Are We Nearing The Revolution?

Although we are living in changing and dangerous times, for the first time in history, a true flowering of humanity is possible. Our fight is to reorganise society to accomplish this goal. Our vision is of a new, co-operative society of equality. The revolution we need is possible. There has never been anything like this revolution in the history of the world. It will be the first organised movement of men and women to become a world movement. To change society, we need a plan to get from where we are now to liberation - a strategy that will work. Any successful revolutionary strategy must address the fundamental issue of who are our friends and who are our enemies. Our ruling class have built empires that spans the planet. The world has been divided up between the big capitalist powers, which will stop at nothing to expand their spheres of influence and control. Capitalists have accumulated untold wealth based on the exploitation of the world’s working class. They live on the labour, land and natural resources of others. Only socialism can save us and only a class, the working class, can bring that about. Socialists all over the world, will replace the competitive struggle of capitalism by the human co-operation of socialism.

Capitalism has been unable to provide people with the minimum levels of comfort that our modern technological society is clearly able to produce. Humanity lives in a desperate situation where poverty and unemployment, racism, sexism, bigotry are all endemic. Industrialisation have wreaked havoc on the environment. People starve, not because there is no food, but because food is distributed only when it can make a profit. Even the wealthiest nations are ridden with debt. Corruption is common in politics and business. Disease, random violence and homelessness are eating the heart out of every major city on Earth. Work, for most people, continues to be drudgery, with fewer and fewer opportunities for creative initiative. Capitalism should be replaced by a more humane, civilised, cooperative society. Socialism is the answer to modern-day barbarism. People are becoming more distrustful of their governments. Antagonism and polarisation has penetrated every aspect of our lives. The capitalist class has proven itself incapable of solving the many social problems. Every step the ruling class takes only makes the situation worse. Our understanding that the events of today are the basis for the events of tomorrow demands that we not only carefully examine today, but use that knowledge to prepare for tomorrow.

The Socialist Party recognises that to win the class war, workers must move from the defensive to the offensive and fight for a cooperative society that is possible. We attack the system of private property. We point out the necessity, this time, of overthrowing private property and transferring the means of production into commonly-owned property. The goal of the Socialist Party is to give people a vision of what is possible. It is a vision of a world where no one has to fight another for the daily bread of existence. It is a vision where cooperation and fulfilling the needs of humanity are the guiding principles. It is a vision that satisfies the deepest yearnings of the people for peace. The first step is that people have to be won over to the reality that private property can be brought to an end. We can take inspiration from the famous statement by the former slave and abolitionist Harriet Tubman when she said, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” Many of our fellow-workers do not understand they are wage-slaves. The first thing in liberating the slaves is to make them understand their slavery.

Socialism is the common ownership of the socially necessary means of production and the distribution of the social product according to need. It is no Utopian proposition, but an expression of the deepest strivings of the people: independence from the chains of exploitation, the guaranteed ability of every person to contribute to society, freedom from want and an expectation of a better life. New technologies have made possible the realisation of this goal. It is only through widespread promotion and campaigns that we can get this vision over. We must make connections withthe life of fellow-workers. We must communicate the message that private property can be brought to an end. We must show a cooperative society is not only possible, but is the only practical solution to the problems they face. Socialism is the rule of freedom under which the state disappears. An overly bureaucratised administration based on the employment of force, and which the masses must obey, is irreconcilable with the socialist organisation of society.

In a cooperative society, production could be planned to fit everyone’s needs. Distribution could be organised socially. It followed that in socialist society, there would be no need for anyone to fight anyone else. There would be more than enough for everyone, and it would be distributed not on the basis of who is the strongest but on the basis of who’s needs are most pressing.

How can it be changed? It certainly was no good just thinking and talking about a new society, or trying to attract others to it by example by setting up communes and co-ops. The working class has to take control of the means of production in a social revolution.  It is up to the working class. No one can do it for them. The self-emancipation of the workers through their own struggle and the democratic society which follows such emancipation is at the heart of socialism. Socialism will replace a hierarchical, bureaucratic and undemocratic society – capitalism – with a genuine democracy in which the working people direct their own delegates. Socialism depends upon control from below, and control from below can never be brought about from above.

Someone Will Suffer. Who Do You Think?

Tesla announced, on Jan.18 that in order to produce cheaper electric cars it would have to cut 7 per cent of its work force, which would be 3,150 people.

 As CEO Elon Musk put it,”We face an extremely difficult challenge, making our cars, batteries and solar products cost-competitive with fossil fuels. While we have made great progress our products are still to expensive for most people.” 

There it is folks the basic hard facts of capitalist economics which inevitably mean someone will suffer and as always it will be the working class who suffer the most.

A Temporary Period Of Softness?

Most Canadian’s were, naturally, happy to see gas prices go down 8.6 per cent in December, but wait a minute not everything is peachey-dandy – inflation overall in Canada went up 2 per cent, according to Stats-Canada’s figures which were released on Jan.18. Canadians paid 14.9 per cent more for fresh vegetables and 28.1 per cent more for air fares. 

The Bank of Canada’s governor Stephen Poloz kept his benchmark interest rate unchanged at 1.75 per cent as the economy goes through what he described as a temporary period of softness due to the drop in oil prices.

 At the supermarket shoppers can experience such softness, that it would make them wonder what hardness would be like.

Capitalism is our enemy.

Socialism is not widely understood. What passes itself off as ’socialism’ today includes many schools of thought that take bits and pieces of aspects of socialism and use them as points for arguments that are in themselves non-socialist. This explains how reformists can find it so easy to represent their arguments as ’socialist’ while at the same time denying the fundamental concepts of socialism. Always, in one form or another, capitalism creates an ideology to disguise and justify its predatory character: it is a necessary device of class domination. Always there exists a deceptive conception of capitalism and socialism.

It is a surprising fact how little discussion there is today among the left-wing about socialism. The Left concern themselves exclusively with the ‘practical’, ‘day-to-day issues’ of the class struggle, leaving the future revolution to take care of itself. This is an echo of Bernstein’s famous saying ‘the goal is nothing, the movement everything’.

At our meetings we are aiming to provide an easy-to-understand case for socialism in straightforward, familiar language.

The class struggle is not a theory but a fact, not a dogma but a grim reality. Much about today’s life is hardly encouraging. Everywhere things appear to be getting worse. Insecurity, violence and poverty are all increasing. No solution appears forthcoming to the global environment problems we all face. Society is teetering at the edge of chaos. Science can only indicate what is possible. What will happen will be determined by what people do. A cooperative, post-scarcity plentiful society awaits if we only choose to form one. Together we can create a worldwide co-operative commonwealth.

The antidote to capitalism is socialism. It is not a complicated doctrine. It is a democratic system of society where the wealth is owned and controlled by the people who produce it. The problems of the world are all about the control of the means of production by a small minority who organise the wealth they control to their own advantage, and to the disadvantage of the people who work for them. The poor are poor because the rich are rich. Instead of competition, socialism encourages cooperation. In a socialist society we pool our abilities and resources to create more for everyone, and to share it out justly. The abolition of the capitalist mode of production requires the appropriation of the means of production by society. It is impossible to conceive of socialist society outside of the world victory of socialism, if only because the universal, world relations of mankind alone allow for the full development of human wants and capacities. The possibility of building socialism in one country is a flagrant contradiction. 

The Socialist Party has a purpose very different from that of any political party that ever existed. Its object is not to reform the present system, but to absolutely abolish it; to wipe out wage-slavery, to emancipate not only the working class, but even the capitalist class; to abolish class rule so that, unfettered, our children and grand-children may enjoy real civilisation. 

Competition, the controlling principle of capitalism, vanishes with the adoption of the cooperative commonwealth. Not that we in the Socialist Party are any less selfish, but that our selfishness is enlightened self-interest. But members of the Socialist Party do share the small satisfaction of knowing that we are not working for a personal gain, but that we are working for the common interests of our common humanity. We call ourselves socialists and have no wish to qualify that word by joining any other to it.

Glasgow Branch MEETING
 7pm 20th February
Maryhill Community Central Halls,
304 Maryhill Road, 
Glasgow G20 7YE

Lothian Socialist Discussion 
7.30pm 27th February 
The Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh, 
17 West Montgomery Place,
Edinburgh EH7 5HA

Where are we today, where will we be tomorrow?

Let’s be brutally honest: There are few, if any in the near future, serious prospects for attaining the transformative change of the capitalist economic system that we need. There has been an austerity programme of mass immiseration conducted by the government’s withholding of adequate welfare and social services. Socialist ideas are side-lined and pushed to the margins of the political field. But that’s no reason to give up on revolutionary social change. Signs of real popular resistance have emerged across the world. People are mobilising with compassion and solidarity. We witness a resurgence of the labour movement where militant trade union activity is once more on the rise. It was the air-traffic controllers and other federal workers who forced Trump’s hand during the shutdown, awakening the sleeping giant of worker power, not the Democrat opposition. Capitalism’s leaders are always being credited with more power over the system than they actually have. No man, and no government, has ever been able to control capitalism; in the end the system wins. When we have an election in which the votes reflect a developing knowledge of that fact, we shall be somewhere near getting rid of the problems the great men are always promising, and always failing, to solve.

Could this growing working class insurgency beneath the headlines take a meaningfully independent electoral form beyond the reach of capital? Yes, with time. New movements for a real people’s party are forming that connects the labour movement to local communities around issues that matter to everyday working people. The time is passing when voters can passively settle for the lesser of two evils politics. How long before a real socialist party could run candidates and win elections for political office. Who can say? Who knows? It’s not as if we possess a crystal ball. It’s about organising and building from the bottom up, to create a powerful movement that activism with the political economy to address interrelated global crises of democracy, inequality, human and civil rights, peace and a sustainable, livable ecology. This is the key.

The Socialist Party puts forward the view that the Earth's resources should be owned and consciously and democratically controlled by and in the interests of humanity.  It believes that the purpose of production should be to produce useful items to meet peoples' needs rather than for profit. The Socialist Party’s argument is that freed from the present constraints of minority class ownership of wealth and production for the purpose of exchange, society has the potential to produce directly for use. The evidence all around us is that present day society's ability to produce is outstripping a system confined to production for sale. Hence, we have such contradictions as "over-production" of food for the market alongside millions of people, worldwide, dying of hunger quite unnecessarily and the vast majority living sub-standard lives. In addition, modem technology, which could be used to further increase productive capacity and free people from dangerous and soul-destroying work, in many cases cannot be fully applied. The Socialist Party conclusion from such everyday experience is that we could create a sane society.

The Socialist Party holds that it is inevitable that our fellow-workers will realise that if there is a conflict between our need for a decent standard of living and our employer's need for profit and will come to believe that we can end the current class relations of production where the producing non-owners of the means of production are economically forced to sell their ability to work to the owners in return for a wage or a salary in order to live. Along with common ownership of the means of production and the replacement of profit by need and usefulness, the Socialist Party argues that people could voluntarily give their skills and abilities to society and have free access to all goods and services on the basis of self-determined need. We point out such demands are after all based simply on the actual experience of the world around us as it is the useful majority, the working class, which produces all the goods and provides all the services that keep society going. It is obvious to all that a society which is organised around the domination of a small useless minority over the useful majority is NOT natural, inevitable and unchangeable.

Most workers, whether paid low or high, have to spend the greater part of their lives in employment which is boring, sometimes dangerous and nearly always uncreative and degrading. The lives of most workers are dominated by their employment and at the level of consumption their needs are to some extent fashioned for them as the same forces which control the means of production are also dominant in the sphere of mass communication. Thus, while it is true that capitalism has created some differences in life style for different sections of the working class, all workers share many common, everyday experiences, and although they take place in different settings, they will last as long as capitalism does.

Reformers base their ideas on the premise that capitalism is inevitable, that workers and employers share common interests. But reformers fail to get to the root cause of workers' problems and can therefore never solve them. What is needed is an alternative, based on a knowledge of how this society operates, for only then will workers be aware of how to carry out the defencive struggle within capitalism with some success. Most of all we require to make it clear that this society can never be made to operate in our interests. The present social system is not unchangeable. There are other possibilities available to us. 

You Legalise Cannabis Then What?

The Ontario government on their boundless generosity are intent to share the pot of all their soon to be tax revenues from the sale of cannabis with the municipalities. 

This does not please Toronto Mayor John Tory, who expects the city to get about $3 million and whose council voted to allow cannabis shops to open on April 1. His staff has estimated cannabis legislation will put the city on the hook for, ”tens of million’s of dollars in additional policing, paramedic, fire, public health and other costs.”

 Just leave it up to capitalist society to create problems it can’t solve.

It's A Capitalist's System What Do You Expect?

Toronto is a city with a severe lack of affordable housing.

 The current waiting list for subsidized housing in Toronto, which includes Toronto Community Housing, Cooperatives and private non-profit housing, (if you believe it), is close to 99,000 households and about one third of those waiting are seniors.

 Average market rents for a three bedroom rental is $1,633, according to data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Those figures are occupied units, landlords can charge what they want for newly empty units. Research firm Urbanation recently published a report showing the average cost of renting a studio condo averaged $1,800 and a two bedroom condo $2,700. 

With prices like that no wonder so many are homeless.

The Road To The Future

Under a rational economic system, the resources and productive capacity of world industry would be capable of assuring abundance for all. If used for the benefit of the people this world’s resources is capable of feeding, clothing and housing billions. Too often socialism has unfortunately been presentedas a system not of abundance but of scarcity, as a system not of increased leisure and comfort, but of self-sacrifice and sweated toil. This is an era when for the first time in history, humankind can produce such abundance that society can be free of hunger, homelessness and backbreaking labour. The only thing standing in the way is this capitalist system of exploitation and injustice. Behind all the fog of confusion and official lies, the processes of capitalism grind inexorably on. They recognise no morality and the only issue they are interested in is a healthy balance sheet.

The Socialist Party holds a vision of a world of plenty. New technology provides better products with less labour. Society now has the capacity to devote the energies and talents of its people to satisfying the intellectual, emotional and cultural needs of all. The Socialist Party seeks a society organized for the benefit of all. A society built on cooperation and which can reorganize society so that the abundance is distributed according to need. Automation and robotics can be the foundation for a whole new world. Abundance, created by robotics and people working for the common good rather than the profit of the few, will forever end poverty, exploitation, oppression and war. 

Politicians are fond of depicting themselves as men who have capitalism firmly under control. They talk of capitalism as if it were a car, which needs only a touch on the brake or the accelerator to keep it humming smoothly along to prosperity. Capitalism cannot be controlled, no matter how refined and delicately calculated its politicians' policies may be. The system runs the politicians, not vice versa. More people in desperate need of a decent place to live, less houses being built, more building material being stockpiled. An inhuman muddle, but it does make sense in terms of the economics and the priorities of capitalism, whether it is capitalism under a Tory government or Labour. All capitalist political parties are basically the same and, when the occasion demands they have no difficulty in closing ranks with each other. They have little respect for what they profess as principles and for the meaning of the very words they use. All of them are after political power, and will do any sort of deal to get it.

Under capitalism wealth takes the form of capital. Wealth is used to produce more wealth not to satisfy human needs but to make profits. Most of these profits are re-invested and in this way capital accumulates. What forces the capitalist to re-invest his profits (rather than consume them all in riotous living) is competition. Each capitalist competes against other capitalists for a share of the market. This means he must run ever faster to stand still. He must use his profits to buy machinery that will cheapen his costs. This has certain technical effects: it leads to an increase in the size of productive units. This competition between capitalist enterprises is the motive for increasing productivity.

But competition has another result. It tends paradoxically to reduce the number of competitors. As the technical process becomes more complex and more costly, only large enterprises can survive. The weak and inefficient go under and their wealth passes into the hands of those who survive. Thus, industry becomes controlled by fewer and fewer enterprises.

This whole social process makes socialism a practical possibility. Ever-increasing productivity makes a society of abundance possible. Socialised methods of production make the private ownership of socially-produced wealth outdated—and worse, a fetter on production. As control of industry is centralised into fewer and fewer enterprises democratic social control becomes possible. Thus, does capitalism prepare the technical basis for socialism.

Although both Tories and Labourites praise competition and denounce monopoly they have long since ceased to tilt at the windmills on this point when in office. They accept—and even encourage —the concentration and the centralisation of control of industry.

Compassion or Militarisation - The Wage-Slave Catchers

‘If Socialism, international, revolutionary Socialism, does not stand staunchly, unflinchingly, and uncompromisingly for the working class and for the exploited and oppressed masses of all lands, then it stands for none and its claim is a false pretense and its profession a delusion and a snare.

Let those desert us who will because we refuse to shut the international door in the faces of their own brethren; we will be none the weaker but all the stronger for their going, for they evidently have no clear conception of the international solidarity, are wholly lacking in the revolutionary spirit, and have no proper place in the Socialist movement while they entertain such aristocratic notions of their own assumed superiority.’ Eugene Debs

People should have the right to work anywhere to earn a living and feed their family. Labour must have the right to cross borders. It is up to unions to organise them, as they seek to organise all non-union workers. Immigration controls are a weapon used by the ruling class against the whole of the working class.  All politicians both on the right and the left have indulged in attacks on migrants and immigration for years. It is necessary for them to have a scapegoat to blame for the ills of the political system that we live under and the immigrant, present throughout history, has always served as such a scapegoat. Whenever we have high unemployment, or cuts to the welfare states social services, those representing the interests of big business attempt to cover up their own responsibility for this situation by blaming working people. The question of house prices, rents, and long hospital waiting times and full class-rooms being the fault of immigrants is balderdash. Yet many workers do say these things and, if not exposed to the true facts, will tend to believe them. The Socialist Party is unafraid to take an unpopular position that is nevertheless a correct one. We in the Socialist Party have a job to do to educate all workers to realise the need to end capitalism and build socialism. It is the system of capitalist production that produces unemployment, homelessness, destitution and crumbling social facilities, not to say incessant wars – not workers, be they native-born or newcomers. The rich are happiest when workers are squabbling among themselves for the crumbs. The rich feel safe as long as people argue about crumbs and not about the loaf because they know that no embarrassing questions will be asked about who made the loaf?

 We in the Socialist Party know that in capitalist society bad housing, crowded hospital conditions, inadequate transport and the like – are caused by a system of society which plans its priorities and makes its decisions in the interests of profit and a minority who benefit from that profit. We stand for the free movement of workers from country to country. We say that immigration controls are against the interests of workers everywhere.

Capitalists want to see migrants with second-class status because they form a layer of the working class that is most easily exploited—they have a much harder time fighting back against rotten conditions and sub-minimal wages. Having such a layer of workers bound to miserable conditions weakens the whole working class, since other workers face the threat of replacement by this underpaid sector of the workforce. In all capitalist societies, a tiny class of people owns the means of production and profits by exploiting the workers’ labor. United, the overwhelming tendency of the working class would be to fight for a decent life for all, which is incompatible with capitalism. Powerful united struggles of the working class would inevitably demonstrate the need to overthrow capitalism altogether. Since the working class is the only class with the power to overturn capitalism, the capitalists use every possible divide-and-conquer tactic to prevent this development. The bosses hope to keep the worst-off sections of workers—Blacks, Latinos and other immigrants—fighting with each other over shrinking pieces of a small pie instead of uniting to fight for a decent life for all.

The working-class cannot be defined by their place of birth, the place where they live, the language they talk, the clothes they wear or the colour of their skin. Our fellow-workers are the plundered all over the world and they speak a multitude of languages and have many different shades of colour to their skins. It is the common factor of their exploitation which binds them together far closer than the trivial differences of colour or language. Socialism is the antidote to racist and nationalist poison. Xenophobia is part and parcel of a capitalist system which divides people up into classes in the interests of the minority in charge of industry and finance, the

ruling class. Economic crises and social frustration are exacerbating populist reaction and parochial forms of nationalism among large segments of the population. The ranting demagoguery of the right-wing stigmatises immigrants as scroungers on the public purse and scapegoats them for the entire mess of capitalism’s troubles.

Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution

“Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will Socialism, fertilized by misery, watered by tears, and vitalized by agitation be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation.” Eugene Debs

The fear and loathing of socialism by the powerful elite, stems from its attention to the unanswered questions in the minds of humanity. Socialism, engages with the central problems of philosophy, political economy and sociology. The philosophy of socialism is materialism. Against religious superstition, materialism is a means of conceiving the world in change. Marx and Engels repeatedly exposed the way people fell victims of deceit and self-deceit in politics. They argued that the supporters of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order, no matter how barbarous and rotten it may be. The task of the Socialist Party is not to concoct utopian schemes but to enlighten and organise for the overthrow of capitalism. The major problems of the day are practical problems. We must stop relying on a faith in “the inevitability of socialism”, that things will turn out all right in the end, so long as we repeat the right slogans.

The capitalist class, in their never-ending grasp for higher profits, are willing to make the world a misery for a majority of working people. Capitalists are the most class-conscious people in the world. Despite their family squabbles over how to divide the wealth that is produced by labour and appropriated by capital, the capitalists all stand shoulder to shoulder when they sense any danger to their system of robbery. All capitalists standing united, regardless of politics, race or creed in the defense of their “sacred” system of “private enterprise,” as they hypocritically call it – or; the system of capitalist exploitation, as honest people call it.  They are right in defending the system of free enterprise. It is THEIR system; they thrive on it. It is THEIR government which protects a system, which breeds insecurity and want on one side, and incredible wealth and indulgence on the other. They only hope that they can succeed in hoodwinking enough people to trust capitalism to provide work for everybody. They hope that the working class will be meek and submissive. They hope that they can convince enough workers to hunger in silence while waiting for the “private enterprise” paradise that has been promised

In contrast, the working class, if it were united, could turn the world into a storehouse of plenty for all. Will the workers learn in sufficient time also to stand shoulder to shoulder? The problem is that people accept capitalism and its logic and therefore see no alternative. The truth is that the attacks on the welfare state point to the need for revolution. Even at a time when the system could afford concessions, “welfare” never meant raising people out of poverty and providing a better life for them and their families. It is one thing to defend all the crumbs, like welfare benefits, that have been won. It is quite another thing to pose more or better welfare as a real solution. The answer to poverty is not welfare but a new society which will have real solutions for all, a new society based on human needs, not profits. Faith that capitalism can be reformed is prevalent but reformism today means acceptance of austerity. There can be plenty for all –but only by socialising the means of production and placing production under common ownership.

We live in a modern society. We have vast industries all over the world. We have undreamed-of natural resources. We have millions of trained and skilled workers. We can produce in one day. what it once took years to produce. Yet we do not have security and prosperity. It is the social system that stands in the way, the system of capitalism or, as it is sometimes called to make it sound better, the system of “free enterprise.” Under that system, a handful of capitalists control all the wealth and power. This handful owns industry, banking, mining, transportation. It owns our jobs. Whoever owns all these things, controls our lives, the lives of you and me and tens of millions of others.

We are not reformers — we are revolutionists. By revolution the Socialist Party does not mean violence or bloodshed. It is safe to say that every member of the Socialist Party would regard it a calamity to the cause, as well as to humanity, to have a violent upheaval in society. Socialism offers a possible, a peaceful solution. So, then, by “revolutionary socialism” we do not mean an appeal to insurrection. We mean the capture of the political powers of the nation by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class.

Imagine for yourself socialism

The Socialist Party is to popularise socialist ideas. Those who want to change the world can’t shape their ideas according to the conventional wisdom about what the public will accept. The Socialist Party challenges the status quo.  For too long, politicians have used the alleged backwardness of the voters to justify their own moderation and gradualism. Unlike other political parties, the Socialist Party does not claim to be able to control interest rates or rents or house prices or council tax. We make no promises on housing or on any other issue because we know that within the framework of private property society there is no solution to the problem. It would be dishonest and foolish of us to pretend otherwise. It is easy to make promises, as the other parties do, but to honour them is another matter. Governments, national and local, do not have the control over capitalist economics that they like to think they have. The wages-system must end. The division of mankind into class compartments must end. There is to-day no relation between the people's needs and what the people are capable of producing; markets and profits stand like mountains, in the way. Markets and profits must end. In other words, capitalism must end if humanity is to survive.

Housing certainly is neglected. But is this really a housing problem? Surely, as far as the production of decent houses for everybody is concerned there is no problem. The building materials exist together with the architects and construction workers. What stands in the way, then? Why, in a world of potential plenty, is a basic human need like shelter so neglected? The answer is simple: most people cannot afford decent housing. And. if people can't afford comfortable houses, then, in accordance with the laws of the market no such accommodation will he built for them. No builder is going to put up houses he can't sell. Instead perhaps the government may step in to provide cheap, utility housing. This problem of how to meet an unprofitable basic need in a society based on profit is one which the other parties have grappled with for decades. Yet still the problem remains. And so do the promises. Our standard of housing, like the whole of our standard of living, is rationed by the size of our wage packet. Our wage is a price and, as such, is fixed by the workings of the market. The price is fixed, roughly, by what it costs to keep us in efficient working order. So we’re in a vicious circle: our standard of housing depends on our income and our income depends on what it costs to keep us alive. This is why in housing, as in everything else, we get only the minimum comforts. This is how it will be, and must be, as long as the means of production are the property of a few for whom the rest of us must work for a wage. A sanely organised human community would give priority to meeting its needs of food, clothing and shelter. If production were carried on solely and directly to meet people's wants then there could be no problem in housing. But production for use is only possible when society controls production. Which demands that the means for producing wealth belong to the whole community. No better definition of socialism can be given in general terms than that it aims at the organisation of the material economic forces of society, and their conscious control by human forces.

Capitalism is a vicious, dirty society which makes human beings act in vicious, dirty ways. Trump claims to represent the opinions of the average worker in America and in the sense that he calls to mind much that is ugly, frightened, bigoted and confused he may be right. Workers feel that way, and take refuge in extreme political ideas, because capitalism is a society of fear, without security; it is a divisive system. The organised workers must take united action. It is not a sectional question. The whole of the workers is involved, and if they remain divided, they will be attacked and beaten, by the employers.

The profound difficulty with socialism is that it cannot be demonstrated. It is a complete system of human society to which a new principle is to be applied. Many enthusiasts with an insufficient knowledge of their subject have endeavoured to found little communities, run as they thought on socialist lines. All have failed, for socialism can only be applied to a highly organised community, and on a large inclusive scale. It is a complete change in the basis of society. It is therefore impossible to show examples of a complete and fundamental change. Socialism and capitalism are mutually exclusive, although, curiously enough, each deals with the same things. Trains would still run, factories still work, power stations still function, the soil still be tilled, under socialism as under capitalism. The great difference would be ownership, and therefore control. Instead of being operated by the whole people, for the private benefit of private owners, they would still be operated by the whole people, but for the public benefit of the communal people. Private owners only employ just so many as they can profitably make use of. Private owners only allow their plant to produce wealth when a profit is to be made. In short, private owners of the means of wealth-making only allow their machine to run for private ends. But with social ownership the outlook is entirely changed. There would be no idlers of any sort, rich or poor, for it would be to the interest of everyone that there should be abundance of everything. There would be no slack times and semi-starvation because too much wealth had been produced, as at present. If, under socialism, too much wealth was to be produced, it would be, first, the signal for a real holiday, and, second, for an enquiry into why the Statistical Department had not properly adjusted supply to public needs. There would be no shoddy clothing, jerry-built houses and adulterated food. The market for trash would go the way of all markets. It would follow poverty and ignorance into the limbo of forgotten capitalism.

But if the workers are waiting to be shown a working model of the proposed new system they are waiting for the impossible. A picture of society under socialism can only be constructed by the imagination aided by an analysis of our present condition and a knowledge of human history. Clever men and women have performed both of these latter tasks, and references to them and their works are frequently given in our columns. Imagination they cannot give you, but they can stimulate it.

If after reading our literature that you decide that socialism is desirable and practicable, do not sit back and wait for something to happen, but do the only logical thing—join our organisation and help get it. What have you to lose? Nothing but your chains. To win? The whole world! You have a world to win. A world to win.

Revolution is not only a possibility, it is a necessity

The socialist movement is almost suffocated by reformers. Every crying evil of capitalism has its devoted band of would-be reformers. What a vast and formidable force would they be if they united for the abolition of the wages system. The horrors of capitalism are world-wide and ever growing, they cannot be cured a bit at a time. All over the world, in all the great cities, are horrible and indescribable slums. People are mentally and physically starved, and repressed in a thousand different ways. All the means of production lie in the hands of private holders. The motive of industry all the time is profit-making, not the supplying of things for the people’s use. Yet it is possible to produce everything that we need in spacious surroundings and decent buildings, and for people to enjoy life to the full. Socialism means a system of society where men and women organise together to produce the things they need, and having produced them in co-operation enjoy them freely. This does not mean a stilted uniformity, but a satisfaction of individual requirements. Socialism means that all men and women will become individuals for the first time and will have individual expression of thought and feeling. The Socialist Party seeks a new world, a class-free world, a peaceful world, a world without poverty or misery. There is only one thing in the way of realising this wondrous state of things, and that is the realisation of its possibility by the rest of the workers. Help us to spread the knowledge and waken our fellow-workers so we can transform this hell of capitalism into a cooperative commonwealth for the benefit of all. Working people, wake up! The time has come to open your eyes and see things as they are. You have been hoodwinked and robbed and enslaved long enough. Line up with your class in the great struggle for freedom. Transform the whole world into one cooperative commonwealth, and bring about real human freedom and Brotherhood of Man.

The theory of the Socialist Party is based on Marxism: Marxian economics, the theory of the class struggle and the materialist conception of history. Marx supported certain wars. The Socialist Party does not.? Is the Socialist Party not Marxist or was Marx wrong? One of the dangers of dogmatism, of going by quotations, is that the historical context is lost. Mid-nineteenth century Europe was a different place from the modern world. Marx’s support for wars and nationalist insurrections must be seen against the background of Europe a hundred years ago. Socialism grew out of the European revolutionary democratic movement which the French Revolution had triggered off. Marx and Engels, in Germany in 1848. had played an active part in this movement and they shared many of its assumptions. Socialism is only possible on the basis of large-scale industry as developed by capitalism. However, at this time. Europe was in danger of being dominated by powerful feudal forces — the Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria. These powers had already been used to crush uprisings in Italy, Hungary, Poland and Germany. Marx felt that in these circumstances there was a very real danger that Europe might be overrun by these feudal powers, particularly Russia, thus putting off the social revolution for decades. This fear of Tsarist Russia explains Marx’s support of the Franco-British side in the Crimean War and also of Polish nationalism.  An independent Polish nation, was supposed to be a shield against Russia for a revolutionary Europe.

The task of the Socialist Party is to spread socialist understanding among the working class. This is not done by suggesting that “defensive” wars should be supported by workers, nor by confusing the interests of the working class and bourgeoisie. It was a mistake for the socialist pioneers to entangle themselves in the international power struggles between the capitalist class and feudal nobility. Apart from anything else, they provided an opportunity for the leaders of the social-democratic parties, when they supported the slaughter of the First World War, to claim that they were following a precedent set by Marx and Engels. This made the task of the Socialist Party all the more difficult when it sought to explain that there were no interests at stake which could justify the shedding of one drop of working-class blood. Marx’s position on war was thus mistaken. Looked at in the context of the historical conditions of the nineteenth century, it is understandable how he arrived at this point of view. But, although we can see the reasons for his error, this makes it no less an error. As it happened the feudal powers did not overrun Europe. They grew weaker and were destroyed completely as a result of the First World War. By the turn of the century capitalism had conquered the world and there was no danger of a feudal reaction. All wars were now purely capitalist, disputes between rival imperialist powers. The purpose of the Socialist Party is quite clear: to struggle uncompromisingly and consistently for the establishment of socialism throughout the world.

Times are a-stirring

The Socialist Party is the political expression of the interests of the workers in this country.  For the existing ills of the wage-workers there is but one remedy. It is embraced in a single word — socialism — the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution; and these can be secured by conquering the political power and seizing the reins of government through a united, class-conscious socialist ballot. To the working class we say, the Socialist Party is pledged to your complete emancipation. It promises no shortcuts and no quack remedies. It is a class-conscious, revolutionary party committed to the overthrow of capitalism and its wage-slavery and the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth and economic equality, and every wage-worker should rally to its standard and hasten the day of its triumph and their own deliverance. The Industrial Revolution created the two inherently adversarial key components of modern capitalism engaged in a monumental battle — the capitalist class and the working class in formation. A united socialist movement may now make clear to all the people the lines of conflict between capitalism and socialism; between despotism and liberty. These lines of conflict may be made so definite that no party of compromise or tinkering can enter the political field. Nothing outside of socialism can defeat capitalism. Socialism points out the economic basis upon which democracy must stand in order to achieve liberty. It proclaims all liberty to rest back upon economic liberty, and all individuality to be rooted in economic unity. It affirms that there can be no liberty save through association and a cooperative commonwealth. It makes clear that democracy in the State is but a fiction, unless it be realised through democracy in production and distribution. Socialism declares that liberty to be a mockery if it means merely the survival of the strong and the cunning devouring the weak. If we are to stand together, we must act like brothers and sisters. Not until slave and master have both disappeared can we lay any proper claim to civilisation.

We do not denounce capitalists as individuals. Men and women are the product of conditions, circumstances, environments, and these are favourable or unfavourable, become useful or useless, noble or ignoble, good or bad. It is, therefore, not with the individual that we have an issue with, but with the system of society that produces him and protects him. The Socialist Party’s purpose is to discuss conditions and point out the means to our fellow-workers who maintain that there can be no relief while any part of the wage system remains, insisting that the present competitive system must be completely overthrown and not a vestige of it left before permanent relief to the suffering masses can be provided. Socialism is the science of human association.

The economic basis of present-day society is the private ownership and control of socially necessary means of production, and the exploitation of the workers, who operate these means of production for the profit of those who own them. The capitalist system of production, under which we live, is the production of commodities for profit instead of for use for the private gain of those who own and control the tools and means of production and distribution. Out of this system of production and sale for profit spring all the evils, and problems of misery, want, and poverty that menace and confronts civilisation. The Socialist Party teaches that the only way to attain the just distribution of wealth to those who produce it is through the common ownership, democratic control and operation of the means of production and distribution, such as lands, mines, factories, transport, communications, etc., etc. It asserts that this production should be for use and not for sale or profit, thus doing away with all private ownership of the means of subsistence in every sphere of society, and with which a vast amount of unproductive labour and an immense number of useless and harmful occupations wastes resources. Socialism would conserve and not abolish the private ownership of wealth as distinguished from capital. Thus, homes and all personal belongings not used to produce more wealth would be individually and not collectively owned.

It is the interest of the capitalist class to maintain the present system and to obtain for themselves the largest possible share of the product of labour. It is the interest of the working class to improve their conditions of life and get the largest possible share of their own product so long as the present system prevails. Each class strives to advance its own interests as against the other. It is what we describe as the class struggle. The capitalists, by controlling the political parties and in control of the State secures and entrenches its position. Without such control of the State its position of economic power would be untenable. The workers must wrest the control of the government machinery from the hands of the masters and use its powers in the building of the cooperative commonwealth. The Socialist Party seeks to organise the working class for independent action on the political field, not just for the betterment of their conditions, but above all to end the class rule of out exploiters. Such political action is absolutely necessary to the emancipation of the working class. To accomplish this aim of the Socialist Party is to bring about the common ownership and democratic control of all the necessary means of production — to eliminate profit, rent, and interest, and make it impossible for any to share the product without sharing the burden of labour — to change our class society into a society of equals, in which the interest of one will be the interest of all. Subordinate to this fundamental aim, it supports every measure which betters the conditions of the working class, and which increases the fighting power of that class within the present system.

THE TIME HAS COME

The Socialist Party is primarily concerned with analysing the capitalist system, pointing out its defects and advocating the replacing of the capitalist system by the common ownership and democratic administration of the means of production and distribution. Its success and progress will depend very largely upon the method of education and the political tactics of the Socialist Party but those in itself cannot bring about the cooperative commonwealth. Just as propaganda fails to necessarily advance socialism nor does great economic distress. These crises may point out the fact that something is wrong, but the suggestion of the remedy and the cure for these ills is quite a different problem. The socialist movement is international because it is born of and follows the development of the capitalist system, which in its operation is confined to no country, but by the momentum of modern methods of production, exchange, communication, and transportation which has crossed all frontier lines and made the entire world the focus of its activities. By this process all parts of the planet has been drawn into relations of industrial and commercial cooperation. The global brotherhood of all workers is the goal of modern socialism and it is this that inspires its advocates with zeal and ardour. 

So, what is socialism? Simply, it means the common ownership by all the people of all the means of wealth production and distribution. Socialism does not propose the shared ownership of personal possession, but of the instruments of wealth production, which, in the form of private property, enable a few capitalists to exploit vast numbers of workers, thus creating class rule and all its odious manifestations. Socialism proposes economic freedom for every human being. As nobody would possess private property in which another person would be dependent for employment, economic mastery and slavery would disappear together and competition for profit would give way to cooperation for use.

The changing economic conditions is the evolution of the social organisation and are paving the way for the transition from competitive capitalism to cooperative socialism. Socialists are simply indicating the trend of the evolution, and seeking to prepare the way for its orderly arrival. The rapid centralisation of capital and the extensive existence of corporations makes individual initiative and small businesses less and less possible. The day of small production has passed, notwithstanding, the protests of the petty trade-person. These great modern conglomerates increase in power and are the inevitable outgrowth of the competitive system. The efforts of small capitalists to destroy monopolies will prove as fruitless as the efforts of working people to resist technological change. Actually, many of these global corporations in themselves are not evil. The evil lies wholly in the private ownership, and its operation for private profit. The remedy is common ownership and for them to be run and operated for the good of all. Despite all such alleged issues as banking reform, imperialism, protectionism and free trade, etc., the Socialist Party declares that economic emancipation is the supreme question that confronts the people. 

The working class are dependent upon the capitalist class, who own the factories, the transport and the communications by virtue of their economic mastery and political power, are the ruling class and it is idle under such conditions to claim that men and women are equal citizens. No person is free in any sense if required to rely upon the arbitrary will of another for work. Such a person lives by permission of the capitalist class. Chattel slavery has disappeared as it is no longer necessary to own the worker in order to take the fruit of his or her labour. It is now only necessary to own the vast machinery which workers cannot afford to buy, and against which he cannot compete, with which we work, and without which we are helpless. We are at the mercy of the owner of the machines, our employment is precarious, and our very lives hang by a thread. The few who own the places of work rarely work in them. The many who toil in the work-places never own them. The few who own them are enabled to exploit the many who use them. The Socialist Party presses forward until it can conquer the political machinery of the State. This will mark the end of the capitalist system. The factories and all other means of production and distribution will be transferred to the people in their collective capacity, industry will be operated cooperatively, and every human being will enjoy the fruit of society’s labour. The hours of work will be reduced. Rent, interest, and profit will be no more. The sordid spirit of commercial conquest will be dead. War and its ravages will pass into history. Economic liberation will have triumphed and the emancipated sons and daughters of Mankind will glory in the triumph of socialism.

It’s up to You

Discontent and unrest are having a wide sway and even to the most superficial observer it is evident that there is something wrong in our social and economic life, and ignore it as we may, the question is daily attracting the public’s attention.  Of the two great `isms’ - socialism and nationalism—the latter has proved the stronger. Socialist internationalism has suffered from the beliefs of patriotism and national chauvinism. War is not merely inevitable under capitalism, but another is actually impending as this blog written. The wonderful inventions and marvellous discoveries which has received joyous acclaim has failed to lift the burden of toil or brought relief to working men and women, but the new technology, under the control of the private capitalist, has driven many from employment and forced down wages of many more. It is true that working people still have political rights, but these are largely infringed, if not extinguished, by economic dependence. Employees of the corporations know that their contracts and security depend upon them voting as their employers want them to vote, and they become the unresisting serfs of the capitalist class. The object the Socialist Party is economic emancipation, that is to say, the abolition of the capitalist system of production and distribution and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth.

There are the exponents of one system — the capitalists — who claim they hold the right to live off the toil of others, while there are the others — the socialists — that believe the earth and and its resources belong to all the people. The competitive capitalist system produces millionaires and millions of mendicants, and it was those who work the hardest who are rewarded with the least. Capitalism makes it necessary for the successful man to compete with his competitor in what is not “the survival of the fittest,” but “the survival of the most unscrupulous.” Capitalism is a cut-throat system where there can be no ethics. Capitalism’s history is written in the tears and blood of the human race.

As a remedy for this pernicious system the Socialist Party is organised with its object to achieve the cooperative commonwealth, where men and women would stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder for the uplifting of our common humanity. Working people should be ashamed to follow leaders. They may betray them. Ignorance is slavery. Knowledge is freedom. The working class shall unite all its energies to destroy the present capitalistic system and establish the cooperative commonwealth. The world has been brought to the verge of ruin, and humanity has been degraded beyond the power of language to describe. To one whose sensibilities are not wholly dead a mere contemplation of the horror of our social life is sickening and shocking. The time has come for social revolution and regeneration. This is only possible through a new and global-wide change of system. We will establish the cooperative commonwealth in harmony with the planet. Socialist ideas will leap over borders and permeate others, and thus the tide will sweep in all directions until the old barbaric system of capitalism has been destroyed. The Socialist Party stands for a cooperative commonwealth system as the substitute for the wage system. Then production will be carried forward for the use and comfort of mankind, and not for the gratification of private greed. Then we shall have industry organized, and work, being scientifically done, will be relieved of all drudgery and the hours of labour reduced in proportion to the progress of invention.  Then poverty, the prolific parent of crime, will disappear. And it is then that we shall progress to a higher stage of social evolution. A civilisation fit for people.

However, as realists, socialists realise that world socialism seems distant and only the optimist that sees the imminent arrival of socialism and the cooperative commonwealth. But to judge it unsuccessful is to reproduce the common and tempting error of thinking that history moves according to the rhythm and tempo of individual human lives. It does not. The Socialist Party’s significant contribution to the attempt to replace capitalism with a better form of social organization, has been its commitment to original socialist principles. It has boldly defied the enemies of freedom, the oppressors of the people, the exploiters of the working class, and the foes of all humanity. Let us in one mighty effort hasten the end of capitalism and herald the inauguration of the cooperative commonwealth.

Cutting Education in Toronto

When Governments Are in Debt.  Education For Workers Is Diminished. Nothing New There.

Ford’s Ontario government lost no time in slashing reform measures. It has cut $25 million in funding for programs that provide after-school jobs for needy teens, class room tutors for kids as well as projects focusing on indigenous issues.

 Maria Rizzo, chairman of the Toronto Catholic School Board, said,”I’m sick to my stomach because I’m afraid of the steps we’ve taken on poverty, on indigenous education and even in the Focus on Youth Program – we’ve hired our kids in the most vulnerable school communities, in the neediest neighbourhoods, just to give them a leg up. Now I have serious concerns. 

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Education said,”such funds must be better managed so they the greatest impact on the students”. The fact that the province is $14.5 billion in debt has, of course, nothing to do with it. NDP education critic, Marit Stiles, said,”These cuts are going to be deeply felt by our kids in the classroom. 

For Doug Ford to take the axe to schools is inexcusable. It would be better for all concerned, if we had a society that didn’t need reforms.

Socialist Party of Canada's  news report.

Dreamers and Realities of Capitalism

A recent issue of the Canadian Jewish News ran an article which focused on the plight of the Yazidi’s, the aboriginal people of Iraq, which are now being raped, murdered and enslaved by ISIS. Their history goes back 7,000 years, but their numbers have dwindled from a high of 23 million down to one million. They are now experiencing their 74th genocide. 

Yet there are still people who want capitalism to continue, but without atrocities – and they think socialists are dreamers.

Recently there has been a rash of convenience store robberies in Hamilton, Ontario. Young men have been driving trucks into them and stealing the ATM machines. So far there have been no injuries and no arrests. 

That such actions are crazy, callous and criminal, is symptomatic of capitalism these days.

Socialist Party of Canada's monthly newsletter.