by reducing labour’s share, by lowering labour’s standard of living. The greed for profits knows no limit. If capital makes five per cent profit, it is not content until it makes ten; when it makes ten, it seeks every possible way of making twenty.

There are also conflicts inside the capitalist class. Each capitalist seeks to dominate others. Each seeks to control, absorb, expropriate the other for his own benefit. Such conflicts rage within the capitalist class of each nation, and between capitalist nations themselves. But the capitalists are united as a class for the maintenance of their own social system and the defense of their class interests. They can and will differ on a thousand subjects, but they are united in defense of the system of capitalist private property upon which rests their power and rule. The class struggle between capital and labour is, therefore, basic to modern society. It is a struggle that goes on all the time, now hidden and now open. It is not only unceasing but also irreconcilable. The basic class interests cannot be harmonised. One or the other must triumph. Let us do our best to ensure it is our own class that prevails in this war.

The Jungles of Capitalism

Nearly 100 migrants a day arrive at the refugee camp at Calais. 

French authorities have tried for a year and a half to dismantle the vast camp known as ''The Jungle''. In March, when 4000 lived there, they leveled half of it, since then it's numbers have swelled to 10,000. 

It's very visibility is proof of Europe's inability to cope with the influx of so many people. Most want to go to the U.K. and so the Brexit vote has not put any off. There is nothing new in this, think of the migrant camps in the thirties, the Nazi death-camps, and the post-World War2 Displaced Persons camps. Whether it be economic or governmental pressure people are constantly going into camps. 

The French authorities don't know what to do because they are looking for answers within capitalism and they're aren't any. 

John Ayers.

The ballot - the Achilles heel of capitalism

We argue we should use the Achilles heel of capitalism - democracy and the vote - to have a majority revolution, the immense majority has to be won and be a politically conscious class for and in themselves to not require 'leadership', i.e. complete change of social system to an elite class free one.

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.

We could actually eradicate poverty and war (capitalism's twin concomitants) now. Workers produce all wealth. But receive a rationed access to it (wages) just sufficient enough to require us to subject ourselves to more waged slavery in order to produce a surplus value over and above our wages, which accrues to the parasite owning/ employing/ capitalist class.

We could also address the restricted access to medicine by the capitalist market system,(can't pay can't have in many countries), by ending production of commodities (for sale on a market), introducing a new post-capitalist society, run democratically by us all, with common ownership and production for use, with free access to all necessities from the commonly owned pot.

The problem is that ownership and control are in the hands of 1-5%, whether individuals, corporations or states. The 95-99% need to make common cause and end this state of affairs.

We have a post-capitalist, poverty and war free, world of superabundance to win. Our health and the health of the planet depends on us eliminating waged slavery and introducing the free access society.  Food grown to eat, houses built to live in, medicine to treat illness, Dissolve all government and elect yourselves for the last great emancipation that of the wage slaves.

In these secular times the negative, 'human nature' argument has proven to be unscientific in the light of a surfeit of human-centred goodness and voluntarism often in very trying circumstances. This is not to argue the opposite. There have been many humanistic socialists also.

The ethical assumptions of all varieties of what is called the humanistic socialist view are based on the fixity of human nature. They share this view with theological theorists, the difference being that the former hold that this basic human nature is good and the latter that it is bad.

Marx denied that human nature can be placed in such absolute categories. Both Marx and Engels held that human nature was not an absolute constant but an historic variable. In fact, they always insisted that the "human nature" to which humanists and the clericalists appeal, each in their different ways, cannot serve as a guide to social organisation. It is not human nature which explains society, but society which explains human nature.

There can be no overall moral agreement or ethical unity in a social system split by class interests and antagonisms. People change themselves by changing the environment in which they live. Such too will be the change from capitalism to socialism. This will be the product of conscious human activity; in changing their environment from class to common property people will at the same time be changing the way they behave or, if you like, changing themselves. There is nothing in the make-up of human beings that would prevent their freely working together and then freely taking from the common store what they need.

The working class always vote against their class interest when they support any of the political parties of capitalism, whether allegedly Labour or unashamedly Tory. In fact, many of the working class think they are not members of this class but somewhere in a non-existent middle category. There is no such thing as a 'middle class'. They disappeared either upstairs into the ruling class, or downstairs into the working class. Even as they fret over getting young Dimkins privately educated, if they have to work for a wage or a salary, they have more in common with the working class in this country and worldwide, than with the capitalist parasite class they emulate in the country they live in.

If you have to work for a wage or a salary in order to live, then you are a member of the working class.

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

2. The working class neither owns nor controls the means of production and distribution. What their relationship is to the means of producing and distributing wealth, this is relevant to their economic and class position in society.

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. They have more in common with a Bangladesh cotton spinner than with their domestic or global capitalist class.

Capitalism is not like some benign country estate and it cannot be organised as if it were. It cannot put human welfare in the forefront of its concerns. It cannot be controlled by any leader or expert. It must produce problems like poverty, sickness and war. Workers who are seduced into thinking that things would be different under a government of less abrasive personalities are deluding themselves. The promised prosperous futures with steadily rising living standards have never appeared and, of course, they never will. You don't have to be a socialist to be sceptical on this point.

Government bail-outs are state-capitalist measures in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, even especially when they are pitched as and seem to be, helping workers. For workers, there is always a sting, whether to dampen wage demands (family allowances) or fob off social discontent (welfare state). They are ultimately a good deal for the capitalist parasite class and can be clawed back if profit erosion occurs. Socialism does not exist and has never existed. Any top-down direction in capitalism is state capitalism. Socialism is a post-capitalist society. So the idea of it will seem alien at first. Just as capitalism must have seemed strange in feudal times. But nothing will stop an idea which time has come. The most pressing need facing humanity is to progress from the anarchy of capitalism to a post-capitalist society. 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.

"Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you."

Ye are many - they are few."

Shelley

Wee Matt

Period Politics

An MSP is calling for the Scottish government to provide free feminine hygiene products (tampons) - saying it is a matter of "dignity" for women who cannot afford to pay. “I, Daniel Blake” by Ken Loach - includes a scene where an impoverished female character shoplifts a packet of tampons. Scots scriptwriter Paul Laverty wrote the scene after meeting UK females who struggled to afford such essential hygiene products. Scottish Labour MSP Monica Lennon is calling for the Scottish government to provide free female sanitary products "for anyone who needs them". A similar proposal has already been approved in New York City where they will be freely accessible in New York City's public schools, prisons, and homeless shelters.

The Trussell Trust’s Scotland network manager, Ewan Gurr, said some women had even resorted to using toilet roll, socks or newspaper because they were unable to afford female sanitary products. 

Surely, when toilet paper is available without charge in all public places, it is not too much to expect that  women are treated with a similar understanding and respect.

However, the Socialist Party goes much further and demands that women and men have the right to free access to whatever they determine to be a requirement for their needs and well-being.

Capitalism has outlived its usefulness

The most pressing need facing humanity is to progress from the anarchy of capitalism to a post-capitalist society. 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.

Socialism is a post-capitalist society where the private, corporate or state ownership of the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth, for the profit of the 1-5% in conditions of wage slavery for the 95-99%, is abolished and replaced by common ownership by us all, of all resources. Socialism is not state-ownership. It is common ownership by us all and administered by us all.

Instead of technology being utilised to produce for sale, only to make a profit for the minority parasitic owning class, with a rationed access to the wealth that workers create, (wages) for the working class (all wealth comes from the workers), production in socialism will be for use and will be ratcheted up to create surpluses for the satisfaction of human needs. Over-production, because of competition, sends capitalism into crisis, as human needs are still unmet, 'can't pay, can't have', is the cause of disputes and wars over trade, trade routes, raw materials and spheres of geopolitical influence.

Capitalism has outlived any useful purpose it might have had in building up the technology and educating workers, so the workers not only produce the wealth, they effectively run capitalism from top to bottom. The twin concomitants of capitalism poverty (absolute or relative) and war, (proxy or arms sales or otherwise) will always persist.

Therefore socialism is a production for use society, democratically owned and controlled by us all, without the need for the anarchy of markets, state-control over people or a means of exchange (money). Government ceases to be 'over people' and becomes the people self-administering 'things'.

Time for an end to wage slavery. The last great emancipation will be that of the working class freeing themselves from waged slavery and taking the world into common ownership and democratic control. Time for a societal upgrade to an elite free, democratic, post-capitalist, production for use, free access society, owned and run by us all, as part of a truly socially equal human family.

The capitalist class are the parasitical class. All wealth springs from labour. Capitalism has outlived any useful purpose it might have had in building up the technology and educating workers, so the workers not only produce the wealth, they effectively run capitalism from top to bottom.

It is not just a question of abolishing money but of common ownership with production for use and then money becomes obsolete. You can paper your walls with it then or soften it for toilet tissue. Capitalism’s technological change allied with its competition creates conflict which capitalism cannot resolve and sows the seeds of the possibility of the demise of capitalism with production for use of a superabundance of wealth harnessed for the common good.

Money is merely a means of exchange. Commodity exchange does not create wealth but is a reflection of the exchange values already contained in the wealth exchanged. The workers' commodity 'labour power' produces a surplus value above what its market exchange value is and is the source of profit once the surplus is sold on the market. Poverty, relative or absolute, is then the essential element within the exploitative relationship of capitalism which keeps the wage slave presenting himself for exploitation and productive in excess of his rationed waged access.

The Labour Party is not and never has been a socialist party. “The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England,” said Tony Benn

But some argue that British socialists should at more like the Spanish party Podemos but what advantage would that give any real socialist? They would be in precisely the same position as any other capitalist party and have to govern over the people as representatives rather than be proceeding, from the people with a mandate for the social revolution in which power resides with the people with recallable delegated functions when required by the people. Don't confuse parties which call themselves 'socialist' or 'socialistic' yet aim to govern over people with the real thing. They are all capitalist variants, at best 'reformist', at worst charlatans.

Socialism will not come in," like a thief in the night", as that balloon Keir Hardie once said, but as the conscious act of the immense majority, who know what it is they are doing and why the democratic end results of a democratic revolution determine the means used to attain it.

Socialism is such a revolutionary transformation of society, from private corporate or state ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth, into common ownership and democratic control of all resources, from production of commodities for sale, with rationing of access via wages and prices to the producers, into production for use, of utilities for free access and use by all.

Once common ownership is established and wage slavery abolished, the world will not be the same as it was. Children will laugh at those money tokens, bank cards, credit cards and cash registers and card machines, in the museums of antiquity.

However, the twin concomitants of capitalism poverty (absolute or relative) and war, (proxy or arms sales or otherwise) will persist as long as capitalism persists. War arises from competition over raw materials, trade routes and spheres of geo-political, national, global, transnational capitalist, interests.

Time for an end to wage slavery. The last great emancipation is that of the working class.

Time for a societal upgrade to an elite free, democratic, post-capitalist, production for use, free access society, owned and run by us all as part of truly equal humans.

It is not the job of politicians, but our job to see it as necessary and to make it so happen, we move into the post-capitalist society.

Wee Matt

Break our Chains

Homo homini Deus

Man is a god to man

For the capitalist, the aim of production is not to produce goods to exchange and to use, but instead, it is a compulsory drive to accumulate capital through exploitation – simply put, to make more money. The capitalists own the means of production; the people live at their mercy, depend on them for the means of life, and are in fact wage-slaves.

Once money becomes the aim of production, labour-power has to become a commodity. In other words, a worker’s labour-power can be bought and sold. Besides the fact that people must be legally free–that is, not slaves owned by others or serfs tied to the land – the labourer must have lost all means of production and thus all ability to produce either for consumption or exchange for himself. An example of this is peasants being driven off the land. Labour-power as a commodity is the necessary complement of the private ownership of the means of production by the capitalists.

Only by buying the worker’s labour power can the capitalist make profits. Workers produce more than what the capitalist pays them in wages and benefits. This is the basis of exploitation of the workers. What the workers produce over and beyond the socially necessary labour for keeping themselves and their families alive and working is surplus value. Surplus value is the only source of profits and is ripped off by the capitalists. Under the system of non-possession of the working class of the instruments with which they work, all progress, no matter what its nature, is turned against them, making greater their misery, their slavery; accentuating the insecurity of their existence; in a word: making unavoidable their exploitation—their robbery. The basic premise of socialism is that this robbery by the capitalist class drives workers into revolt against the system.

Today’s economic system is built upon conflict rather than cooperation. Competition between the worker and the capitalist for their respective shares in the produce; on one side, wages, on the other, profits; each side exerting itself to carry off a maximum. Strive between workers and workers for the sharing of wages and to capture a job. Rivalry between capitalists and capitalists for the sharing of profits. Land-owner versus banker versus industrialist.

General insecurity becomes the normal condition of society. Capitalist society has proved its dismal failure to produce anything from a superabundance of resources except misery and suffering. The class struggle does not have to exist.  

With socialism, solidarity is the basis of society. Any thought to organise the immense and still growing power of technology to meet human needs does not even enter into the capitalist’s heads for such a policy cannot arise within the conditions of capitalism. Only socialism can sever the bonds of capitalist property rights and organise production to meet human needs. Once capitalism is overthrown, then and only then can production be organised in common for all, and every increase in production bring increasing abundance and leisure for all. This is the aim of the socialist revolution – to destroy the power of the capitalist class, to dispossess the capitalists and organise social production. Only the socialist revolution can cut through the tangle of private property rights and conflicting interests that fetter the growth of production. First, the political expropriation of the capitalist class today, then the economic expropriation tomorrow. The state is torn from the privileged class and becoming, in the hands of the working class, the instrument of its emancipation and social transformation.

All the members of a socialist society are at once with equal title the co-proprietors and co-producers. The State, in the oppressive sense of the word, will cease to exist, it being nothing more than a means of maintaining artificially, by force, order that a system of society, founded on the antagonism of interests would naturally give birth to. The government of men and women gives place to the administration of things. Social harmony and universal peace shall prevail. Commercial production of exchange-values with an end to realising profit will disappear, and be replaced by the co-operative production of use-values for consumption with a view to satisfying social wants. In place of robbing and exploiting one another, we will all help one another. By perfecting automation, technology will provide so much more leisure or well-being for both for ourselves and the community in general. Daily drudgery will disappear and vastly reduced working hour will be sufficient to provide for the material wants of all, especially added to the robotics works are those employed in jobs of a destructive nature (armaments) or socially useless (sales).

Democracy provides the means of accomplishing our will and therefore of satisfying our wants. The first necessity is the working-class conquest of power. Without power, no change. But what do we mean by “power”? Do we mean simply a change of government? No. What is in question is not simply a change of government on top, but a change of class power; since our purpose, is not simply to carry through one or two legislative measures, but to change the whole class-direction of existing society. At present the capitalist class rules, whatever the form of government or what party holds office. 

Marx on wage slavery (video)

Socialism - the revolutionary idea

We are living in a class society. Every person born in human society is thereby a social being. In society divided into classes, every person is necessarily born into a class. Since social being determines social consciousness, in class society there can be no consciousness but class-consciousness. As Marxists, this is our basic materialist premise. Marxists did not invent the term class, nor did they invent the class struggle. Many had already recognised the class struggle, but they did not see it as the motivating force in society. In itself class-consciousness is not revolutionary (capitalists possess class-consciousness).

For Marx and Engels, to the contrary, the advent of classless society would result from economic sources (the development of the productive forces, the socialisation of labour) and social and political sources (the maturation and organisation of the proletariat, the unfolding of the struggle between Capital and Labour) which flowed precisely from these advances and contradictions.

For Marx and Engels, to the contrary, capitalist society could only be abolished as an entity, not factory by factory, village by village or farm by farm. Its abolition, therefore, required the active participation of the majority of the population.

Marx and Engels based themselves on the common interests of individuals belonging to a social class called upon to become the majority in bourgeois society: the proletariat; this was the force that would open the road to the advent of socialist society. But their approach negated neither the importance of propaganda and education, nor that of reason, nor that of a series of emotional feelings in the fight for socialism, insofar as all these motivations facilitate to one degree or another the gradual awakening of the proletariat to its class interests, the achievement of class consciousness.

 Marx and Engels conceived the advent of class-free society as the result of the real movement of self-organisation and self-emancipation of the great masses. Class-consciousness must make a qualitative leap to socialist consciousness. “The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class themselves; proletarians of all countries unite!” That, in a nutshell, was what was newest and most revolutionary in Marxism’s contribution to human thought and history, what represented the most radical break with all the other doctrines.

Marx and Engels designated the working class the 'grave-diggers of capitalism’ not by virtue of any intrinsic merit it possesses as a class qualifying it for that role, but because of the objective role it plays in the production process of capitalism.

Socialism is the most revolutionary idea that has ever existed in the history of mankind. Socialism will be the classless society. Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. A classless society means that a privileged minority of the population are not in a position to enjoy the wealth, while the majority live only on their labour to produce it. Socialism means that privileged individuals cannot invest in the instruments of production with which others work, thus reducing them to a position of fixed subservience. It means an end of rent, profit, and interest on stocks and shares, an end of “surplus value,” an end of the exploitation of labour. Marx and Engels revealed the class nature of the state; they showed that ever since classes had appeared in society the state had always been an organ of the ruling class, an organisation of a handful of exploiters, of the minority, for the suppression of the exploited. No ruling class has yet been able to dispense with ideology. All ruling classes feel a need to rationalise their power, to find some presumably admirable objectives in the name of which they act.

The idea that state ownership of the means of production constitutes socialism is wrong. Engels pointed out in Socialism, Utopian and Scientific:

 “...the transformation, either into joint-stock companies or trusts or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalist nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious and the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of the individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution to the conflict...”

Come Rally, Comrades!

Humanity is in an age of great revolutionary change. The technology exists to produce all that we need for a peaceful, plentiful world. For the first time in history, a true flowering of the human intellect and spirit is possible. Our fight is to reorganise society to accomplish these goals. Our vision is of a new, cooperative society of equality, and of a people awakening. The revolution we need is possible. Let us embrace this revolutionary mission and make it a reality. Humanity stands at its historic juncture. Can we today visualise tomorrow with enough clarity? Visionaries portray a future made possible through an examination of objective, material forces in the real world. Dreamers create impossible hopes.  Humanity has never failed to make reality from the possibilities created by each great advance in the means of production. This time, there is no alternative to stepping across that line and seizing tomorrow.

Revolutions come about because of historical economic forces at work. The reasons change comes about can ultimately be traced to economics. Everyone knows the economy is undergoing a profound change, that is fundamental and irreversible. It is so great it is causing great change in every aspect of our lives. The change is the replacement of human laboUr by new and ever-expanding technologies, computerised automation and robotics. Throughout history, such fundamental changes in the economy have always forced revolutionary changes in the social system. Economic revolution has always precipitated political revolution. Only by engaging in the sustained struggle for the hearts and minds of the fellow citizens can we win this social revolution.

Social reorganisation becomes inevitable because basic necessities of life must be paid for with money. We make money by going to work. If the robots do the work, then how will we get the food, housing and clothing we need? If there is going to be production without wages, then there must be distribution without money. We must guarantee that the technological changes result in a better life for people. We must guarantee the technological revolution reach the potential for common good through common ownership.

Capitalism is a society divided between those who own and those who work in the factories and in the fields and who produce the wealth. The contract between the workers and the owners can b explained thus: “I will buy your ability to work at its market value and pay you in money. You will use this money to buy back enough of your production to feed, house and clothe yourself and your family. In this way, you maintain your ability to work and create a new generation of workers. We can all get along if we maintain this contract.”

The essence of the contract is this: Both the capitalist and the worker must sell their commodities and buy each other’s commodities. The worker is not a commodity, but what he sells, his ability to work is. Like a chair or an automobile, his ability to work is worth the cost of its production. Like the chair or automobile, its cost of production is determined by how much labour went into producing it. The secret of profit is this: Labour produces more than it costs to create. Every worker knows, even if he or she can’t explain it, that labour cranks out more value than it consumes.

So the capitalist system is one in which everyone bought and sold. The capitalist buys the elements of production, the worker buys the elements of life. The worker sells his ability to produce, the capitalist sells the production. The producer must consume and the consumer must produce. So long as this interlocked buying and selling is not disrupted, the system works. It works unfairly, but it works.

Every employer understands that the surest way to increase profits is to have the worker produce more for the least amount of wages. Every advance in machinery made the workers more productive and made many of them unemployed. No longer is technology merely labour-displacing. It is now labour-replacing. Suddenly, there appeared in the workplace a producer who does not consume. Social revolution is beginning before our very eyes. Owning no property whatsoever, without employment or resources the throw-away workers — temps and casuals with no benefits, the part-time under-employed, the permanently unemployed, sometimes called the under-class or the precariat by progressive sociologists are now slowly but surely becoming conscious of itself, growing aware that it is the only class in modern society where “each for all and all for each” has any real political meaning, and where “from each according to ability, to each according to need” makes economic sense.

Suffering want in the midst of plenty, and increasingly alienated as being expendable to the emerging economy, the modern worker has no choice but to turn against the system of capitalist relations. If consumers can’t work and earn money. Already some liberals are talking about the universal basic income, a citizens wage, to placate people. Socialists present the revolutionary alternative - the necessaries of life must be distributed without money.

Onward and upward

For many generations, the long list of Utopians, Plato, Thomas More, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, and Edward Bellamy, and many others have dreamed and planned ideal states of society. As mere speculations, they were disconnected from actual life and fell upon deaf ears. Today, the objective situation has become ever riper and the revolution no longer appears as an abstract theory and a mental projection. The objective conditions, in the shape of scientific knowledge and the technological means of creating material abundance, are already at hand in sufficient measure to do away with the menace of scarcity and deprivation to humanity. Automation and robotics releases productive forces strong enough to provide plenty for all and it destroys the whole accompanying capitalist baggage of ignorance, strife, and misery. But the trouble lies with the subjective factor. The will and determination to make such bountiful planet.

Capitalism has halted the evolution of the human species if it has not actually brought about a process of social regression. Capitalism, with its wars, wage-slavery, slums, famines and pestilence undermines the vitality and health of humanity. Socialism will not confine itself simply to thus developing the material conditions for a better life but will it turn its attention to the fundamental improvement of mankind itself.  Socialism can free humanity from the stultifying effects of the present struggle for sheer existence and opens up before us new horizons.  The socialist re-organisation of the economics of the world upon a rational and planned basis will bring the systematic conservation of the world’s natural resources, the beautification of the world, the liquidation of congested cities and their transformation into the convenience of country, and urban life, now hardly even imaginable.

People will not fear new technology. Anti-technology proponents in the environmentalist movement are the expression of the absurdity and despair of capitalism. Automation is to be seen as the emancipator from the drudgery and poverty of the past. We will have no dread of ensuing industrial crises and unemployment. We will control the machine; not be enslave by it as under capitalism. The creative impulses of people are not stunted by poverty and slavery, and the arts and sciences will not be hamstrung by the profit-making motive. Empowered by a free community and given the maximum cultivation of the intellectual and artistic powers—there will be no need to fear a society robotised by the machines. The unique stamp of individuality and originality will be upon everything. So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last forever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die.

 As William Morris counseled us all:

 “Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.”

And that we should:

 “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” 

The battle is class struggle

“…the werewolf-like hunger for surplus labour” Marx

The Socialist Party aims to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social system from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated. In socialist society the means of production have ceased to be capital, that is, to be a means of exploitation. In a socialist society, there are no longer classes with a monopoly of property in the means of production arid classes deprived of property in the means of production. In the conditions of socialism, the means of production are social property. The conversion of the means of production into social property and the emancipation of the workers from all forms of exploitation signify the new socialist system. The present capitalist order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty, it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests, the majority are habitually sacrificed. When profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic depression in which the people’s normal state of insecurity and hardship is worsened.

Socialism is not some Utopian dream. Socialism will not mean government control. The state serves the interests of the ruling class. Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism in the world. Today, there is social production but no social ownership. Socialism will bring social ownership of social production. Only socialism can turn the boundless potential of working people and resources to the creation of a world free from tyranny, greed, poverty and exploitation. By harnessing new technology, automation and robotics we could achieve an era of abundance for all, releasing us all from monotonous toil and drudgery. Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to reform it. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society. Under capitalism, labour is a commodity. Workers are used as replaceable parts, extensions of machines—as long as they provide dividends. Employers use their power of ownership to devastate the lives of workers through layoffs, shut-downs, and neglect of health and safety. Unions, despite their courageous efforts, cannot eliminate even the worst abuses of management power.

Capitalism, by its very nature, is a prolific breeder of crime. It is a system of legalised robbery of the working class. The whole process of capitalist business is a swindle and an armed hold-up. As Woody Guthrie sang “Some will rob you with a six-gun/ And some with a fountain pen.” In capitalist society what constitutes a crime and what does not is a purely arbitrary distinction. The capitalists do not recognise any line of demarcation for themselves. They do whatever they can “get away with.” The record of every large fortune and big corporation is smeared not only with the brutal robbery of the workers but also from the bribery of law-makers to plain murder. Wall Street is full of unprosecuted banksters. In a society where each grabs what he can at the expense of the rest naturally, government office offers a wide opportunity for corruption. It is not surprising that in a system of society where the aim is to get rich by any means, crimes of every kind should flourish. Capitalism blames crime upon the individual, instead of upon the bad social conditions which produce it. Hence its treatment of crime is essentially one of punishment. But the failure of its prisons, with their terrible sex-starvation, graft, over-crowding, idleness or forced labour, stupid discipline, ferociously long sentences and general brutality, is overwhelmingly demonstrated by the rapidly mounting numbers of prisoners and the long list of terrible prison riots. Capitalist prisons are actually schools of crime. The American prison system is particularly callous and fruitless. It is characteristic of capitalism to justify all the robbery and misery and terrors of its system by seeking to create the impression that they are caused by basic traits in human nature, or even by “evil acts of satan.” Mankind is pictured as an aggressive animal, and therefore capitalism escapes responsibility. This is all nonsense, of course. Mankind is by nature a gregarious and friendly species. He or she is not violent because he dislikes others of his own species, perhaps differing from him in language, religion, geographical location. His violence has always arisen out of struggles over the very material things of wealth and power. This is true, whether he has been living in a tribal, slave, feudal or capitalist economy. In a society in which there is no private property in industry and land, in which no exploitation of the workers takes place and where plenty is produced for all, there can be no grounds for crime. The interests of a socialist society are fundamentally opposed to the murderous and unnatural struggle of dog-eat-dog capitalism. The overthrow of capitalism will bring about the immediate or eventual solution of many great social problems. Some of these originate in capitalism, and others have plagued the human race for scores of centuries. Among them are war, religious superstition, prostitution, famine, pestilence, crime, poverty, alcoholism, unemployment, illiteracy, race and national chauvinism, the suppression of woman, and every form of slavery and exploitation of one class by another. Only a world socialist system can fully uproot and destroy all these evils.

One of the classical capitalist arguments against socialism is that it would destroy incentive; that is if private property in industry and the right to exploit the workers were abolished the urge for social progress, and even for day-to-day production, would be killed. Why incentive in the socialist society will be even greater is easy to answer. They own everything in it. There is no exploiting class to rob them of the fruits of their toil. They welcome better production methods because they get the full benefit of them. They will have broken the chain of capitalist slavery by building a new world of liberty, prosperity, and happiness for themselves and families. It is equally understandable why the producers in capitalism betray no such enthusiasm in their work. They are robbed of what they produce; for them improvements in production mean wage-cuts and unemployment. Incentive under capitalism is confined practically to the exploiting classes and their hangers-on. It is only with the advent of socialism that real incentive will develop. The apologists of capitalism declare that socialism destroys individualism. But when they speak of individualism they have in mind the right of freely exploiting the workers. They mean that the anti-social individualism of capitalism will go. Inside socialism no one will have the right to exploit another; no longer will a profit-hungry employer be able to shut his factory gates and sentence thousands to starvation; no more will it be possible for a little clique of capitalists and their political henchmen to plunge the world into a blood-bath of war. Such deadly individualism is doomed. In its stead, there will grow a new and better development of the individual. The society of socialism, by freeing people from economic and political slavery will, for the first time in history, give them all an opportunity to fully express their personalities. Theirs will be an individuality growing out of and harmonizing with the interests of all. It will not have the objective of one’s getting rich by robbing the toilers but will develop itself in the direction of achievement in science, culture, sports, etc. Only socialism can provide equality of opportunity, which means a genuine occasion for people to enjoy life and to exercise their latent talents and skills. Life in a socialist society will be varied and interesting. Individual will vie with individual, as never before, to create the useful and the beautiful. Locality will compete with locality in the beauty of their architecture. The world will become a place well worth living in, and what is the most important, the joys of it will not be the monopoly of a privileged ruling class but the heritage of us all.

The Socialist Party does not believe in change by violence. Social and economic transformation can be brought about by political action through elections. The Socialist Party aims at political power in order to put an end to this capitalist domination of our political life. It is a democratic world socialist movement. This wholesale reconstruction will be accomplished by democratising all levels of society, and by making workers’ self- management the touchstone of industrial relations. We call upon all Socialists to unite to secure humanity’s imperiled future. Socialism will unify the world into one great inter-connected, inter-linked and inter-dependent organisation. Global resources will be at the disposition of all the people of the world. There will be none of the barriers erected by capitalism – no borders, no nations. Socialism will have achieved Marx’s famous slogan, “Workers of the World, Unite!”

We want socialism

Up until the early 20th century, socialism commonly meant more or less the same thing as communism - a money-free wage-free state-free commonwealth based on common ownership of the productive forces. William Morris, Kropotkin, Marx and Engels all used socialism in this sense. Even Stalin described a socialist society as a society without buying or selling. The important thing to note is that state ownership for Marx and Engels did not constitute socialism. Lenin's view was quite different. He called socialism a "state capitalist monopoly" run in the interests of the whole people. Marx and Engels' views must not be confused with those of Lenin. Drawing up a detailed blueprint for socialism is premature since the exact forms will depend on the technical conditions and preferences of those who set up and live in socialism but we can broadly define the essential features of socialism.

Socialism is a system in which the means for producing and distributing wealth will be owned by society as a whole. Under capitalism, the land, factories, offices, mines, transport and other instruments of production and distribution are monopolised by a section of society only, who thus form a privileged class. Socialism will end this, for, with the means of life owned in common by the entire community, it will be a class-free society in which the exploitation and oppression of man by man will have been abolished. All human beings will be social equals, freely able to co-operate in running social affairs.

An authentic socialism must be built by the working class in such a way that they are empowered in social production and in control over the society, dismantling the class power of the capitalist class. It means people possessing control over planning about what is produced and the rules for the society. There would need to be the breaking up, the dismantling of the old hierarchical state machine, and its replacement by congresses of delegates controlled by general assemblies at the base.

Socialism is about radical democracy. It would give people democratic control over political as well as economic matters, rather than the system we have now that concentrates the control of these areas into the hands of a small group of people at the top of the socio-economic ladder. It means giving you control over your workplace rather than in the hands of some board of trustees, the stock-holders, or the bosses who are only interested in profit and not your livelihood. The economic basis of socialist society is the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and the eradication of exploitation of man by man.

Abolition of money and the prices and wages that go along with it should be part of the basis of socialism. "To each according to his ability, to each according to his need". NOT "let the workers starve if they can't pay".

Arguments for the retaining of this ridiculous system of distribution and exchange usually rest on some misanthropic claims about humans being the uncivilised greedy hordes who will deplete resources if everything was made free. If socialism will create a more abundant amount of resources, then certainly we won't need such extreme caution. The idea of hoarding goods only seems palpably tempting because of the society we live in. I think that money would just be more control in the form of a bureaucracy. There has to be someone to manage the prices and wages, to manage all that economic activity, to make sure everyone has jobs to pay them so they can buy the stuff on the "market".

Obviously, we cannot have a revolution right now because most people haven’t got an inkling about socialism let alone want it. But assuming they did, the Socialist Party would argue that electoral strategy has these advantages:

1) It is a reasonably good indicator of the strength of the communist movement. Which means we would we know we had enough support to go over to communism

2) It infuses the communist movement with the moral authority to proceed forward to communism. Opponents of communism would be less able to thwart it having been deprived of the moral authority to retain capitalism

3) It provides a convenient coordinating juncture for the changeover to a moneyless economy which by its nature cannot just be phased in

Common Sense Socialism

Socialists should explain their aim and describe the essential characteristics of socialism clearly so that it can be understood by everyone. Understanding socialism should be simple. Socialists believe that society is divided into two great classes by the present form of property-holding and that one of these classes, the wage-earning, the proletariat, is robbed by the other of the fruits of their labour by the capitalist. A multitude of people possess nothing – they are property-less. They can only live by their work, and since, in order to work, they need an expensive equipment, which they have not got, and raw materials and capital, which they have not got, they are forced to put themselves in the hands of another class that owns the means of production, the land, the factories, the machines, the raw material, and possess accumulated capital in the form of money. And naturally, the owning and possessing class takes advantage of this power. All  misery, injustice and disorder, results from the fact that one class monopolises the means of production and thus controls life, itself, and they impose their laws on the subservient class. The thing to do, therefore, is to break down this supremacy of one class. All differences in class must be abolished by transferring the ownership of the means of production and of life, which is to-day a power of exploitation and oppression in the hands of a single class, from that class to the whole of the community. The abusive rule of the minority must be substituted by the universal co-operation of citizens associated with the common ownership of the means of labour. And that is the essential aim of socialism - to transform capitalist property into social property. The object of socialism is to see society transformed, to be changed into something quite different from what it now is. It is a new society that we are working to achieve, not fixing up of our present system into a better, new improved smoother-working form of that same old social and economic order. The essence of socialism is that both the production and the distribution of goods will be carried on for the benefit of the community, instead of as now for the gain of individuals at the expense of the community.

Socialists long ago realised that the problems we face are in fact social problems, not natural ones or the vengeance of gods – social problems because they have their roots in the way our world is organised for production, that is production for profit, not need. If you think seriously about it, you’ll be hard pressed to find any aspect of our lives that is not subordinated to the requirements of profit. This is the case the world over. We are all of us at the mercy of the anarchic laws of capitalism.

Socialists advocate a world without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders, states or governments or armies. A world devoid of money or wages, exchange, buying or selling. A world where production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit. A world in which people give freely of their abilities and take according to their own self-defined needs from the stockpile of communal wealth. A global system in which each person has a free and democratic say in how their world is run. Socialism, like capitalism, can only exist on a global scale, and that it will only come about when a majority of the world’s people want it and are prepared to organise for it peacefully and democratically, in their own interests and without leaders. No vanguard can establish socialism – “the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”.

Capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the world’s suffering billions because reform does not address the basic contradiction between profit and need. The world’s leaders cannot be depended upon because they can only ever act as the executive of corporate capitalism. The expansion of democracy, while welcome, serves little function if all candidates at election time can only offer variations on the same basic set of policies that keep capitalism in the ascendancy.

Capitalism must be abolished if we as a species are to thrive if the planet is to survive. No amount of reform, however great, will work. Change must be global and irreversible. It must involve all of us. We need to erase borders and frontiers; to abolish states and governments and false concepts of nationalism. We need to abolish our money system and with it buying, selling and exchange. And in place of this, we need to establish a different global social system – a society of where common ownership and true democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources exists. A society where the everyday things we need to live in comfort are produced and distributed freely and for no other reason than that they are needed – Socialism.

It is now no utopian fantasy to suggest we can live in a world without waste or want or war, in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. That much is assured. We certainly have the science, the technology and the know-how. All that is missing is the will – the global desire for change that can make that next great historical advance possible; a belief in ourselves as masters of our own destiny; a belief that it is possible to free production from the artificial constraints of profit and to fashion a world in our own interests. And how soon this happens depends on us all – each and every one of us

Socialists hold that because we can adapt our behaviour, the desire to cooperate should not be viewed as irrational. We hold that humans are, “by nature”, cooperative and that we work best when faced with the worst and that our humanity shines through when the odds are stacked against us. There are millions of cases of people donating their blood and organs to complete strangers, sacrificing their lives for others, of people giving countless hours of their free time to charitable work – all of this without financial incentive.

Socialists believe the only way forward lies in abolishing the money/wages/profit system that we know as capitalism and establishing a world socialist society or, in other words, a world of free access to the benefits of civilisation. Only then can we gain real control over our world and reassert control over our own destiny. Only then can we produce without polluting our world and only then can we enjoy a world in which there is no waste or want or war.

Scientific socialism

Socialists do not only want to interpret the world; they want to change it for the better.

In Capital, Marx developed the labour theory of value which proved “…the value of every commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time spent in its production.” From this, Marx revealed the creation of surplus value as the basis of capitalist exploitation of workers. “The worker spends one part of the day covering the cost of maintaining himself and his family (wages), while the other part of the day the worker toils without remuneration, creating for the capitalist surplus value, the source of profit, the source of wealth of the capitalist class. “By destroying small scale production, capital leads to an increase in productivity of labour and to the creation of a monopoly position for the associations of big capitalists. Production itself becomes more and more social – hundreds of thousands and millions of workers become bound together in a systematic economic organism – but the product the collective labour is appropriated by a handful of capitalists. The anarchy of production grows, as do crises, the furious chase after markets and the insecurity of existence of the mass of the population.”

Socialism is scientific when compared to the visionary schemes of the earlier utopians. Scientific socialism differs greatly from the earlier visions of the utopian socialists such as Saint-Simon, Fourier and Robert Owen, who saw socialism mainly in terms of reforms and moral re-education to make capitalism more “humane”. It is scientific because it recognises the reality of class struggle as the main agent for change in society, as opposed to the concept of just changing individual attitudes. Marx identified the working class as the class created by capitalism, the class with “nothing to lose but their chains”, the class with the historical mission to liberate itself and all humanity from the tyranny of class rule forever. Socialists champion the cause of the working class for the abolition of classes and class society.

Marx developed the theory of Materialist Conception of History to explain the process of society change – the rise and fall of social systems, of different social classes, of political and religious ideas. Defining the economic base as the cause of social development and change does not do away with the role of human ideas leading to change, but it certainly does condition the scope and timing of these ideas. “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” (Marx 18th. Brumaire of Louis Napoleon 1852)

In other words, ideas don’t just fall from the skies. 

Marx defined socialism as a class-free and therefore state-free society, in which all people contributed to the common good, and in return received all their social needs; “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (K. Marx Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875)

Socialism should not be confused with government-operated industries that function as modern capitalist economies. These exist as a means for the capitalists, as a class, to avoid the huge cost of providing all the capital for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure such as roads, railways, seaports, power grids, etc. Nor do they wish to pay for services considered unprofitable, such as education and medical facilities in working class suburbs, emergency services, armed forces, and so on. No, the whole of the capitalist class is forced to shoulder the burden for these things through taxation and government charges.

Socialism is a world society based on human cooperation without the divisions of class or nation. Reformism is based on acceptance of the permanence of capitalism. It is a major obstacle in the way of  socialism. The Socialist Party recognises the workers’ willingness to struggle to maintain and sometimes even improve basic wages and working conditions, as well as to protect hard-won democratic rights. This attitude is summed up in the slogan, “If you don’t fight, you lose!”

Trade union activities are only concerned with the day to day issues of wages and conditions. Reformism is reduced to half-hearted deals between the pro-capitalist parties and minor legislative changes designed to alleviate immediate problems. The Socialist Party differs from other political parties in that it completely wants to change the society’s economic organisation and advance the social emancipation of the working class. The imperfections of today’s society are the capitalist way of production. The interests of the working class are the same in every country with capitalism. With the development of world trade and the production for the world market will the position of the working class in one country become dependent on the positions in all other countries. The emancipation of the working class is thus a project, in which every people of the world must take part. With this the Socialist Party declare themselves being a part of the socialist movement in all countries. The most fundamental problem for the Socialist Party concerning the many workers’ organisations is that what they are pursuing is not socialism. What do people have to show for it? Have there been reforms? In many cases, yes – even significant ones like large-scale social welfare benefits. Has exploitation been ended, the enrichment of a few on the labour of the many? Hardly. Poverty? No. Is the economy planned to benefit the people? Of course not. Have workers gained self-management of their work-place. No. What is more, and this is crucial, all the workers’ organisations do not aspire to this! They are content with the continuance of class divisions and the dominance of the capitalists. Reformists do not seek to challenge the existing structures.

There is no longer an excuse for a hungry person. All the materials and all the forces are at hand and easily available for the production of all things needed to provide food, clothing and shelter for every man, woman and child, thus putting an end to the poverty and misery. But these materials and forces must be released from private ownership and control, to be socialised and democratised, and set into  motion for the common good of all instead of the private profit of the few. A capitalist world can never be a free world and a society based on division, strife and hatred cannot stand except by means of coercion and force.