We’re going after the system!

The world and humanity are heading for unprecedented dangers and conflicts, up to and including the end of a habitable planet, if we are to trust some climate change experts.  They say this is the apocalyptic reality facing future generation. Current policies may well make our earth unliveable. Why do we not respond to the crisis? Only immediate action can save the future. If the future is to be saved the world requires a different economic system. Capitalism uses every trick, fair or unfair, to turn natural resources into money. By law, the directors of corporations are obliged to put the profits of stockholders above every other consideration. No room whatever is left for an ecological or social conscience. They act in such a way as to make themselves richer, and to increase their control of the political system to ensure they can accomplish this.

The media is dominated by trivia, entertainment, sports, the weather, celebrity gossip and so on. Worries about the future, the danger of new wars resulting from uncontrollable climate change, of widespread famine arising from global warming, of the possible mass migrations of peoples because of environmental destruction seldom appears in the news or in daily conversations of the public. Serious discussions of the crises which civilisation now faces are almost entirely absent. The media gives no hint at all of the true state of the world or of the dangers which we will face in the future. The lack of urgency demonstrated by the media and politicians gives the false impression that all is well with the world. But in fact, all is not well. We have to act immediately and adequately to save the future. 

Trump’s victory was achieved because he was able to convince a large majority of working-class whites that he represented a better hope for a healthy economy and world peace. Interlaced with his appeal was a deep undercurrent of national chauvinism. Trump shamelessly presented a program of thinly veiled racism, painting those who do not become rich or successful in a capitalist society as inferior, lazy and leeching off hard-working taxpayers. Trump is a throw-back to the bygone days of unchallenged U.S. supremacy in the world. His nationalism calls for a return to aggressive U.S. unilateralism.

We live today in an era of populism. We don’t know how coming events will pan out. But what is certain is that the economic and political crises are going to get worse, that the ruling classes have no alternatives to these crises, do not offer any future.

Across the world we see a wholesale embrace of the anti-working-class reformist ideology, along with attempts to create whole new reformist institutions to replace the openly discredited ones. In some cases, leftists are already taking the logic of their shift further: attempting to build or support openly class collaborationist populist parties and popular fronts. The gap between the capitalists and the increasingly impoverished working class is widening. Reformism is a proven failure: that is why the progressives and liberals are moving rightward. The far left’s rehashed reformism has even less viability. Its programme is worse than illusory: it is dangerously misleading. he liberation of the proletariat is the task of the proletariat itself; it is a task it must carry out in opposition to “condescending saviors.” Reformism is not a moderate or too slow form of socialism, but its enemy. We want the working class to become conscious of itself and its power in society. Success in the class struggle demands working-class independence from all capitalist parties. If more workers are to be won to the cause of socialism it is clear that we must greatly advance in our ability to explain the advantages of a socialist society and how we can achieve it. Working people remain open to socialism and are looking for change. But they remain to be convinced that socialism can provide them with a better life – greater democracy and improved material well-being. It is clear we must improve our explanation of our fundamental socialist option. We must combat the distortions of what socialism is. First of all, the word “socialism” is in the popular consciousness closely associated with the former USSR and Warsaw Pact countries. While these regimes were never socialist we never stop hearing that these countries typify socialism. Not only do the former Soviet Union and its satellites repeat this endlessly to cover up the fierce exploitation of workers in their societies, but the media and academia also take up the same refrain. They like nothing better than to point their finger at the ex-USSR and say, “Look, that is socialism,” knowing full well that the police state structure and the command economies of the East bloc countries are unlikely to attract workers.

Sooner or later, we should prepare for the time to re-structure the world’s economy to achieve planetary sustainability and steady-state economics. We must achieve a new kind of economy – socialism. What is needed more than hope is political action. We must end capitalism. We must create industrial democracy. We must replace nationalism with a movement for a world commonwealth. Fight for a future.

Socialism – Saving the Future

The principles of the Socialist Party are clear and definite. We assert that the wealth of society is created by the workers. We claim that society, through their industrial and community councils, must own and control all the processes of wealth production. We engage in this struggle on to the political field in order to challenge the power which the present ruling class wields through its domination of the State which it wins at the ballot box. By its victory at the ballot box, and its consequent political domination, the capitalists are able to subjugate the workers as wage-slaves by using the ministers of State to impose their domination over our fellow-workers. These unsympathetic bureaucrats are appointed by our masters and being appointed by the ruling class, who control the State, the bureaucrats can only maintain their jobs by serving those who control them. Make no mistake about it, government are out to cut our standard of living. To be sure, they claim this is necessary so that standards can rise in the future. But we need take no notice of this. The promised prosperous futures with steadily rising living standards have never appeared and, of course, they never will. You don’t have to be a socialist to be sceptical on this point. It is surprising that there are still people who think workers generally have something to gain from supporting capitalism.

The Socialist Party is convinced that the present political State, with most of its attendant institutions, must be swept away. The political State is not and cannot be a true democracy. It is not elected to serve the social wants of the community. It is elected because the wealthiest section of society can manipulate all facts through its power over the media. By its money the capitalists can buy up advertising to decide the election issues. The electorate is not asked to vote upon facts but only upon such topics as the media, representing capital, puts before the workers.

The working class cannot leave political control in the hands of the ruling class. We have seen what power the conquest of the State gives to the capitalists in its struggle with workers. It is through its political strength that the capitalists can deprive us of civil liberties. The power to accomplish this flow directly from their control of the State which it secures at the ballot box. The maintenance of our freedoms is part of the political struggle.  In order to achieve a peaceful revolution our class must capture the powers of the State at elections and prevent the capitalist class from using the law against an emerging mass socialist movement. This destructive function is the revolutionary role of political action. But this destructive political function is necessary in order that the industrial constructive element the creation of socialist bodies in the revolution may not be thwarted. The Socialist Party’s task is the preservation of civil liberties and the destruction of the political State. All other questions, such as the United Nations, free trade, or tax reform—these things which are agitating the minds of Tory and Labour parties—are merely traps to catch the unwary workers and to persuade them to vote to preserve capitalism. The working class must end capitalism and construct socialism. The Socialist Party alone puts forward such a position. It urges the workers to use their ballots to capture political power—not to play at politicians or pose as statesmen, but to use their votes to uproot the political State. To think that Parliament can be used as the means of permanently improving the conditions of Labour, by passing a series of acts, is to believe in parliamentarianism. The Socialist Party is not a parliamentary party. It believes in entering Parliament only as a means of sweeping away all antiquated institutions which stand in the way of the working class collectively owning and controlling the means of production.

To simplify Marx’s criticism of capitalism in the mid nineteenth century, he argued that the core problem of capitalism was a class exploitation and struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat where the latter sells labour power which is extracted as surplus value by the former.  The bourgeoisie own the means of production and over time in their race to maintain profits they increasingly replace human labour power with machines, they drive down wages placing more and more individuals into poverty.  This process creates an economic crisis, intensifying class struggle, and eventually creating conditions for a capitalist struggle. It suggested an economic inevitability for the revolution. Starting in the late nineteenth century individuals such as Eduard Bernstein in Evolutionary Socialism argued that the revolutionary tactics and economic inevitability of the revolution were not practical or certain.  He and others agreed with much of the basic criticism of Marx but instead tied the future of a class-free society to gradualism and reforms through parliament. It was supposed to be state capitalism for the benefit for poor, but it was still capitalism.  Yes, the government can act and manipulate the economy for the benefit of the people, but it did so for the benefit of the rich. China has its state-owned enterprises but it is not socialism, it is state capitalism, and mostly to the benefit of a few.  Socialism is not the central state planning of the economy where the government owns all the businesses. Extremely few Chinese have any say over the economic choices being made in that country, one where there is a sharper and sharper class divide.

An old world to overthrow. A new world to build

Why must the working class play the prominent role in the socialist revolution? First of all, working people are highly socialised by working side by side at their jobs. By making the products the capitalists sell for profit, workers learn through their own experience the need for organisation and cooperation. Clearly, the products could never be made if the workers themselves were disorganised and refused to cooperate with one another. In capitalist society these qualities of organisation, and cooperation are used to benefit not the workers, but the capitalists. The capitalists use these qualities of the workers to make their profits and, in the process, keep workers in a state of near or actual poverty. Since workers are the people who are directly exploited by the capitalists, they have the most potential for seeing through the capitalist system. Thus, of all classes in society, the working class also has the most potential for learning the need to overthrow capitalism and to replace it with a new system – socialism – that will benefit not a handful of capitalists, but society. Also, a mass movement of workers possesses great strength to cripple the capitalists. If the workers don’t work, the capitalists don’t profit. As the only productive class in society which manufactures and operates the things necessary for life, the working class is the only class with the ability to build the new, healthy socialist society. For all these reasons, the Socialist Party holds that the working class is a revolutionary class for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with socialism. The Socialist Party does not believe in the old romantic notion of a handful of heroic revolutionaries making the revolution for the people on the behalf of the people, rather than the people making the revolution for themselves. We oppose those who lack faith in the ability of the people themselves to make a revolution, and who therefore feel that they must do it for them. Such individuals and parties never accomplish much. History shows over and over, however, that all such schemes based on minorities and vanguards are doomed to failure. The working class is a sleeping giant and when it awakens, it will recognise the great power it has in its hands. It is only a matter of time. Education, of the workers alone can fit and prepare them for the herculean task before them. It is only through the education of the workers that they can come to clearly understand the necessity of not only organising, but for the kind of organisation required to give them the power to carry on their struggle, to fight their everyday battles, and finally to conquer capitalism and come into possession of their own.

To-day all wealth, the largest and most fruitful tracts of land, the mines, the mills and the factories belong to a small group of private capitalists. From them the labouring class receive a scanty wage in return for long hours of arduous toil, hardly enough for a decent livelihood. The enrichment of a small class of employers and investors is the start and end of present-day society. It is to change this capitalist world which is the purpose of the Socialist Party.  All social wealth, the land and all that it produces, the factories and the mills must be taken from their exploiting owners to become the common property of the entire people, placing them under social control. To-day production in every manufacturing unit is conducted by the individual capitalist independently of all others. What and where commodities are to be produced, where, when and how the finished product is to be sold, is decided by the individual capitalist owner. Nowhere does labour have the slightest influence upon these questions. We are simply the robots to do the work. In socialism all this will be changed. Private ownership of the means of production and distribution must disappear. Production will be carried on not for the enrichment of a few individuals but solely to supply the wants and needs of the working class. Accordingly, factories, mills and farms must be operated upon an entirely new basis, from a wholly different point of view. Production will be carried out for the sole purpose of securing to all a more humane existence, of providing for all plentiful food, clothing and other forms of subsistence. The productivity of labour will be increased. Farms will yield richer crops, the most advanced technology will be introduced into the factories. It follows, therefore, that we need not, and will not deprive the small farmer or handicraft artisan of the bit of land or the little workshop from which he or she ekes out an existence by their own hands. As time goes by, he or she will realise the advantages of shared socialised production over private ownership.

Bountiful provisions, a decent education for the children, comfortable care for the aged and the infirm – these form the all-important part of the socialist system. Waste such as we find to-day must cease. Society will be more rational in the use of its products, its ways of manufacture and its deployment of labour power. The production of armaments will pass out of existence, for a socialist society ends war. Instead the raw materials and the enormous amounts of labour power that were devoted to this purpose will be used for other more useful production. The manufacture of costly luxuries for the of wealthy will stop. Work itself must be completely altered. Today employment in industry, on the farm and in the office is usually a torture and a burden. Men and women work because they must in order to obtain the necessities of life. In a Socialist society, where all work together for their own well-being, the health of the individual worker, and the joy in work must be conscientiously fostered and sustained. Short hours and less days of labour will be established: recreation and leisure merged into the work process, so all may do their share, willingly and joyously. Today hunger drives the worker to the factory or the farm-owner, into the business office. Everywhere the employer sees to it that no time is wasted. With socialism all working people are free and on an equal footing, working for benefit and enjoyment, tolerating no waste of social wealth. To be sure, every socialist enterprise needs its technical superintendents who understand its technology, who are able to administer production so that everything runs smoothly, to assure the implementation of the most efficient methods. Workers inside socialist industrial democracy will must show that we can work decently and diligently, without capitalists and slave-drivers but of own volition.

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.