Go Forward

The capitalist class has never stopped–and will never stop–its efforts to destroy and weaken the workers’ movement. The capitalists recognise that decisive class battles occur when the working class goes into action, and that is a constant threat to profits. The bosses use their government apparatus to undermine the workers. Members of the Socialist Party are imbued with the revolutionary aspiration for a new society without exploitation. The Socialist Party aims to political militancy, to end the policies of class collaboration, and to develop again throughout the workers movement the historic perspective of socialism. Despite a bloody history of struggle to organise and to improve conditions, reforms have not resulted in a decent, secure life for working people. Reforms only create illusions. Reforms fail to raise the political, class and socialist consciousness of workers. They fail to expose the nature of capitalism. Every gain is continuously rescinded. As long as the ownership of land and industry is under control of the capitalist class, the economy is run solely for the maximum profit interest of the bosses, and their state power is used to protect their capitalist system. Capitalism must be defeated ideologically, politically and economically.

The Socialist Party urge fellow-workers to be guided by the slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all”. Capitalist politicians make pretty speeches. That is the way capitalism operates, the only way it can operate. For the capitalists run things for their own profit. This swindle isn’t going to last forever, of course. The working people will take over the factories, mines, transport and all other means of production. So, our main job is to kick out the capitalists and establish socialism. But that doesn’t mean we can just sit around and wait for socialism. A working class and a people that does not fight for its material needs, and for its dignity, will never get to socialism. We are preparing to dump capitalism and establish socialism.

The Socialist Party is aiming for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class and the creation of a new world system of production. We are for common ownership to directly satisfy everyone’s needs, where production and distribution is controlled democratically by the working class via a worldwide network of local, regional and global administration system councils. Production for profit will end and nation-states and borders will be eliminated. In the process capitalism’s environmental degradation of the planet will be reversed and humanity will be able to plan for sustainable development. There have been no modern wars that are not rooted in capitalist commercial competition. The drive to war is an outcome of the operation of the capitalist system itself. It is not the result of a few mad or bad capitalist leaders and only the overthrow of the capitalist system can prevent war. There is only one war that workers are duty-bound to support – the class war. The Socialist Party does not simply oppose one section of the ruling class but is against the whole system which offers the world's workers death, destruction and misery by poverty, disease and disaster. Capitalism has no future to offer people anywhere. The power to overthrow this system based on profits for a tiny few, stolen from the unpaid labour of the working class, rests in the hands of those workers who must organise resistance and oppose capitalism on their own account

Fight for socialism! We will win!

Futile hopes, empty dreams!

Few can deny that the world today is suffering upheaval, chaos, turmoil and conflict. Against this insane capitalist system, the Socialist Party raises its voice in protest and condemnation, declaring that if our society is to be rid of the economic, political and social ills that plagues it, capitalism must be replaced by a new social system, organised on the basis of common ownership and democratic management of all the means production and distribution and all of the social services. It must be one in which production is carried on to satisfy human needs and wants. In short, it must be genuine socialism. Across a world full of human gore, we, the Socialist Party, reach out the hand of solidarity to our fellow-workers.

Capitalism is the last expression of class rule. The economic foundation of class rule is the private ownership of the necessaries for production. The social structure, or garb, of class rule is the political State with no vital function other than the maintenance of the supremacy of the ruling class.

Goals determine methods. The goal of social evolution being the final overthrow of class rule, its methods must fit the goal. Capitalism laid the economic groundwork for socialism, and provided the class that can bring socialism about. The workers cannot rid themselves of their sufferings without abolishing the domination that the state machine has over them. They can do this only if they gain control of the state machine itself. By doing so, they can end capitalism and reorganise of society. For the first time in history, the state would be in the hands of the majority to be used against the anti-social minority. The important thing is that there will be no need of a public coercive force to maintain the power of one class over another, to protect the property of one from the assaults of the other, to assure the continuation of oppression and exploitation.

Socialism is based upon the planned organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and it is the abolition of all classes and class differences. The purpose of planning, is to assure the harmonious integration of industry with the environment while still raising the standard of living of all. It is the maintenance of capitalist domination of society that demands, more and more, the abandonment of ecological balance and democracy. The raw materials, machinery and labour power of the nation would be brought together into an integrated whole. The waste of capitalist competition and the stagnation of monopoly capitalism would be overcome. Production would not be organised on the basis of the blind push and pull of the capitalist market, but in accordance with the needs of the people. Production for profit would give way to production for use. Capitalist motives for production was, is, and always will be profit. It is not the needs of the people that dictate its production.

 Democratic process and institutions are not merely desirable ideals, but indispensable to the planning of production for use. Who is to determine what is useful and what would satisfy these needs? Will that be decided exclusively by a small board of government planners? No matter how high-minded and wise they might be, they could not plan production for the needs of the people. Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, constant control and direction by the people. The democratically-adopted decision of the people would have to guide the course of production and distribution. Democratic control of the means of production and distribution would have to be exercised by the people to see to it that their decision is being carried out. Otherwise, at best, it would be the benevolent regimentation of the people “for their own good.” A government which declares itself to be for the people, but is not a government of and by the people. Production would be run by the autocratic will of a bureaucracy. Economic distortions, social conflict, exploitation and oppression would inevitably result. Production for use, aimed at satisfying the needs of society and of freeing all the people from class rule, would be impossible. Democratic control, the continual extension of democracy, is therefore an indispensable necessity.

With socialism, there is abundance for all. A rationally planned organised society, sustainably using resources and renewable energy and with better technology to come, could easily assure abundance to all.

Socialism is not a blueprint for society that exists in the minds of the members of the Socialist Party. It is the direction that the people must take in order to save society from disintegration, in order to satisfy their social needs. To be a socialist, merely means to be conscious of this necessity, to make others conscious of it, and to work for the realisation of the goal. In the socialist society we will show that abundance, freedom and equality are not only possible but the natural condition for the new history of the human race.

Why settle for the lesser evil?

SMASH CASH

“heads-I-win-tails-you-lose”

We now face a daunting array of challenges. If we are to save ourselves, we must take an honest look at where we are and then act urgently to get where we want to go. The interests of the workers, as the exploited and oppressed, class of society, are the same in all countries. Capitalist exploitation unites the workers without difference of trade, sex, religion, and nationality, into the one revolutionary force, that is going to build a new world. A vote for the Socialist Party is a vote for yourself. A vote for Labour or a Conservative or Nationalist is a vote for your master. They believe in capitalism and are firm defenders of the profit system and the rights of capitalists to exploit labour.

 If anyone who has a shred of socialist integrity left is to support the Socialist Party candidates against the candidates of the capitalist class. When no socialist is on the ballot, The Socialist Party’s advice to voters, is abstain from voting for either evil, and to mark their voting papers for the Social Revolution. A vote for the small revolutionary party, then – which has no candidates? Yes. A vote of confidence in it and of confidence in the revolutionary tomorrow, so that the dozens and hundreds of today may be the thousands and hundreds of thousands they must number tomorrow

For many years people have been told to vote for a lesser evil. Lesser Evils who, as executors of the system, find themselves acting at every important juncture exactly like the Greater Evils, and sometimes worse. The lesser evil in theory becomes the greater evil in practice. And we are tired of being blackmailed into voting for enemies of the world’s people.

It would be nonsense to argue that a Tory Government would be “better than a Labour Government.” It is equally nonsense to argue that a Labour Government “is better than a Tory Government.” Both governments are anti-working-class governments of the capitalist class.

The Socialist Party seeks to eradicate the basic causes for war, unemployment, poverty and fascism, which it knows are the products of capitalism. We are for world socialism as the only way to abolish all the evils of modern class society.

The tragedy lies in the fact that there is no mass revolutionary party, independent of all varieties of reformist politics, to end capitalist rule and its attendant horrors.

This lesser-evil argument represents the greatest single mistaken dogma on the Left. Socialism is not a matter of helping capitalism solve its mess.

In politics, we don’t believe in choosing the “lesser evil” over a greater evil, when such a choice exists. But these parties are both monstrous evils for the working people. We choose instead something good for working men and women: THE SOCIALIST PARTY!

This is socialism. This is a socialist party

We are socialists because we recognise in it the only principle by which the working-class men and women can emerge as free people and not as mere profit-making machines for the service of others. The future advocated by the Socialist Party is the socialist commonwealth. Our objective is aimed at the right of the community to control for the good of all, the production of its social wealth. The Socialist Party’s goal is a class-free society based on the common ownership and control of the industries and social services to be administered in the interests of all society. Socialism means production to satisfy human needs, not as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Such a system would make possible the fullest democracy and freedom. It would be a society based on the most primary freedom—economic freedom. For individuals, socialism means an end to economic insecurity and exploitation. It means workers cease to be commodities bought and sold on the labour market, and forced to work as appendages to tools owned by someone else. It means a chance to develop all individual capacities and potentials within a free community of free individuals. It means a classless society that guarantees full democratic rights for all workers. Socialism is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people where political and economic despotism has been abolished and class rule is at an end. That is socialism.

If it does not fit this description, it is not socialism—no matter who says different. We must not be swept off our feet by revolutionary phrases and radical slogans. Those who claim that socialism existed and failed in places like Russia and China simply do not know the facts. Socialism does not mean a government command economy or state ownership. It does not mean a one-party system run without democratic rights. Those things are the very opposite of socialism. Socialism has so far never existed anywhere. It did not exist in the old U.S.S.R., and it does not exist in China. When the working class takes control of state power it controls all that is necessary to run production on socialised lines. A dictatorship of the proletariat is unnecessary, the workers being in a majority. There will not even be a rule of the proletariat because the act of socialising the industries automatically abolishes all classes and therefore the proletariat as a class ceases to be.

The Left wants a dictatorship over the proletariat. It argues that the large mass of workers will never become Socialist and will have to be led by an intelligent minority. So, it is willing to unite with any movement of workers, no matter how wrong this may be, in order that they will have some masses to lead. The Socialist Party knows that no leaders are going to pull the workers into Socialism. As Marx stated, “The emancipation of the working class must be the class-conscious act of the working class itself.” An ignorant muddleheaded working class will never be able to act correctly or move in the proper direction no matter how clever the leaders may be. “The day is past,” says Engels, “for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses.” In order to gain a following the left-wingers caters to the ignorance of the masses and so we find its platforms filled with all kinds of petty reforms. The Socialist Party holds that the political party must be a party of no compromise. Its mission is to point the way to the goal and it refuses to leave the main road to follow the small bypaths that lead into the swamp of reformism. The crimson banner of socialism is held high by ourselves and not dragged down into the quagmire of reform. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be overthrown.

The Socialist Party is opposed to violence or the advocacy of violence in the labour movement because it knows that such tactics are playing right into the hands of the capitalist class. It is not cowardice that dictates our position but common sense. In many countries, workers have the right to openly and agitate for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. If we did not have this opportunity then no alternative would be open for us but to advocate the forceful overthrow of capitalism. The capitalists can steal elections, miscount votes, and resort to a thousand and one political tricks, but it is merely tampering with a thermometer — it cannot change the temperature. And the temperature is the organised power of the working class. Let a revolutionary moment arise and unless the workers are organised, all the armed insurrection and physical force will bring us nowhere unless the working class are politically and industrially organised so an invulnerable unity be offered to the master class. Advocacy of violence brings naught to the workers but imprisonment and executions.

 Socialism will be a society in which the things we need to live, work and control our own lives—the industries, services and natural resources—are collectively owned by all the people, and in which the democratic organisation of the people within the industries and services is the government. Socialism means that government of the people, for the people and by the people will become a reality for the first time.

You need to be in the Socialist Party fighting for a better world—to end poverty, racism, sexism, war and to avert the threat of imminent environment catastrophe. The Socialist Party calls upon all who understand the critical nature of our times, and who are aware that a basic change in our society is needed, to join us to put an end to class conflict and all its poisonous results. By placing the land and the instruments of social production in the hands of the people as a collective body in a cooperative socialist society we seek to build a world in which everyone will be free.

The Socialist Party alone of all the organisations on the political field has a concrete, clear, concise, principled vision, the only one possible of inaugurating. The time is ripe for action. It is the responsibility of every class-conscious worker to line up on the side of that organisation that has the conviction, the principles and the tactics necessary to the emancipation of the working class. Right now, the Socialist Party alone points the way to freedom. The only argument ever made against the Socialist Party is that we are small. When the time is ripe for the social revolution, it will be the organisation, no matter what its size, that has the correct principles and tactics that will be the rallying point of the working class.

The Socialist Party never compromises truth to make a friend, never withholds criticism of mistakes lest it make an enemy. It pursues its course unswayed by a desire for temporary advantage. Its integrity of purpose by which it is inspired will, in the long run, win the respect and confidence of our fellow workers.

Feed the World

Many people still believe that hunger is caused today by over-population and that if there were fewer people in the world, then, and only then, could they be adequately fed. This is not so. In the first place, the resources and technology exist now to feed the world’s population many times over. Second, even if the population did decrease substantially, there would still be a hunger problem, since hunger like homelessness is essentially an economic problem, a poverty problem. To say that millions of human beings suffer from hunger because there are too many people is to subscribe to a myth. It is an explanation of a situation which is not based on an examination of the facts. The continued existence of millions of lives endured under the scourge of hunger, malnutrition and starvation is not “natural” or “unavoidable” but is entirely artificial. The so-called population problem is in reality a poverty problem—a problem of capitalism. The Socialist Party argues that the first step to be taken in solving the problem of hunger is to recognise that famines are artificial and that the miseries that they bring are unnecessary and avoidable. The amount of food currently being produced would adequately feed the expected world population for the year 2100.

In the face of this overwhelming abundance why do millions of our fellow humans continue to starve? The situation is clearly intolerable. Food is not produced primarily to satisfy human need, but to be sold on the market so as to realise a profit. No profit, no production. Because the market only recognises effective demand (i.e. demand backed by the ability to pay) people starve within sight of food.

In the 1980s economist Keith Griffin (then President of Magdalen College, Oxford) put the problem this way:

  “The fundamental cause of hunger is the poverty of specific groups of people, not a general shortage of food. In simple terms, what distinguishes the poor from others is that they do not have sufficient purchasing power or effective demand to enable them to acquire enough to eat. The problem is the relationship of particular group of people to food, not food itself.”

Back in the 1970s, Don Thomson who worked for War on Want stated:

  “Experienced disaster and officials now admit . . . that they know of hardly any famine in living memory where there has been an outright shortage of food locally. They found instead that the victims did not have the means to buy.”

Today that assessment is still backed by the findings of aid charities in the field. People can buy food if they have money, but hungry people do not have money. The hungry have no money to buy food at existing prices, so they do not constitute a market. Under capitalism food is a commodity and commodities are only produced when there is an effective economic demand. People experiencing hunger is not the same thing as “economic demand for food”. The world’s food problem does not arise from any physical limitation on potential output or any danger of unduly stressing the ‘environment’. The limitations on abundance are to be found in the social and political structures of the exchange economy.

The problem of hunger cannot be solved within the framework of production for profit. The challenge that faces humanity is that of organising things on a different basis. Class ownership of the world’s resources must be replaced by common ownership. This will be done when the majority of the world's population—we who own no productive resources other than our ability to work—organise to take democratic political action to dispossess the profit-seekers who currently own those resources. Capitalism has neglected the enormous potential of developing countries. The land is there, much of it unused, capable of feeding many times the world’s present population. Producing enough food to feed the world’s growing population is not a problem in itself. We have the technology to get the rest of the world into the position of food surplus that the West has enjoyed in recent years. Producing more food is not the greatest of problems, from the scientific point of view. All we have to do to maintain the world’s population in food is to measure now much food we needed, apply the technology and knowledge we already possess and then grow the food required. In a socialist world this essentially is all we would have to do. The problem, of course as already been stated, is poverty. The hungry people of the world simply do not have the money to buy the food they need and so do not constitute a profitable market. Food production is limited to what can be sold profitably, and its rate of expansion is governed by the rate of expansion of the market for food.

Too many environmentalists adopt positions blaming the victims, the poor, for their poverty. This attitude dehumanises the poor so that they become “hordes”, “floods”, “a cancerous growth" or “a plague of people”. It also, by making the problem seem so enormous, saps the political will to do anything let alone take any meaningful action. In addition, it patronises the World’s poor in particular as they are seen as being helpless victims unable to do anything for themselves. The attitude of the neo-Malthusians is to condemn the poorest of the poor to death. The only framework for a rational solution of this problem is production to meet human needs on the basis of the common ownership of the world’s resources. This means an end to finance and trade, and the problems they bring, and the institution of the planned distribution of food to where it is needed. The answer is really quite simple. The land should belong to all and food be produced to eat and not for sale with a view to profit. We cannot pretend that the object of present society is concern for human welfare. The production and distribution of food is organised as a world business. 

Socialism in Scotland

Edinburgh Branch Meeting
April 4, at 7:00 pm
The Quaker Hall, 
Victoria Terrace (above Victoria Street), 
Edinburgh EH1 2JL

Glasgow Branch Meeting
April 17 at 7:00 pm
Maryhill Community Central Halls, 
304 Maryhill Road,
Glasgow G20 7YE

The very existence of human life is threatened

The Socialist Party offers something unique. It analyses the events of capitalism from a consistent Marxist standpoint. It is not misled by promises of reform of easing any social ills. Experience teaches it that this is futile. So, we shall continue to stand, alone, for the only effective way of dealing with capitalism’s ailments—the establishment of socialism. We have kept the socialist case alive and active. However, capitalism remains and its abolition is urgent. Only socialism will truly set free the people’s talents to build an abundant world of free access to wealth. Socialism will bring the uniting of the human race. The Socialist Party stresses the essential unity of the majority of the world’s people, to give mutual support during the class struggle of capitalism and-more importantly—in the struggle to end class society and replace it with the class-free society of socialism. Our weapons in this struggle are words — discussion, debate, and knowledge. Cogency, clarity, and coherency are vital to our work. We do not indulge in smears, or distort what our opponents say—they condemn themselves out of their own mouths. The Socialist Party tirelessly puts it case, in talks arguments, in speaking and writing. We tell the way out, and we are sure that if you think about it you will sooner or later agree with us.

Capitalism divides people on the basis of their country or their physical characteristics. The Socialist Party is at present so small so it might seem a better political strategy to switch to some vote-catching gimmick. But in the long run this would make our work harder still. It would signal the end of the socialist movement and leave us with the task of rebuilding once more.

The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production, distribution and communication. The working class owns none of these, and therefore workers must sell their labour power to the capitalist for wages in order to live. The worker creates a product of value, part of which is returned to him as wage, and the rest of which is taken from him by the capitalists as profit. Thus, is created the basic antagonistic contradiction between worker and capitalist, since the interest of one is, and has to be, directly opposed to the interest of the other. This most fundamental of contradictions will not end until capitalism with its private ownership and/or control of the means of production is itself ended, and replaced with socialism.

In socialist society, all means of production will be common property. There will be no classes and no class struggle. The consequences of class divided society – racism, national chauvinism, male supremacy, the monogamous family based on property, etc. – will all have disappeared. There will be no wars, no armies, and no need for weapons of war, which will become historical curiosities. There will be no distinction between mental and manual work. Socialism will be a life of material and cultural abundance and any problems arising resolved by mutual cooperation.

Piecemeal reforms cannot solve the problems our society faces. There can be no doubt that a new society based upon common ownership is the only way to end the problems of modern society. Our task is to keep that case alive, to sharpen our propaganda and to make our party into an ever more dynamic force for socialism. All the left-wing parties which said they knew how to humanise capitalism have failed, and the parties which thought they had discovered short-cuts to socialism have come and gone and the socialist proposition still holds the field. We ask you to try socialism.

We of the Socialist Party call on all to fight the political fight on the straight ticket of revolutionary socialism. We will fight this fight on principles which penetrate to the foundations of society in all lands: the abolition of the private ownership of the land and means of production. The Socialist Party is intent upon taking the fight not only into the institutions of the working class but also into the enemy’s camp itself - Parliament. Many arguments have been brought forward which deal with the propagandist and agitational value of electoral politics but there can be greater value in engaging at the ballot box. No important struggle of the workers against the exploiting class can take place outside parliament without having a mighty echo inside parliament. When workers are driven into a big industrial struggle, the state machine operates against them, as witnessed by the miners’ strike of 1984-5. We must fight inside parliament as revolutionaries. Parliamentarism is not an end but a means for the conquest of power.

The Socialist Party holds that power is in the hands of those who control the machinery of government including the armed forces, and that the working class cannot remove capitalist dominance and introduce socialism until, through socialist political organisation, they have conquered the powers of government for the purpose of introducing socialism.

We again place on record the important proposition that while the working class must in self-defence organise on the industrial field, and use their only weapon there, the strike, there is a definite limit to what strike action can achieve, for in the last resort the capitalist-controlled State forces can, and will, crush strikes, both large and small. As for the future and the establishment of socialism, it is obvious that when a majority understand and want socialism this will express itself in the trade unions as well as politically. 

Nevertheless, the key to the achievement of socialism will still be in political organisation and action to gain control of the machinery of government. Or, as it is put in our Declaration of Principles, the working class must conquer the powers of government “in order that this machinery, including the armed forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation.”

Let Us Face the Future

Capitalist production is concerned with the realisation of a profit, not the satisfaction of human needs. No profit — no production, is the criterion, though millions of people are ill-clad, ill-housed and ill-fed. This is something we have said many times, and there are plenty of examples to support our claim.

We need a society which is concerned with the interests of all its members, an alternative to the present world where resources are monopolised by a privileged elite. The Socialist Party seeks a world which is held in common and at the free disposal of all humanity, where the alternative to commodity production for the market is the production of useful wealth directly for human need. The transfer of the world into the hands of all humanity and its conscious democratic control for the human interest is the political aim of the Socialist Party. Our job is to explain to thoughtful and involved individuals that only socialism will liberate mankind's ability to produce a world of abundance.

The capitalist or employing class lives by exploiting the workers; this means that out of the whole product of their labour, the workers receive only a part, and not a large part. Generally speaking, they get sufficient to enable them to work and to bring children into the world who will carry on when they are worn out—just like horses, with the one great difference that a horse costs money and must be fed and tended even when temporarily not required to work, while men cost nothing and can be laid off when work is slack, because their employer is under no obligation to keep them, and knows that they can be replaced at any time. In any industry, therefore, the employers are primarily interested in the exploitation of their own employees. Their interests are served by having production as high, and wages as low, as possible, even to the extent of injuring the health of the workers. An individual employer does not have to consider the health and fitness of future generations, and in consequence physical deterioration has been the lot of the workers in every land under the present system of society. No modification of capitalism can alter this condition of affairs. The solution is to abolish capitalism. Capitalism is only one of the forms of society which have evolved, and socialism must succeed it if poverty, privilege, slavery, are to give way to comfort, equality and freedom. Buying and selling of the necessities of life, should be abolished and a system of free distribution adopted. In a world based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production, production would be merely a technical problem — and we already have the technology to meet the task. With the fetters of profit-making removed, today’s potential plenty would be made a reality.

The essential facts are very simple. The land and the instruments of production are owned and controlled by a comparatively small number of persons. The workers, therefore, can only obtain a livelihood as the beasts of burden, the hirelings, of these capitalists. It further follows that the more of the good things of life the workers can make the fewer labourers need the exploiters hire. It is therefore not lack of necessaries, but the worker’s ability to produce more than is in demand, that enables the capitalists to create that powerful means of keeping the workers poor, the unemployed.

There is, however, one outstanding feature common to all countries irrespective of their size and population. And that is the existence in each nation of a fortunate, privileged minority who never have to contend with problems of poverty or large families because they own and control the wealth of the world. They became rich through the efforts of the working class, and irrespective of their sexual or biological habits, and they will remain in this same economic position until their employees realise the true nature of the system that enslaves them. When this time arrives the age of scapegoats, red herrings and political hypocrisy , no matter how it is sliced, will be at an end. And you can be certain that men and women who have finally obtained their emancipation and freedom, and have become the common owners of the world's wealth, will also have the intelligence to control their numbers according to the desires and requirements of a socialist society.

Remember the next time someone tries to tell you that world poverty is caused by over-population. Tell him or her it’s caused by capitalism’s profit motive.

Stop Being Fooled

In the world today, our fellow-workers are united under no cause whatsoever beneficial to themselves. Because working people consider politics far too complicated, they place trust in others—namely politicians and the government— and remain employed, exploited and enslaved. Capitalism is not a society of unity. It is based on class ownership of the means of life and therefore on class conflict. It cannot be controlled or moulded by politicians or economic experts into something which it is not. It cannot operate in the interests of the majority of its people. It must continue as a chaotic system of poverty, disease and war. All of that is taught to us by experience and by an analysis of capitalism. Capitalism depends on workers selling their labour power for the lowest wage or salary that employers can get away with paying. Workers are educated, trained and conditioned into believing that wage slavery is freely entered into. Unless the working class act to abolish capitalism, the prospect is dismal — a succession of ineffective governments distinguishable only by their style of empty promises and of the excuses they give for their impotence. We have had time enough to accustom ourselves to that idea — and time to act on what we have learned from it. Only knowledge of socialist principles will make the workers proof against being misled by capitalist and Labour Party misrepresentation. All the resources and know-how which, throughout the world, are devoted to "perfecting" the means of killing could so easily be devoted to ending hunger and poverty. But to do that means campaigning not for a change of government or for nuclear disarmament, but for the only line of defence against war — the establishment of socialism.

The fundamental division between workers and employers in the structure of modem society affects all the relationships within it. It affects feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and has a fundamental effect upon the personality of every individual. The child brought up in a family owning a few million shares, a few thousand acres, and four or five houses to live in has a completely different outlook on life from that of the child brought up in the average factory or office worker's semi-detached house on a housing estate. The children born into a family with adequate capital realise as they grow up that they are part of an élite with the freedom to chose how they occupy their lives. They may also realise that, although they will not necessarily do the hiring and firing themselves when they grow up. and may never even see the mines, factories and offices where their wealth is made, their inheritance of capital will make them employers of other human beings. The vast majority of children, on the other hand, become aware that their future depends upon being able to find someone to employ them. If they want to succeed in this, not only their education but their dress, their manners, their attitude to authority, even their political opinion must conform to the standards laid down by employers.

We are born essentially the same living beings as our ancestors of thousands of years ago; but we learn to think and feel and act from what goes on around us. From school, the newspapers and television, we take in the knowledge of the world's hunger and disease. At other times we learn that “butter mountains" are being piled up, milk poured down quarries, wheat burned, or crops ploughed back into the ground. We may not bring these facts together in our mind to raise questions about the system by which society is run indeed we are actually discouraged by the schools and the media from doing so. Instead we are persuaded to believe that the present organisation of society is eternal — even divinely ordained — and that it is ordinary people like ourselves with our selfishness. laziness and greed, who are to blame. And so. unresolved, these contradictions remain at the back of our mind, causing confusion, frustration, and a vague sense of guilty helplessness.

We are taught that hard work and thrift are the recipe for success in our future "career"; and then occasionally we see members of the ruling class in the news, who never do a day's work in their lives and spend money like water, playing at fox-hunting on their ten thousand acre estates, or racing ocean-going yachts, or shooting grouse on their Scottish moors, while our hard-working, thrifty parents get worn out before our eyes with years of work and worry. Our potential for behaving with affection, generosity, trust and creativity is made to seem naive and ridiculous up against the power of wealth in a society of ruthless competition.

All of us. whether we remain relatively sane or not are inevitably contaminated by the social values that provide the real motive power of capitalist society. The behaviour of capital in its urgent, relentless drive to make profit, which can be reinvested as capital to make yet more profit, regardless of human need or suffering, is the essence of avarice or greed. The very structure of modern society, in which the minority own and control all the means of producing and distributing wealth — and employ all the powers of the state to preserve their monopoly this class-divided structure has insecurity and self-interest at the foundations of society. None of us can fail to be affected by it.

Capitalist society is not a collection of individuals with common interests and a common set of guiding principles, it is a society deeply divided, at odds with itself. Class conflict was built into the foundations and shows up every day in its workings. To criticise workers as being selfish, greedy, unco-operative, deceitful, violent, when these are the main characteristics of the nations and the businesses with which we are compelled to be involved all our lives is to add insult to two hundred years of injury. Certainly, these are anti-social forms of behaviour; but then this is an inhuman social system. As long as we, its working-class majority, allow it to continue, we can expect nothing better. It is only by political organisation and action to gain control of the machinery of government can the capitalists be deprived of their ownership. It is not capitalist ownership that keeps the working class a subject class, but the control by the capitalists of the machinery of government, including the armed forces, which alone enables the capitalists to continue owning.

We All Need Socialism

To save the long-term future for our children and grandchildren, we require a social change. We have to do all that is within our power to give them a future in which they can survive. Fundamental changes in our economic system are needed. Since rapid and fundamental changes are urgently needed to save the future, it is perhaps not an exaggeration to speak of the need for a revolution, but a nonviolent revolution. If we do not work with determination and dedication to save our world for future generations, all of the treasures that past generations have bestowed to us will be lost. Socialism is necessary because everywhere we are faced with the contrast between wealth for a few and the poverty for the many.

The Socialist Party puts forward the alternative society. Socialism will be a society in which the whole of humanity, without distinction of race or sex, will own in common all we use to make and distribute wealth. Common ownership means a society without classes, without privileges, without different standards of consumption. In socialist society everyone will have free access to the world’s wealth and will stand equally in that respect.

Socialism will be a world community without frontiers. Based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. Articles will be produced, not for sale or profit, but solely for people to use. Within this framework we can clear up once and for all the problems that are built-in to capitalism — the problems of housing, education, transport, health, pollution. racism and the others the orthodox parties and politicians are forever promising to solve. We can create a world of plenty where, as free men and women, we can co-operate to produce an abundance of wealth to which we can have free access according to our needs.

Socialism will produce its wealth for human use instead of for sale. This will make it a society of cooperation instead of competition. There will be no frontiers to divide the world’s people. Socialism will be one world, with one people working together for the commonwealth. Socialism will be an efficient world, in contrast to capitalism, where waste and shoddiness are profitable. For the first time, men and women in socialism will realise their capabilities to the full. Socialism will produce an abundance and at only one standard — the best we are capable of.

The Socialist Party is not another collection of leaders telling you to trust us and promising you almost anything for the sake of winning your vote. No leader can give you socialism, no clever politician can pull you by the nose into the new society. Neither will it happen by accident.

Trying to reform capitalism in this way has proved time and again to be futile. Capitalism is a class society that can work only for those who live off rent, interest and profit.

Socialism must be your work; it needs a conscious political act by the mass of the people, opting for the new society in full knowledge of what it is. It comes to this — only if you understand socialism and want it. Everyone who joins us in the struggle against this pernicious social system is helping to make the life of capitalism shorter and helping to bring about a sane and rational social order.

The world is a divided society

There is massive cynicism and distrust of the system, its inability to provide basic services, its failure to deliver the necessities of life and its unaccountable bureaucracies that rule our lives. After a campaign we are faced with yet the need for another.

Socialism is the socialisation of the means of production and of production and democracy is the means to this end. Socialism without democracy is unthinkable. Nevertheless, democracy occasionally might become unsuitable, or even a hindrance to our aim. It is a question of the conquest of political power. The possibility exists of a socialist party becoming the majority at an election, yet the ruling classes could make use of all the forces still at their command in order to prevent democracy asserting itself. Therefore, it is not by democracy, but only by a political revolution that the workers can conquer the political power. Should a ruling class, under the suppositions here discussed, resort to force, it would do so precisely because it feared the consequences of democracy. And its violence would be nothing but the subversion of democracy. Therefore, not the futility of democracy being demonstrated by the ruling class attempting to destroy democracy, but rather the necessity for the working class to defend democracy

We live in a world where the vast majority of men and women are living under the yoke of wage slavery. Capitalism remains the enemy of humanity, it cannot be reformed and the only solution is to build a new social system. We are still a long way from bringing that day of Revolution closer, but it is only through the educational and preparatory politics of today, through confronting the ideas of the system, can we prevail. Socialism is the only road out of the crisis of capitalism, the only road out of exploitation and oppression, the only road that can prevent war and reverse climate change. Working men and women of the world rise up and wage the class struggle. Rally to the red banner of the Socialist Party. We have a World to Win and a Planet to Share. Today is a turning point.

Our goal is the abolition of every kind of exploitation and oppression, be it directed against a class, a party, a sex, or a race. We seek to achieve this object by supporting the working-class struggle, because the workers cannot free themselves without abolishing all causes of exploitation and oppression. The socialist revolution will put an end to capitalist exploitation and all the forms of oppression that inevitably accompany it. The heart of socialism lies in the refusal to accept that what is will always be. Change is inherent in the very fabric of society. To find people seeking social change you don’t have to go back to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, to the ideas of the Levellers and Diggers, to the agitation of Chartism, the revolutionary upheavals of 1919 or the General Strike of 1926. Within living memory there have been historic clashes of interest between the ruled and the rulers. There have been the class war and the union battles of the miners, the fire brigade union, postal workers and dockers. Where there’s exploitation there is resistance. Things never stay the same: opportunities will arise to assert the working class’ interests.

In revolutions people and institutions are transformed very rapidly. Ideas, aspirations and actions which would have seemed impossible a year or ten years earlier suddenly come within the grasp of masses of people. Social revolution is the hope of the people.

The Socialist Party declares that its purpose is a social revolution. A social revolution means nothing more or less than adoption of a system of production, distribution, and consumption which is based on common ownership in place of the present inconsistent and anarchistic system of private ownership based on the power of capital. We cannot define the method by which the social change will occur. But even now, during this stage the Socialist Party does not confuse revolution and violence with one another. Violence and bloodshed do not make any movement revolutionary, and essentially, they have nothing in common. Being an organisation which stands for humanity and the attainment of its general happiness and well-being, the Socialist Party hopes that its victory will be accomplished by peaceful revolution. The Socialist Party is also aware of the fact that the success of the social revolution is guaranteed only when it occurs at a historic moment, at the moment when the minds of the people and the events have matured for it. Therefore, our greatest task is to educate and organise the working class so that it will become capable of carrying out this historic mission.

The Socialist Party works for the revolution, its struggles for the well-being, for the self-respect, and for the self-consciousness of labour.

Eco-Apocalypse

It is quite clear that with production carried on for profit and not for use, with the means of production used, not for the purpose of satisfying human needs but for exploiting human labour in the extraction of surplus value, waste is absolutely essential. The capitalist system involves the persistent production of a mass of commodities which must be got rid of some­how if the wheels are to be kept going around. Thus, under capitalism, wilful waste is the essential corollary of woeful want. There exists waste in every industry, represented by the production and distribution of things which are useless and worse; adulterated and shoddy, made only to sell and to fall to pieces as soon as sold.

Under the capitalist system, with production geared to private profit, society’s resources are squandered in a thousand and one ways. Any High Street demonstrates this, with shops full of goods made more expensive by the duplication of product brands and built-in obsolescence. To combat waste, we are often urged to recycle. Recycling is, of course, a good thing. It is often the first step that most people take down the road towards environmental awareness or action. However, it is also very much a diversion. Simply putting “Please recycle this product when finished” on the outside of a drink can gives the manufacturer a green image, even though they are producing millions of “use once”, throwaway containers. The recycling industry gives the impression that something is being done about waste and stops people questioning why so much stuff is produced in the first place. Packaging companies want to shift the blame for “waste” onto the individual consumer. Why don’t we have reusable bottles? Why do we need disposable razors?

All the waste traceable to operations of a capitalist system, waste which drain the wealth of the world at a hundred thousand points, will never be fully uncovered this side of a socialism. Capitalism is inherently wasteful. If we are to save the planet, we have to fundamentally change how society uses, manufacture and treats the goods that currently form such an important part of our lives. All those unrepairable appliances, change with the fashion clothes, and the mountains of disposable packaging are actually not the product of an economy that delivers its benefits to most people. On the contrary, the biggest beneficiaries of consumerism are those at the top.  a system that unscrupulously exploits not only nature, but also human life and labour.

Nothing at all approaching to such stupendous outlay on sheer economic waste has been heard of in the entire record of the human race is that of war and the armament industries preparations for war. One would think that if the true costs of waging a war were dispassionately examined, war would be deemed unacceptable by all. Unfortunately, there are those who stand to benefit.

One of the biggest waste is undoubtedly unemployment at the cost of the demoralisation and misery of the unemployed and their families.  Unemployment represents a monstrous waste of society’s resources in terms of what the unemployed could contribute to production. Capitalism’s attitude to people is the same as everything else. Cast aside when no longer required. It is a system that unscrupulously exploits not only nature, but also human life and labour.

A Revolutionary Party

The working class are the creators of all wealth in society. Under the rule of the capitalists, there can be no freedom for the workers – only freedom to be exploited as wage slaves. The Socialist Party says plainly that mere reform of our existing society is impossible, or if possible, useless. When the foundation is insecure, and the edifice is crumbling, there is nothing for it but to build anew. We in the Socialist Party are revolutionists, not reformers in that we have no confidence in any measures of amelioration. We shall not throw our lot in with silly or self-seeking charlatans nor waste another moment in considering their contemptible social reforms.  The emancipation of the wage-slaves will not fall, like manna, from heaven. Nor yet will they be led into freedom, as into the promised land, by inspired leaders of mankind. The workers will only be freed by those whose interest it is to do so—the workers themselves.

Wherever people work for wages, they have been robbed of the land, the mines, the factories and so on; and they are steadily robbed of everything they produce, because it doesn’t belong to them when they have made it.  It doesn’t make any difference if the state nationalises some, or all, industries — as we know in this country — the people still don’t own them. That is why they have to sell their energy and skill to those who do own them — and the state can be a more powerful and ruthless boss than private companies. In socialism it will belong to them. The land and factories will belong to the whole people. But that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world yet. It is the next stage in the evolution of society — the system to supersede capitalism. The sooner we make the change-over the better.

Every time a war ends, they say, “Never again.” Every time trade picks up after a slump they say, “It won’t happen again. We learned the lessons.” They try trade agreements, altering the bank rate, juggling with currency rates. None of it works: recessions still happen, just as there is always a war going on somewhere these days. If things improve, the government takes the credit. If things go bad they blame the previous government or another country. The truth is that they have no control at all over the economic convulsions of capitalism, because they are uncontrollable. Recessions and wars are essential phases in its progress. They restore a sort of balance for a few years. But what a ramshackle way of organising the production and distribution of goods in the world. Their computers are never programmed to tell us how world socialism, with production for use not for profit, would employ the earth’s resources. They assume that production for profit will go on forever, and then argues that this system must be reformed to prevent it from destroying mankind’s habitat. Better surely to argue for an end to capitalism, since it is a system which generates waste and seeks constantly to increase the quantity of materials processed, year by year.

Everywhere the capitalist “mode of production” prevails: we see men and women who possess no land, no tools, nothing, who are driven by fear of want to sell their labour-power by the week or the month, mortgaging their lives in instalments so as to survive till the next pay-day. We see them producing goods galore, “an immense accumulation of commodities”, all their own work, yet they remain unable to afford most of what they need. We see human toil and human skills diverted from man’s real needs — food, clothing, health, housing, culture — to pander to the aristocracy of Big Business, the wasteful war-machine, the accountants, the luxury resorts, and so on.

This is what the Socialist Party oppose: the global system of exploitation of the many by, and for the benefit of, the few. A system which combines wanton waste with wasteful want.

Labour Lies

The Labour Party was not formed to replace capitalism by socialism, nor has it ever stood for a socialist object. Herbert Morrison repudiated any suggestion of Labour Government wishing to end the profit system. The Labour Party seeks by reform measures to stimulate capitalism while trying to curb its harmful effects. Pledged to retain capitalism, it cannot remove the evils of capitalism. Capitalism’s need for a National Health Service was expressed by all parties standing for capitalism. Nationalisation is not socialism but an expedient of capitalism. Openly capitalist powers have nearly all nationalised where necessary. Despite the efforts of Labour Governments, working class problems remain. Housing and healthcare are sacrificed to bail out the banks and industrial barons. Any politician who is promising a better life soon is dishonest.  The Labour Party is not a class party. It does not aim at socialism. The Labour Party works for capitalism. Despite the “bleak” outlook forecasted for workers, profits had risen. The “socialism” of the Labour Party has benefited only the capitalists. The Labour Party, so far from assisting the emancipation of working people, hindered it, in their pursuit of the will-o-the-wisp of social reform. For all their reforms the problems remain. It is not a bogus claim to make that if the factors causing war and unemployment continue that these things will re-appear. The Labour Party does not spread socialism but disillusionment. What can the Labour Party offer now?

That wealth exists on this planet in abundance is well known. But the distribution of this wealth proceeds according to the social relations of society. These are capitalist relations, resting upon the capitalist ownership and control of the means of production. According to the Left’s plan these relations would remain, only the wealth would be redistributed by cutting down on big fortunes by increased taxation and adding to the small ones or giving to those that have none via tax credits and benefits, and among the “radicals” the Universal Basic Income. But this is impossible under capitalism since the ownership and control of the means of production determines the form of distribution of all wealth. So far this has meant and can only mean ever greater riches for the parasites and ever greater impoverishment for those who toil, who have nothing but their labour power to sell – and to sell only when the bosses see fit to buy. What is the cause of this unequal distribution of wealth? The cause is to be found in the ownership and control of the means of production. This system secures the right to exploit labour by leaving in the hands of the capitalist class also the ownership of the surplus value produced by the labourer over and above what he receives as wages. This is how profits are acquired. Moreover, under the conditions of mass production, and in order to continue the process of production, wages only sufficient for their bare upkeep when they have jobs. Of course, the abundance of wealth available could easily guarantee to each family, a decent standard of life. But this is equally impossible under the profit system and it can be obtained only when the profit system is abolished.

Jeremy Corbyn declares in self-righteous indignation for the redistribution of wealth; but he is equally vociferous for the maintenance of the present social relationship. Labour Party policies assume the continuation of the right to exploitation, however, with an increase of the purchasing power of the masses so that returns to bondholders in the form of unearned incomes may continue; so that dividends on shares may be paid and the now of profits taken out of the exploitation of labour may proceed uninterrupted. There are no other sources for profits to come from. What is this but the stabilisation of the system of exploitation? To stabilise the system of exploitation means to stabilise the economic power of the class that owns and controls the means of production. It is also well to remember that political relations are governed by this economic power which is another way of saying that those who own are also those who rule. They use their economic power to build up their political state, to build up their government and to reinforce it by courts, by police and by military forces, always ready to be used against the workers when on strike or in other forms of struggle and on a whole serving for the purpose of keeping workers in subjection. The ruling class  will not consent to any redistribution of their wealth without political resistance. They will not even permit the workers to organise into unions so as to obtain a living wage without the most stubborn opposition. They will not yield their economic power, as represented by their accumulated wealth, or give up their privilege to exploit labour. They use this economic power to determine who can be elected to the public offices and to dictate the programmes of those elected and its execution as well. A real redistribution of wealth and implementation of real economic security can be carried out in no other way than by the overthrow of the system of capitalism. That is not at all the purpose of Corbyn’s Labour Party. Only the working-class revolution can accomplish that.