Social Democracy

Socialist ideas are assailed on all sides by our class foes, the story of the alternative, socialism, is not told so it necessary to keep explaining it. Capitalism is the mortal enemy of the people

Capitalism is a system of commodity production (that is, the production of goods for sale and not for direct use by the producer) which is distinguished by the fact that labour power itself becomes a commodity. The major means of production and exchange which make up the capital of society are owned privately by a small minority, the capitalist class, while the great majority of the population consists of the working class. Because of their economic position this majority can only exist by selling their labour power to the capitalists and thus creating through their work the incomes of the upper classes. Thus, fundamentally, capitalism is a system of exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class. Under capitalism social production replaces the individual production of the feudal era. It is based on an ever-greater socialisation of labour. However, although production is social, ownership is private. The working class produces the commodities which constitute the wealth of capitalist society, but it does not own them. They are appropriated by those who own the means of production – the capitalist class.

The contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation is the basic contradiction of the capitalist system, impelling its development and giving rise to the motive force of capitalist society, the class struggle. It also manifests itself as an antagonism between the high level of organisation in the individual factory or enterprise on the one hand, and on the other, the anarchy of production prevailing in the social economy as a whole. Production is socialised to an ever-greater degree while the ownership of the means of production are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Anarchy of production is

the tendency of capitalist producers in general to produce to the maximum without regard to their competitors or to the capacity of the market to absorb their production. Competition for the market in which profit is realised has always been the hallmark of capitalism, and the greatest stimulus to capitalist production. The lust for profits stands in the way of economic progress.

 It is both possible and necessary for the working class, the main and decisive productive force in capitalist society, to carry out a social revolution which it is the historic mission of the working class to accomplish. By replacing private ownership of the means of production by common ownership, by transforming the anarchy of production which is a feature of capitalism into planned production organised for the well-being of all of society, the socialist revolution will end the division of society into classes and emancipate all of humanity from all forms of exploitation. Exploited by the relations of production under capitalism, the working class has a direct material interest in the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism, the system in which the working class owns and controls the means of production and collectively shares in the products of its labour. The working class, created by capitalism, is also the destroyer of capitalism. This need for a socialist party is not something that is merely thought up in the heads of revolutionaries. More and more production becomes socialised, that is to say, great masses of workers are concentrated into huge industrial plants in the great cities. The highly complicated machinery of modern capitalism converts workers into a semi-skilled and unskilled mass which merely serves or tends machines. The huge masses of capital become centralised into fewer and fewer hands. The constantly diminishing number of capitalists faces the constantly growing mass of workers. The class struggle becomes sharper and sharper. The workers concentrated in the offices and factories are not divided to the same degree that they once were. They are compelled to think in terms of solidarity. For sure, there is still room for reform and betterment in the present social system, but this is of minor consequence compared to the world’s crying need for economic and social reorganisation. Private property and private ownership of production for individual profit are no longer compatible with social progress and have ceased to operate for humane and civilised ends.

The Socialist Party sets its task to assist fellow-workers to understand the irreconcilable antagonism between the exploiters and the exploited, and explains to it the significance of the social revolution and the necessary conditions for it. It highlights to all how hopeless their position is under capitalist society and explains the necessity of a social revolution if we are to free ourselves from the yoke of capital. Accordingly, the Socialist Party calls upon all members of the working class to join it. The inauguration of socialism is the aim of the Socialist Party. That is the task of the working class. That is the road to human freedom. Upon socialism, depends the future of humanity and of civilisation. The working class is called upon to save society from barbarism. We can be sure, however, that recent setbacks are temporary and that the socialist revolution remains on the agenda.

Everything must change

SOCIALIST CONSCIOUSNESS

How can we try to avoid potential catastrophic consequences of capitalism? Are we afraid to scare people away if we tell them how it is? Isn’t this one reason why there is no action, because people are told there is a solution to their predicament? Shouldn’t people be told that if things are left unchanged, civilisation is very likely to be doomed? Isn’t it their right to know that capitalism has gone too far so humanity as we know it may not make it into the next century? Capitalist interlocking, self-serving interests have managed to institute a globalised system of war, poverty and food insecurity which has effectively turned the world into a free-for-all. People are told to pretend it will be all okay lest all hope for the future disappears. The full shock of the issues which face mankind leave us feelings of desolation, despondency and despair. But the Socialist Party holds that people’s ideas and attitudes can change. Hopelessness is not inevitable. We are also free of Utopian false hope and can realistically prepare for the future. Members of the Socialist Party are not be afraid of the truth and we do not seek to avoid reality. What we witness today is just a little taste of a possible future but it is not the full outcome. Men and women are in control of our destiny, we can make our future. We can make history. It will be in an utterly different world if we take control and determine the course of events ourselves. We owe it to our children and to our grandchildren to work together to build what is needed to be able to survive. We must maximise human well-being by re-organising our society. We require a different economic system based on a different set of values. We must look at the social relations of production and distribution through another lens to inspire us to consider the possibilities and alternatives to the present that we can shape in desirable forms.

If workers want a constant reminder of the futility of reforms as such then they could do no worse than study the history of housing reforms both before and after they were enacted by Parliament. A similar lesson could well be learnt by the reformers themselves. The high number of often well-meaning individuals who attempt to alleviate the housing problem under capitalism have taken on a job for life; one that will result in regular frustration and hopelessness. In fact, taken globally, and bearing in mind all the various housing reform bodies now in existence. the housing problem as it affects the world's working class could hardly be worse. Unable and incapable of meeting workers' housing needs capitalism forces them to either sink or swim according to the private or government dictates of housing provision. So not only do workers have to cope with the very real problems of lack of space, of repair and maintenance, of housing obsolescence and unfit habitation, they also have to cope with the constant financial pressures of mortgage and rent demands where the inability to meet the high amounts involved means repossession and subsequent homelessness. Similarly, since the end of the nineteenth century, workers have seen every housing reform supposedly enacted in their interests fail. The state has not been able to end the housing shortage, provide the wide and different housing workers require throughout their lives, nor alleviate the dangers to health and overcrowding within the decaying inner cities. In fact, the state's interference has more often than not contributed to the worsening of the problem. The reality for workers is that there is no direct access to land, materials and technical advice. The capitalist class monopolises it for themselves. Workers' access is governed by their ability to pay. In a society freed from the utter absurdity of buying and selling, of commodity production and of classes, people will be in control of their lives and the society in which they live.

Let us start by saying what we mean by ‘socialism’. We should not allow this word to be stolen from us. It ought to be re-claimed and restored to the meaning given to it by Marx. Profit is derived from unpaid labour time. Workers’ labour power is purchased on the market by the owners of capital. Put to work, on average in half the working week, it produces values sufficient to cover wages to maintain a worker and family. The value produced in the remainder of the working week constitutes surplus value, the source of profit. The commodities produced by workers’ socialised labour are privately appropriated by capitalists. They will continue to be produced so long as they can be sold for profit on the market. This factor is the cause of the alternating cycle of boom or crisis of capitalism. It is inevitable that sooner or later these social conditions will impel people to organise to end the conflict between the socialised labour process and private ownership of the decisive means of production, the big factories, mines and corporate farms by the establishment of socialism. With socialism, production takes place for people’s use.

We must possess vision

The class struggle is the ceaseless struggle which goes on from day to day in every country and between the same combatants, the masters, the capitalist class and the slaves, the working class. The Socialist Party did not invent human aspirations for a just, egalitarian and free society. Mankind have cherished this dream for a very long time.

Capitalist society is like a huge market.  The capitalist brings his money, and the worker brings his or her labour power.  The worker sells the labour power in exchange for some money which will bring the subsistence of life.  But it must be remembered that the commodity of labour power is free, that is to say, that the worker has no personal ties like the feudal serf or chattel slaves.  We can either sell our labour power or withhold it; but our well-being depends on the things we must eat and drink and where we dwell.  The capitalist has already accumulated these necessities which he sells by means of his money, consequently the free labourer with empty stomach is forced to sell the labour power in return for the commodities without which we cannot live.  The wage labourer therefore is in the grip of a system that can beat us down to the lowest bare subsistence.  The supporters of this system are those who have gained control of it and control of the means of production, all those whose interests are bound up in it.  The system is capitalism, and those who control it are capitalists.  To manage it effectively and to their interests they must have a group of people to assist them and to operate the machinery.  The section or class who assist must be subject to their controllers or, in other words, must be slaves.  In return for their slavery they receive only sufficient money to enable them to continue operating the machinery from day to day, and to perpetuate their class.  It would be a catastrophe to the capitalist system if slaves did not breed more slaves.

From this we see that for any material advantage one class must take from the other class.  This attempt to take, be one form the other, goes on all over the world, day in and day out.  It is like a tug of war and imagine your bread and butter in the form of a rope – with the capitalists at one end and the workers at the other.  The more of the rope that is won, the more material comfort is acquired. This is the class struggle. Economic power is—and always has been—the foundation of political power. Those who control the peoples’ means of living rule. Capitalism has now placed us in a trajectory to possible self-extinction—a future with no winners, rich or poor. Marx described it as the mutual destruction of the contending classes. We must now seek a path that intends to restore equity, material sufficiency, peace, and abundance for all—exactly the opposite of the capitalists drive to secure the power, privilege, and material excess for themselves. This makes socialism far more than just a good idea; it is now an imperative. In our complex and interconnected world, socialism will global administration, responsive to the people’s will and well-being, that supports cooperation and sharing among communities, but the real power will be dispersed locally. There would be ample room for competition among local communities to be the most beautiful, healthy, democratic, creative, and generous. There is no place for predatory institutions. These communities will feature common ownership of enterprises recognising shared responsibility to care for the environment.

The power of the capitalist depends on keeping members of our class divided against one other along gender, racial, national or other fault lines. The goal is to divert our attention from themselves so that they can maintain their power and continue to amass wealth. The problem is not that the capitalist corporations are “out of control,” the problem is that the capitalist corporations are very much “in control.” Capitalism has ruled over us for three hundred years. We have far less time to come up with social democratic alternatives. That search must quickly become the focus of debate and discussion. Reformism talks the language of legislative regulation, not socialist revolution. No one is going to save us. How do we save ourselves? It is impossible to know in advance, with any certainty, which tactic or strategy is best. However, the Socialist Party argues that its case for socialism offers the most suitable path toward socialism for this country and others like it. Elections do matter but we also acknowledge that there are many other struggles which must accompany it as complementary methods of revolutionary change. Voice must be given to mass movements to defend the planet and realise its promise. We want the whole of the people fighting for the a whole of the Earth.

Wage Slaves! Think about it! The time has come for the abolition of the wage system. 

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.