Is There a Future for Humanity?

“Capitalist development has dragged humanity down to so low a level that it no longer knows, and can no longer know, other than one incentive: money. Money has become the prime mover, the alpha and omega of all human action. Balzac calls it ‘l’ultima ratio mundi’ [the world’s last argument].” Paul Lafargue

The entire capitalist world is currently in a period of great economic and social crisis damaging the lives of millions while a small minority reaps the benefits and profits. Capitalism is now being seen to be the main enemy of the people of the world and an awareness is growing among the working class that piecemeal reforms cannot solve the problems our society faces. Men and women are also coming to see that their overall liberation hinges on the demise of capitalism. Many of our fellow-workers are advocating a thoroughgoing change in the system. The conflict within capitalism is between the working class and the capitalist class which exploits its labour. This exploitation is the foundation of the capitalist system and provides the working class with its objective interest in the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with socialism. Further, because of its role in the production and distribution of all goods and services, only the working class has the numerical strength, strategic position, basis for collective organisation, and therefore, the potential power to overthrow capitalism. Critics adopting a tone of consummate reasonableness dismiss socialism as a dream. But that’s precisely what it is. It’s visionary. While there are others who criticise socialism for not articulating a bold and transformative vision for the planet. Socialism is the world’s last best chance to get it right. Otherwise, the future will be some sort of dystopia. 

What race are you? What colour are you? What’s your nationality? What Gender? What’s your sexual orientation? It’s capitalism’s bogus and divisive nature. Like cattle we are branded.

The Socialist Party supports strikes for higher wages and improved working conditions. As workers ourselves we know that under capitalism we get nothing save through organisation and struggle. The social conditions of capitalism, where a tiny minority own the means of life, inevitably give rise to a struggle over the division of wealth. The class struggle will last as long as capitalism because the interests of workers and owners are irreconcilable. Strikes are an expression of this class struggle though it is fair to say that very few workers fully understand this. They do not recognise that there is an irreconcilable conflict between workers and owners everywhere. They do not recognise that workers have no country and that patriotism is a delusion and a snare. They do not recognise that the wages system shows up the dependence of the workers on the owners for a living.

One of the disappointments of the ecology movement has been its failure to understand the challenge that requires us to explain how we would build a political movement to shape a better world. Our idea is of the democratic common ownership and control of the economy. Either we develop the socialist transformation of society or we are eventually destroyed. There is nothing inevitable about the further advancement and evolution of the human species. In the world today only the working class has sufficient objective interest in the overthrow of capitalism and the strength to carry out this revolutionary task if it chooses to do so. The working class has it within its power to overthrow the crisis-ridden moribund capitalist society and in so doing to pave the way for the liberation of the whole of humankind. It is now required to challenge the regime of capital which is based as it is on the cheapest and fastest exploitation of labour and nature and the endless expansion of exchange value — and the creation of a sustainable steady-state economy

Halting climate change requires a change much more fundamental than making a series of lifestyle choices. Many in the environmental movements insist that we all have to make sacrifices for the sake of the planet. Only a self-denying existence can save us. However, it is the structure of existing society that determines what the individual does, not the other way around. And it is the impact of corporations driven by profit which is causing climate change, not individuals. There may well be a small minority of people prepared to reduce their living standards, but think of the billions across the world who are already live below the poverty level. Imposing cuts in the living standards of millions of people already deprived of well-being and comfort should be inconceivable. It is the private ownership of the means of production which is the principal cause of all the calamities which the capitalist system continues to visit upon humanity.

Do we stand upon the brink of the destruction of the whole of mankind? If the catastrophists and those who predict social collapse are correct that ecosystem is in fact in the process of irreversible destruction, then all alternatives, even socialism, would seem to be not only utopian but futile. The popular media presents us with the dystopian vision of a Mad Max scenario rather than off a positive socialist alternative. The Socialist Party explains that we stand upon the threshold of a new age of peace, prosperity and plenty. What is the future of mankind? That is for humanity to decide. It must be decided by the majority of the working people. They must organise and speak with one voice: We demand life with socialism before death under capitalism. The fight for socialism has become the fight for the very existence of humankind. We have always said that the future belongs to socialism.

The Economics of Food

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
― Dom Helder Camara

As each year passes many people are eating worse, not better, high prices prevent people buying the food they want and a great number of people are eating less of the more nutritious foods. This indifference of people about their own food supply is one of the most surprising features of our social life.

Why does the farmer grow crops? Because there are people who want to eat? No so. As far as the farmer is concerned, they can go without if they do not the money to pay for it. there are people wanting all sorts of things, but nobody is going to try to provide them because there is no profit to be made. Yes, profit! The farmer grows food with a view to making profit, on which he lives. The food processers and distributers engage in the self-same purpose—that of making profit.  Bakeries make bread for no other purpose than profit.

If it is more profitable to use artificial fertilisers to grow more crops then the farmer uses those chemical fertilisers. If bakery companies find that supermarkets do not want their bread to go stale too quickly on the shelves then the baker adds preservatives.

The more anonymous the origins of the food we eat, the better we prefer it. We aren't burdened with the  responsibility of knowing whether it is the suffering of the beast of the field or the suffering of the field-hand, poisoned by pesticides and fertilisers. Yes, even vegetarians cannot escape social culpability unless they only eat what they themselves grow or only choose organic but this being capitalism, money and economics will always come first both for producer and consumer.

The current industrial model of farming is unsustainable. It is not based on methods of conservation but rather uses enormous resources that can only be purchased from the market. Large-scale and monoculture farming uses inorganic fertilizers, increases water usage and destroys biodiversity with the use of herbicides and pesticides. Today’s livestock-based food system consumes grains that people have traditionally eaten. And farm factories where livestock are crowded together need chemicals, antibiotics and hormones to control bacteria, and the animals’ manure pollutes the water table. Big Ag corporations are interested in maximizing profit, not in a sustainable and healthy food system.

So long as society is run in this way, we will have the present state of affairs—the factor that is wrong is neither the farmer, nor the baker, nor even the public, but the commercial motives of capitalist society that produces these potentially harmful food manufacturing practices. Only within a socialist framework can we have a rational food policy. A rational food production system would not see food produced determined by the needs of Big Business to maximise profits. The food industry will not produce food except for profit.

The most important point to reiterate is that there is currently the ability to produce enough food to adequately feed the world’s population. The primary problem facing the developing world is the distribution of food and its control. The problem is a not lack of food, but rather lack of access to it. Capitalism has created the supply-chains in which food can be efficiently transported around the world. The motivation for farmers must no longer be for sale and for profits through sale, but for human beings, to satisfy their needs. Malnutrition and actual hunger threaten the working people around the world until the production and distribution of food is taken out of the hands of the capitalists and politicians. The question is this: Will the people eat – or will the food corporations be allowed to accumulate profits as usual. Even bread and milk – the mainstays of life – have not been exempted from the machinations of the economic and political bosses working hand in glove. There is no other way out. Food must be under the control of the people themselves through committees of the consumers and the producers. Such a step will mean more and better food for every man, woman and child.

Edinburgh Branch Meeting

Thursday, March 7, 
at 7:00 pm 

Quaker Hall, 

Victoria Terrace, (above Victoria Street)
Edinburgh EH1 2JL

The Edinburgh branch of the Socialist Party advocates the principles of World Socialism; that is, we seek a change in the basis of society - a change which would end the distinctions of classes and nationalities. The Socialist Party aims at the realisation of socialism, and well knows that this can never happen in any one country without the help of the workers of all lands. For us geographical boundaries does not make rivals or enemies. For us there are no nations, but only fellow-workers and comrades, whose shared sympathies and mutual interests are perverted by our masters who stir up rivalries and hatreds between the peoples in different countries.

Some people try to escape the system. They try to ignore it, whitewash it, pretend it doesn’t effect them. Sooner or later life and the system catches up with them and they discover they are in a class war. Sooner or later they find themselves in a battle. And learn the importance of solidarity. We’ve got to stick together if we’re going to change things. There’s a big class struggle going on. And the question is, what side are you on? 

The Socialist Party has a vision of the future. We don’t have a detailed blueprint, but we do have a theory. And we believe our theory holds up to scrutiny and is inspiring enough to offer a guide.

Socialism - A Bold Idea

The anxiety is genuine and the insecurity is growing, but we in the Socialist Party wholeheartedly reject attempts by those in power to blame immigrants. In situations of growing desperation, many want an outlet for their anger and blame someone or some group of people. Politicians stoke this racism and fear to keep the poor at each other’s throats. Politicians are constantly presenting us with an enemy to focus on, offering messages inciting us to blame immigrants for all our troubles, whether it’s lack of jobs or the problems with health care or education or housing. It’s all rubbish. It is our system of capitalism to blame. It’s very clear that apologists for capitalism have one plan for dealing with the problems it creates: scaring the hell out of people.

The mantra of “immigrants are taking our jobs” comes from people with little knowledge of the job market. The jobs held by immigrants are often either the low-skilled jobs that locals refuse take, or they are professional high- jobs in our science labs, hospitals, and engineering firms that similarly benefit us all. As always, the ruling class will foster divide-and-conquer by racism and national chauvinism. Capitalist society is based on exploitation in which one class, through its ownership of the means of production, is able to live as a parasite class, not producing, but living off the labour of—that is, exploiting—the other class. In capitalist society, too, the fact of exploitation is clearly understood, at least by every worker. We knows that while we and our fellow-workers do all the work, it is the small class of capitalists who enjoy the lion’s share of all that we produces. The nature of the exploitation, that is to say how we are exploited, is not however so obvious, because, unlike the slave or the serf, the wage worker is not legally forced to work for our masters. Yet in fact, like the serf, we work part of the time for ourselves and part for our employer. Like the slave, what we produce is not ours but the employer’s, who owns the means of production.

The trade unions sprang up during the early stage of capitalism as an organisation aimed at improving the economic conditions of the workers within the framework of the existing capitalist system. At first, they considered it as their task to fight only the individual capitalists in defence of the immediate professional workers' interests, without affecting the foundations of capitalist exploitation and without going beyond the pale of the capitalist industrial social organisation. The abolition of competition among workers of a given trade, the restricted access of new workers to it and the resorting in extreme cases to strikes - those were the usual methods used by the old trade unions in order to obtain higher wages, shorter working hours and better working conditions. Despite the fairly innocuous character of the first trade unions the employers and their state opposed them vehemently and tried by violence, repression and legalised bans to destroy them, sensing instinctively that they might develop into dangerous class organisations for the abolition of the capitalist system. The violence, repressions and bans against the trade unions, however, far from failed to produce the result expected. It compelled the ruling class to get reconcile themselves to the existence of trade unions, while attempting to tame them and to turn them into compliant organisations which would regulate relations between workers and capitalists. Adopting this industrial policy towards the workers, the capitalists strove to make them believe that an improvement of their condition could be achieved not through strikes, not through a struggle against capitalist exploitation, but solely through an increase of capital, through an expansion of production, through constantly growing capitalist profits. The capitalists have at their disposal various means of counteracting the efforts of the trade unions, aimed at improving labour conditions, as well as at divesting them of the fruits of their struggle. The trade face limits and chances of success where its results remain insufficient and precarious. They do not create for the working class in capitalist society the possibility of living well, nor do they even substantially decrease the material and social misery in which it lives. The trade unions, however, are not in a position to impose sufficient and lasting improvement. Within the framework of the capitalist system this is excluded. For its attainment, the first condition to break and go beyond this framework.

Despite the billionaire bombast, socialism remains a viable force for change in the world. At present, only small numbers of workers see through the lies presented by the political parties and understand the need for a revolutionary solution. Our goal in the Socialist Party is the creation of a world party of socialist revolution. We oppose any kind of support to capitalist parties no matter how “progressive” they like to style themselves. Elections focus attention on political questions, and we in the Socialist Party seek to participate ourselves. A revolutionary campaign would not promote illusions in reforming the system but would instead expose pro-capitalist policies. We urge working-class people to learn more, to discuss with us the case for socialism, and to join the fight to end capitalism and exploitation through social revolution.

The Cul De Sac of Separatism

In a society of economic scarcity, hardship, and poverty, questions about who is more poor and more needy, among the poor, is directly and indirectly attempting to hide a more important question, why should anybody have to live in poverty and hardship? It is that lack of questioning which allows and drives the development of racism, sectarianism, and xenophobia. The Socialist Party stresses our common humanity. Real or imaginary “evidence” of colour of skin or nationality are used to break the unity of humankind. It is no longer an age of great enlightenment. Something is clearly wrong in a world where a rise in productivity is often seen as a curse and when a system can be driven by arms spending but cannot develop of education, health, or the protection of our environment. Across the world, the state is increasingly failing to deliver any form of social redistribution to the most disadvantaged. And some areas, most of which are in Africa, have seen not just increasing poverty but actual social collapse, brought on by economic crisis, which the state has been unable to prevent.

For sure, in 1917 the Russian Revolution did capture the imagination of people throughout the world and did inspire millions of downtrodden to action. For quite a time people believed a socialist future was being forged. Those hopes vanished a very long ago but it does not show that the socialist transformation is impossible. The failure of the Welfare State exposes that the reformist humane management of the capitalist system is impossible.

To try to maintain their position, the capitalist class cut the pay of the poorest in a myriad of ways and vilified immigrants in the newspapers they owned or influenced. The workers had to be distracted from the rise in inequality and poverty. After decades of innuendo and outright propaganda suggesting that immigration was the main source of most of their woes there were some people who believed the propaganda that all the problems in health, housing, and education were due to immigrants, and some really thought “their” country was being taken over by immigrants, by refugees, and even by Islam. Without the foreigners, they were told, there would be plentiful good jobs for all, without the newcomers, their children would get better schools, without immigrants there would be fewer on the hospital waiting lists, and best of all, we would all live in the house of our dreams, a home currently occupied by asylum seekers who have jumped the council housing queue. Those “non-British” have stolen “our birth-right” is the refrain. All this was said to distract people from looking at who was actually becoming much wealthier. If you spend days, weeks, months, years, telling people they are under threat, that their country has been stolen from them, that they have been betrayed and sold down the river, that their birthright has been pilfered, that their problem is they’re too slow to realise any of this is happening, then, at some point they are going to react. 

Whatever the reason or pretext, however, ruling classes throughout history have instigated or endorsed the oppression of different groups in order to maintain or create divisions amongst those over whom they rule. For the Socialist Party, our aim is to overcome the divisions. Opposing racism and nationalism ultimately means challenging the very foundations of capitalism itself. The idea of one person working for the personal enrichment of another, wage slavery, will be seen to be as odious and ‘unnatural’ as the notion of one person owning another, chattel slavery.

Nationalism is a dead-end remedy. We must empower, educate, organise and fight. This is the only way our lives will improve. There is no automatic socialist future, no guaranteed social progress and no final crisis of capitalism leading by itself to utopia. The choice between socialism and barbarism is still open, and its outcome depends on each one of us. We must create a solidarity without borders, inspired by a vision of change. Building solidarity that consciously connects struggles across borders will be a

formidable challenge, but we must face the future not with fear or despair, but with determination rooted in the socialist ideals which continue to motivate us. “Our“ nationalism is not presented as nationalism, “we” have patriotism. 

“National liberation” or “For Independence!” are  empty slogans which demagogues  fill with a false and even dangerous content.

WHAT THEN IS SOCIALISM?

This is an era of change. New technology and Artificial Intelligence are replacing human labour with automated machinery. This system offers unemployment, hunger, homelessness, welfare cuts, and a plague of drugs. The world is in the midst of revolutionary change. The jobs we once knew are slowly disappearing. We are being replaced by robots, computers and other new technologies in our workplaces. The capitalists are defending their profits and domination by being ever more ruthless in their policies towards the workers and the new class of the dispossessed.  The system can no longer feed and house us or provide us with jobs. Despite the changes in working methods, the relations of production have not been revolutionised by computers any more than they were overturned by the assembly line, electricity, or the telephone: the owners still own, we still work for a wage. The pace of change is so fast, and the power shift, thus so far in favour of the boss, that it’s hard for workers to figure out how to take advantage of the new conditions on the office and factory floor.

We are faced with two choices – either acquiesce or overturn this system. We possess the technology developed enough to end hunger and all want – but only if it is taken from the exploiters and used in the interests of the well-being of all. We are an organisation based on the idea that the economic system should provide people with what they need. We are political party determined to struggle all-out for food, homes, jobs, education, health-care, freedom from terror and drugs. We seek to educate and organise our fellow-workers to wage war on the capitalist system and how society can be reorganised to put an end to poverty and injustice once and for all. Standing in the way of social progress and socialism is the capitalist class who control the destinies of billions around the globe. The conditions for the people cannot fundamentally improve without the overthrow of the ruling class.

Scientists feel that we have until perhaps 2050 before the multiple and massive environmental problems we face will become irreversible. After that, the planet will not support the existing global capitalist civilisation. The ruling class hope that market-based mechanisms and technological innovation will solve our problems.  Without the active participation of socialists with a clear program and concrete ideas, the environmental movement will not bring about the fundamental change needed to resolve the crisis. While some involved in environmental struggles may well guide them in a revolutionary direction, this is not an automatic process. We can shape our own destiny only by embracing Marx’s objective, the society of associated producers.

The Socialist Party’s objective is a society in which “the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all” as Marx says in The Communist Manifesto. This cannot be achieved by authoritarian methods. If self-emancipation is the goal, it must be the means as well. To cite the American socialist Eugene Debs, if a saviour can lead you into the promised land, he can lead you back out again too. The task of the Socialist Party is to help people see through the illusions of capitalism, to understand that we are faced with this stark choice of socialism or barbarism, and to encourage a vision of self-emancipation as both means and end of revolutionary socialist practice, the only means of creating socialism and the essence of what socialism would be. The Socialist Party must help develop the fighting capacity of the exploited through education and organisation and at every opportunity we must expose the capitalist system and uncloak our class enemy. Scarcely anyone but the Socialist Party nowadays trusts in the anti-capitalist sentiments of the working people or believe that they can in time participate in a mighty movement oriented toward socialist objectives. For adhering to these convictions and being guided by them, we are looked upon as ideological freaks and political fossils, ridiculous relics of a bygone era, dogmatists who cling to outworn views and cannot understand what is going on in front of our own eyes. We go against the overwhelming preponderance of public opinion and dulled class consciousness among the workers themselves. In holding to its revolutionary convictions, the Socialist Party is not reflecting a religious-like faith. Our ideas are derived from a scientific conception of the course of world history, a reasoned analysis and understanding of social development. Marxism has clarified many perplexing problems in philosophy, sociology, history, economics, and politics. Its supreme achievement is the materialist conception of history as an explanation of the key role of the working class in history. If the working masses cannot be counted on to dislodge the capitalists, who else can do that job? It is exceedingly difficult to point out another social force that could effectively act as a surrogate for the working class. The struggle against capitalist domination then looms as a lost cause and a socialist world becomes a Utopia. People who pessimistically envisage such a perspective of powerlessness must reconcile themselves to the looming prospect of the end of civilisation and the onset of barbarism. If members of the Socialist Party succumb to such sentiments of hopelessness, we might as well shut up shop. It is the capitalist rulers today have an arrogant faith in the longevity of their system. They firmly believe in an empire assured of perpetual dominion. Those possessing confidence in the longevity of capitalism rule out the possibility that the workers will become more combative and conscious of the nature of the system they confront. The world has hardly been a model of social peace and harmony. A resurgence of workers’ radicalism and militancy may come at anytime. The possibilities are so diverse that it is impossible to foretell where or how the breakthrough will occur.

The Socialist Party is engaged in a struggle to create a world, a socialist society, where people live from birth to death never having to suffer under the chains of wage slavery and end the exploitation of men and women forever. It is what all honest socialists are fighting for. We have no choice but to create a world free of exploitation and want. The working class can only be liberated through its own self-activity. The working class lacks the most basic mass workplace and community organisations, let alone socialist ones. The Socialist Party can help in the process of working class self-organisation toward revolutionary social change. We need socialism more urgently than ever. Being revolutionary does not mean picking up the gun, talking about class insurrection and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Nor does it mean endlessly reciting the works of Marx and Engels. Being revolutionary means acting so as to shorten the time left before a successful social revolution in which the working class take control over their own lives from the old exploiting classes. Anything that advances such a social revolution is by definition revolutionary, anything that hinders such a social revolution is anti-revolutionary. What seems like short-cuts to revolution can often be a dead-ends resulting in frustration and defeat. The working class has colossal tasks ahead of it. It confronts the most formidable and ferocious of adversaries. Yet it possesses the potential of a giant.

Global Protest Against Global Warming

The Socialist Party has a position that it is capitalism which is the main danger to our planet and that a socialist society would be in a better position to look after it. The immediate well-being, safety and survival of the human species is of paramount concern. If socialism were to be established in the near future our first priority would be to rapidly increase the production and free distribution of food, clothing, shelter and essential medical supplies to those human beings in need and to end the miserable poverty caused by capitalism. It is clear, even for many non-socialists, that there is tremendous waste in modern society. So, if certain things e.g. food, shelter, medicine need to be made more available via increased production then it is beyond our capabilities as a species to do so while at the same time curbing needless production in other areas.

Climate change from global warming is the single most important issue we as a species are faced with immediately. We could see vast areas of this planet becoming uninhabitable very rapidly, with huge numbers of people unable to cope with severe climate change and simply dying. If we get this one wrong it could threaten most of our species with destruction. What is obvious to those of us in the Socialist Party, is that capitalism with its short-sighted inept politicians, will not address this issue with any degree of seriousness. Same old story, profits first everything else last. 

Capitalism could happily lead our species into extinction which is another pressing reason why we need socialism. The Socialist Party views the ending of poverty and trying to avert environmental disaster as being achievable at the same time. Marx predicted that the productive forces would transform themselves more and more into destructive forces if they were not liberated from the fetters of private property and profit.  The ever-increasing meaningless commodities of dubious quality has led not only to the pollution of the atmosphere, land and water but created global warming.

Socialism of recent years has lost in actuality by the fact of being postponed to a far-off future. When we talk about the inevitability of socialism, we assume that the workers will continue to struggle for their rights. Were they, on the other hand, to accept the word in a fatalist sense, and think that they could sit down tamely and wait till socialism came to them, they would soon lose all the rights that they have now and become mere slaves. Socialism can only come when the willingness of the workers to allow themselves to be exploited ends. When workers, both politically and economically, are so class conscious and so well organised as to make their exploitation impossible then capitalism ends. That is what we understand by social revolution, and our ideal – that of human brotherhood – is revolutionary, because it is only to be realised by the social revolution. Capitalism has produced a vast number of social ills, and it is very tempting for the politician, to deal with each of them separately and by itself. The more, political parties go on trying to remove theses evils by palliative measures, the more does it become clear that they can only be abolished by the abolition of capitalism itself. Socialism is the first social system in the history of mankind to be introduced by the conscious action of its creators. Capitalism is a structure which can absorb and integrate many reforms and which automatically rejects all those reforms which run counter to the logic of the system (such as completely free public services which completely cover social needs). You can abolish the structure only by overthrowing it, not by reforming it out of existence.

The workers can achieve the understanding that what the overthrow of capitalism is all about in the last analysis is for the associated producers to take over the factories and the whole industrial system and run it for the common benefit of mankind, instead of having it run for accumulating profit and capital for a few giant financial groupings locked in deadly competition with each other. The workers can build the actual organisation through which they can, tomorrow, themselves take over the administration of the economy and the state: freely elected community workers’ committees which will federate themselves afterwards locally, regionally, and internationally. That’s what the conquest of power by the working class really means. There is no other way to develop anti-capitalist consciousness among hundreds of thousands and millions of workers than along this road.

A global day of action is planned for Friday, 15th  March. There will be events in more than 30 cities and towns across the UK including Glasgow. 

In Scotland, many school students intend to walk out in protest at the lack of urgency shown by governments over the looming catastrophe of climate change. 

Slaves to the System

Socialism is revolutionary in that sense, that it is a totally new principle, fraternity and solidarity principle! It is revolutionary, since it demolishes the old foundation and builds on it a new one. But if revolutionary means what is commonly understand by the word, something which has to do with street riots, insurrection and looting, then socialism is far from revolutionary. The Socialist Party seeks to abolish the system, which is the root and source of evil, but this will not happen by killing some individual capitalists or bombing a few corporate HQs. Capitalism is based on wage slavery. The capitalists hire wage workers to produce wealth, give them part of that wealth in the form of wages and keep the rest. We do not sell our labour to the capitalists; we sell our labour power.

To illustrate what a wage slave is, suppose you owned a nice automobile and someone should say to you, "I want to use your car until it is all worn out. I will give it petrol and lubricator oil enough to keep it running until it can’t run anymore." Surely you would not agree to that. You wouldn’t allow anybody to use your car until it was all worn out just for petrol and oil.

But if you are a wage worker that is what you are doing with your body. The capitalists use you until you are all worn out and all they aim to give you is what the chattel slaves got, what the serfs got, what a horse gets, a bare living, and you are not even sure of that. How about your children? You parents spend many happy hours teaching your children how to walk and how to talk. Long years are spent upon their education. When they get to be wonderful young men and women with their eyes brightly shining like the headlights on a new car, and with their veins and arteries like the wiring on a new car, and their hearts beating without a murmur, like the smooth running of new engines, then the capitalists say to the proud parents, "We want to use your children to produce wealth for us and for our children. Just as we have used you to produce wealth for us, so our children want to use your children to produce wealth for them when we are gone."

The parents ask, "What are our children to get for the use of their bodies during the precious years of their lives?" Answer, "Petrol and oil". A mere living wage. The endless chain that starts and ends with work. Work to get money, to buy food, to get strength to work. Every increase in the productivity of labour, every invention, every victory of science and triumph of genius in the line of industrial progress, only goes to increase the wealth of a parasite class while the workers are only supposed to get what slave classes always got, a bare living and often not even that. This is wage slavery, the foundation of capitalism. But capitalism is only a passing stage in the economic development of mankind

The Socialist Party objects to the existing form of society, now known to everyone as capitalist society. Why? Because a few people own the world and the factories and machinery of wealth production. These are the propertied class, including landlords, industrialists and financiers. Most other people have to sell their brains or muscles, in short, their labour-power, to this class for a return in money called wages. This class is the wage-earning class, or the wage-slave class. Wages are not based on the money value of the goods produced or services rendered by the slave-class, but reflect the cost of living. Robbery of the workers is the root of all the world’s troubles. Wage slavery is unable to give us security in our means of life. Production under capitalism is anti-social. It is anti-social because it operates against the interests of the producing class, the great majority. Capitalism is synonymous with violence and chaos. We, the workers, are many, though divided because of ignorance. They, the capitalists, are, few, but strong organisationally, ruthless in policy, grimly determined to increase in power and to perpetuate their dictatorship over the hopeless existence of a robbed class. The thoughtless might conclude that there is no ray of hope for the workers. Indeed, this despairing attitude is preventing many from acting for working class progress. We have reached an era where action may not much longer be delayed if we are to escape the heavy consequence unprecedented in the annals of mankind – global warming.

Society is not a fixed entity. It is an organism, not only capable of change but constantly changing. Everything in the universe, from atoms to solar systems, is continually moving, changing, transforming, developing; likewise, the history of the human race is nothing but a ceaseless change, a continuous development. In the course of its history classes are formed; these classes continually struggle for supremacy and, after prolonged struggle, one class succeeds another in the dominating position. The struggle continues until class divisions themselves are dissolved and a new, class-free society results. But although these struggles and changes are ceaseless, the apparent velocity of these motions greatly varies at different periods. There are times when whole series of important changes take, place so rapidly as to take one’s breath away, to be followed by long periods of apparent stagnation, when social evolution seems not only to be standing still but even to be going backward. Of course, this is only an illusion, for, as a matter of fact, historical forces are continually at work, only their manifestations are of a more spectacular nature at one time than at another.

The necessity of class education is imposed upon the working class by the facts of industry. That striving toward life—the will to live—which is inherent in every living cell of life, makes it necessary to educate the workers in matters that are deleterious to their health, detrimental to their lives and restrictive of their chances of survival. The capitalist system or any system in which one class lives at the expense of and by the deliberate exploitation of another, is opposed to the chances of survival of the workers. Their lives are lived at a hazard by the imposition of adverse working and living conditions. Their meagre share in the social division of the wealth produced by their labour is insufficient to sustain life. To neglect instruction in such vital facts is to mis-educate. And to fail to attribute the facts cited to their cause—a class system in society—is to lie by suppression of the truth. That is why education in class consciousness is necessary. Class systems are not eternal. They are an incident in the history of the human family. Class division is at war with the biological forces that make for humanity’s survival. That is why every class system in society has ultimately been overthrown by revolution. The necessity that gave rise to classes in society has passed. The socio-economic structure capacity to produce wealth has increased to a point where it is more than ample to provide sustenance for all. The final class-free society in which the workers will be the only class, embracing the entire human family, with ownership and control of the means of life in the hands of the collectivity. This is the final solution of social problems—industrial democracy.

Wage-Slave Abolitionists

In the class struggle of the working class to free itself from wage slavery it cannot be repeated too often that everything depends upon the working class itself to take control of the productive forces and manage industry in the interest of the people and for the benefit of society. That is all there is to Socialist Party theory and what the Socialist Party is fighting for. There would be no “bosses” but instead—free men and women, employing themselves cooperatively under administrations of their own making, shortening the work day as machinery increased their productive capacity, building fit houses to live in, growing plenty to eat and creating leisure time enough to enjoy life in the full. This is not mere fanciful wishes from the Socialist Party.  All the workers have to do is to recognise its benefits and possibilities.

 Members of the Socialist Party are wage-slaves with their brains in working order, which means they are today the most fearless, persistent and successful agitators and the most optimistic people in the world. They are not waiting for some so-called “great man” or “good leader” to do something for them, but they are preparing to do all things for themselves. he workers do not want to be patronised any longer by intellectual “superiors.” They are organised upon the basis of mutual service and the superiority of all. The workers are in a great majority and without them every wheel would stop, industry would drop dead, and society would be paralysed. All they have to do is to unite, think together, act together, strike together, vote together, never for an instant forgetting that they are one, and then the world is theirs. They have but to stretch out their millions of brawny arms and trained co-operative hands and take possession. But to reach this point requires education and organization—these are the essentials to emancipation. The workers must organise their emancipation. They must unite in one and the same industrial union and one and the same political party. And the union and the party must be managed and directed by themselves, not from the top down, but from the bottom up. The Socialist Party is different; it’s different for one basic reason – because our Party is a Party of slaves. In this capitalist system we are wage slaves and we are determined not to be slaves any more. But that’s who we are. You go into the job market and basically you sell yourself. You don’t have to stand on an auction block or literally be held in chains like the old days, but it’s the same thing when you come right down to it, only under new conditions. You’ve got to go in there and sell yourself to a master, and everyone who’s ever clocked in knows that’s what it really is, slavery under new conditions: we are wage slaves. They pay us a wage and in turn for it they take and do with us whatever they want. They use us like beasts of burden, like extensions of a machine, to get as much work from us and money out of our work as they can.

The Socialist Party is not a political party that says it represents everybody. We’re not a party that stands up and says we represent both capitalists and the workers, and preaches the idea of harmony between capitalists and the workers, because there can’t be harmony between the slaves and the slave-masters. There can’t be harmony between the exploited and the exploiters because the employing class lives by exploiting the workers – the capitalist lives by exploiting, that’s his whole existence. And we live for the day when we can break those chains of exploitation. We proudly and openly proclaim that are the party of the wage-slaves. We further declare that our class which is now in bondage is not going to put up with it much longer. We’re going to break those chains. We are one mighty class that represents the majority. We’re going to overthrow our masters.

Everybody knows the fact that, young or old, we have to struggle to get a job and once we get it, we’re driven even harder to keep it as capitalists are forever trying to make more profit for themselves out of our sweat. The history of our class is the history of struggle. We’ve been through this struggle to survive every day since we’ve been born. Our whole lives, our whole struggle is preparing us for the big struggle. No matter what they do, every time they beat us back and they bring down violence against us, we pick ourselves up and we go forward as we always have. We all should know about it and be proud of it, learn from it and build on it. We fight in unity with fellow workers in all parts of the world, fighting against attempts to throw people out onto the streets, to let them starve and fighting against attempts to cut wages, fighting to keep wages up, fighting against discrimination. Work is a struggle, life is a struggle, and winning our emancipation is going to be a struggle. This whole system of capitalism forces us to struggle, drives us to unite together to fight back. We learn through our struggle that by ourselves, as one person, we can’t accomplish very much, but when we get together and unite, we can move forward.

This is not a system that can meet the needs of the people. It’s not a system that even considers the question of how to meet the needs of the people. When the slaves start rebelling, they’ve got to throw a few scraps and hope they get people fighting among themselves for these crumbs so they can fasten these slave chains even tighter. The capitalists try to present their system as the best of all possible worlds. But we’re catching on to them that it is due to their capitalist system that we are enslaved, just the same as others like us in countries throughout the world. The so-called free enterprise system is built so the capitalist can be free – free to enslave and exploit us. That’s the only free part about it. Oh yeah, we’re free too, they give us a choice. “You are free to work for me or starve.” And when a crisis comes on like it is now, when they can’t make enough profit out of people, you aren’t even “free to work for me”– just starve. But as things develop and they can’t get over with “this is the best of all possible worlds”– then they come up with their ace in the hole: “Well, it’s the only possible world, so you might as well accept it because things can’t be changed.”

They force us to struggle, they take our blood every day – thousands of workers die on the job every year and millions more are injured. And when they can’t make enough profit, and when they can’t keep their system going just by exploiting us here, they try to put us in uniform and force us to go fight our brothers and sisters in other countries throughout the world. The possessing class talk about all people are created equal, but they don’t believe it. In fact, nobody can practice such equality as long as there are classes in society. As long as there is a situation where you either work for somebody or somebody works for you, how in the hell can there be equality? We can only get rid of all social inequality when we’ve done away with classes, done away with the situation where anybody has to work for anybody else, and we have created a situation where we all work in common for the common good of society and humanity. Under today’s conditions there’s only one class that can make use of these mighty productive forces – these large factories, these plants where there are tens of thousands of workers, and these machines created through the labour of the workers – can make use of this for the benefit of society. And that is the working class whose labour created them and whose labour makes them go.

We can’t do it as individuals, we can only do it in common. Because that’s how we built things – in common. You look at the car you drive, the shirt you have on or the chair you’re sitting on, or whatever else. You don’t know who mined the ore for your car, you don’t know who grew the cotton for that shirt. You’ve never seen that person. Nevertheless, it took all the cooperative efforts of thousands and millions of people to make all these things, to produce and distribute them. That’s basically what a society is about.

The Socialist Party is the party of emancipation. A party of wage slaves who are determined not to be slaves any longer, organised for the historic mission of advancing human society to a completely new stage, to end all the evils and suffering of this capitalist system.  Together with all our fellow-workers throughout the world we will free ourselves and help free all mankind.

Fight Capitalism, Not Just Effects

Our only real future lies with the working class in its fight to end the foul system of capitalism. Our survival is to put an end to the present system of capitalism, where the first and last issue is profit. Profit and more profit. Today profit rules, not the needs of the people. Capitalism is a system where those who have ownership of the factories, the mines, the mills, the land they sit on, the machines, and so forth have everything. It’s a system where those who have no other way to make ends meet except to sell their ability to work to the bosses, must labour to enrich the capitalist, and can work only so long as they do so. When the capitalist finds no further use for a worker, when he finds it unprofitable to continue paying his workers, the wage slaves are thrown out into the streets as additional figures on the unemployment lists. Under their system, democracy is for the rich, justice is for the rich, a good education is for the rich, and medical care is based on your credit-rating. The Socialist Party is an organisation which would help get rid of this system, and build socialism where the people’s needs will be in the first place, a political party which firmly states it is socialist and stands with the working class, and that the only road out of this hell is socialist revolution for class-free society.

Unemployment, dead-end jobs with lousy wages, discrimination, terrible schools, the constant threat of another rich man’s war and the continual destruction of eco-systems. These are some of the problems we face. Partial “solutions”, a few piecemeal reforms, never has and never will end these conditions, and it doesn’t answer the most basic problem people face under capitalism–that it is completely unable to offer them a life with a purpose. Years in a factory or some other job making some capitalist richer, or devoting their life only to raising a family and house, fighting to stay ahead of debt and with nothing their children except life in a system based on exploitation and oppression. This is the future the ruling class offers us, and what we have to look forward to in the years ahead so long as the capitalists’ rule. The only solution to this most basic problem is to overthrow the existing system–a revolution. The Socialist Party recognises that to wipe out this mad-house system requires not piecemeal reforms but one major thorough-going solution - revolution.

For most of our lives we have been preached to about the horrors of socialism, in the schools and colleges, in the media, from the lips of lying politicians. But who, or better yet, what class has been doing this; what class has been trying to poison our minds with anti-socialist venom? And what has been their purpose in doing this? It is none other than the rich ruling class, the source of all exploitation and oppression. It is the same class of people who try to present their system, where the masses of people catch hell each and every day, as the best of all possible worlds. They tell us it is natural for some people to be on top of other people. They say the best thing in the world is looking out for Number One (yourself), and to hell with everyone else. After all they say, that’s just the way it has to be. The ruling class hates socialism, they say it’s bad for the people. For the ruling class it is indeed bad, because socialism will end their blood-sucking ways. For the people, on the other hand, it is the beginning of a new era. It is not hard to see what the motive lying behind the anti-socialism is. The capitalist class has about as much interest in promoting the spread of socialist ideas, as a rat has in the spread of rat-traps. Under capitalism the workers are wage slaves, slaves of the bosses. The bosses run the factories in order to maximise profits. This means that they pay workers as little as possible, that they do not hesitate to maintain unsafe working conditions to save a dollar, and poor quality products are purposely produced in order to increase profits. History has shown that these conditions are always present under capitalism, and cannot be eliminated as long as there is boss-rule of the country

Throughout the world people are being screwed over in a thousand and one ways by the capitalist system. A capitalist has to exploit his workers in order to survive as a capitalist. Are we to fight the capitalists individually? First of all, in industrial battles that in the short run mainly affect one group of the people, think how much the strength and power is increased when all the people take them up. the most important thing for people to understand is that the only way to do away with the misery and oppression which capitalism breeds is to build a united and organised movement against the capitalists and for revolution. If is the task of the Socialist Party to go further and point to the broadest and biggest fight of all: that against the capitalist class for control of this

society. We don’t look for friends among the ruling class. Instead we support the daily struggles of the working class by promoting unity and solidarity, publishing the Socialist Standard that tells the working ’class side of the story, and working towards the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist class.

Socialist Standard No. 1375 March 2019

• Contents
  
• Editorial: Lethal Might Before Needs
  
• Pathfinders: Getting Twitchy about copyright
  
• Letter: A Writer Writes . . .
  
• Dear Theresa…
  
• Cooking the Books: Trump and anti-socialism
  
• Wood for the Trees: Nostalgia
  
• Material World: Ethnic cleansing the desert
  
• Sanctions: Waging war without bullets
  
• What is happening in Venezuela?
  
• Climate change: capitalism can’t cope
  
• The One Big Union
  
• Cooking the Books: What are normal profits?
  
• Don’t sweat the small stuff
  
• Proper Gander: The Hand-Made Tale
  
• Book Reviews: ‘Winners Take All’, ‘The Ideas Industry’ & ‘The Givers’
  
• Book Review: ‘World In Crisis: a global analysis of Marx’s law of profitability’
  
• Book Review: ‘National Populism: the Revolt Against Liberal Democracy’
  
• Book Review: ‘Everything Is Connected’
  
• 50 Years Ago: The Catholic Church and the Pill
  
• Rear View
  
• Cartoon: Free Lunch
  

To the Men and Women of the Working Class

The Socialist Party exposes the distortions, the lies, and crimes of those murderers and enslavers who have refused to treat workers as worthy of respect and having the dignity of human beings. We come to explain to our fellow workers the nature of the struggle in. which they are participating. To tell them of the principles for which we work and fight. To reveal what we are confident is the way out for our class from the horrid nightmare of the competitive struggle which sets nation against nation, class against class, and individual against individual. In opposition to all other parties—Conservative, Labour or nationalist—we affirm that so long as one section of the community own and control the means of production, and the rest of the community are compelled to work for that section in order to obtain the means of life, there can be no peace between them. The eyes of the world are upon you. The choice is yours.

Every man and woman of our class has to make a great decision. We choose whether capitalism with all its attendant miseries and horrors is to remain enthroned, or whether we intend to be free people. Indeed, we shall have to choose whether prefer to remain the tools of the employers and the slaves for their profits. The struggle between individual capitalists to realise profits sets employer against employer. The conflict between national groups of financiers sets nation against nation, and produces war. But despite their individual and national conflicts the whole capitalist class stands united in their common desire to exploit Labour. Hence under capitalism the freedom of the working class consists in the freedom to starve or accept such conditions as are imposed upon them by the employing class. But the freedom of the master class consists in their untrammelled freedom to buy Labour to create profit. Thus, the workers are not free. Neither owning nor controlling the means of life, they are wage slaves of their employers, and are but mere commodities. The propertied class created the State machine by conquering the rest of the community, hence arose the dual character of the class war, manifesting itself industrially through the Employers’ Federations, and reflected politically in Parliament.

The worker today is a wage-slave, bound by the pressure of economic wants to compulsory servitude to idle capitalist masters. We are obliged to sell our liberties in exchange for the means of subsistence. We are under the greatest tyranny of which it is possible to conceive — the tyranny of want. By this lash men and women are driven to work long hours and in unwholesome occupations, and to live in tenement rookeries in our city slums that for vileness would surpass the slave quarters of old. The person who has no work or is compelled to submit to wages dictated by a corporation, and is at the beck and call of a master for his or her working-day. Someone thus conditioned is far from free. The real restrictions today are economic. We are prevented from doing the things we would like to do, not by governmental restrictions, but by limited means. We would all like to take a trip abroad. No law prohibits us, but we are restricted by the lack of the needed material resources – money. Today workers are exploited. Socialism will abolish this exploitation. But it is not only freedom of labour but freedom from labour that socialists seek. With a rational re-organisation of industry, eliminating all the wastes of the present system, two or three hours a day or even a week would suffice to supply all the comforts and even luxuries of life. This would secure to the workers the leisure necessary to enable him to develop their faculties and which could be devoted to recreation and travel. There can be no liberty in economic dependence. Someone who is in want or in the fear of want is not a free. No-one is free if he or she does not possess the means of livelihood. As long as we must look to the pleasure or profit of another for a living we are not independent, and without independence there can be no freedom. Freedom will become the heritage of all as soon as socialism is realised, because it will guarantee to all security, independence and prosperity by securing labour to all and recompensing each according to performance. Socialism contains the only hope. True liberty and freedom can only be attained in the cooperative commonwealth. Wage slavery is obviously only chattel slavery in disguise.

The Socialist Party affirm that all land, mines, factories, all means of transportation, and all other social and welfare service shall become the communal property of the people. Social classes thus being abolished, no person shall have the power to employ another person for private profit. The only hope for the human race is in socialism, that system of society that gives to every individual, without regard to race, colour or sex, an equal opportunity to develop the best within themselves.