Against the Nats and Independence

WORLD SOCIALISTS

The All Under One Banner (AUOB) group are planning the largest ever march for Scottish independence in Glasgow next month, Saturday, May 4. It hopes to attract more than 100,000 people.

Manny Singh of AUOB declared, “The message is simple and it has not changed. Scotland must become an independent country, and Scotland needs to decide its own future.”

Members of the Socialist Party ask in what way is the life of a Scottish wage slave basically different from that of an English, an American, or the Chinese wage-slave? There is no basic difference in the way of life of the world’s working class because we all suffer from the same problems such as poverty and insecurity. Independence from England will not cure the poverty and insecurity of the Scottish workers, because we will still be subject to the wages, labour and capital relationship.

Workers have more in common with people like ourselves in other countries than with the privileged owning class of the country where we happen to have been born and work. The world-wide working class has a common interest, to end its exploitation and solve its problems, to join together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the planet will have become the heritage of all, so that there can be production to meet needs and not for profit. One World - One People, where cultural differences will still be celebrated, but where we’ll all be citizens of the world.

The interest of the working class in all countries is to reject all nationalism and to recognise that they have a common interest with people in other countries in the same economic situation of being obliged to sell their mental and physical energies in order to get a living. That interest lies in working together to establish a world-wide society of common ownership, democratic control, and production for use, not profit.  

Independence will not give the people of Scotland effective control over their own affairs.It is only feasible in a class-free, money-free, frontierless society. It is for the Scottish workers to see that their position demands that they should fight only for their class emancipation and that nothing, constitutional reform or national independence, should draw them away from their determination to fight for the realisation of socialism. What is the “independence” some Scots yearn after, if it means being trapped inside the confines of capitalism?

This is what we mean by socialism

Socialism will not be and cannot be established by decree. It cannot be legislated into being by any government, no matter how admirable. Socialism must be created by the people, must be made by every worker. There is no other way. Humanity must choose between the continuation of the capitalist system which leads to destruction or socialism which will make the Earth one country single and indivisible. Capitalism means conflict and bloodshed. Socialism stands for peace and the end of war. Socialism means peace and freedom for the entire world. Wars are inevitable under capitalism. Only socialism will bring permanent peace.

Workers must acquire a clear understanding of their real position under capitalism, of the nature of capitalist society as a whole, and of their mission in history. They must act consciously for their class interests. They must become conscious of the fact that these class interests lead to a socialist society. When this takes place, the workers are a class for themselves, a class with socialist consciousness. Against the ideas of capitalism and reformism, the Socialist Party works for the ideas of socialism. It combats the insidious ideas of capitalism so that the working class as a whole may be better equipped to fight its enemy. To imbue the workers with this rounded-out class consciousness, or socialist consciousness; to organise the struggle for socialism – that is the function of the Socialist Party. Socialism cannot be achieved, and the workers cannot effectively promote their interests, without class consciousness. Class consciousness means an understanding working class, a self-confident and self-reliant working class. The Socialist Party needs to win the working class to the principles of socialism. Socialism will never come by itself. It must be fought for. Without an organised, conscious socialist movement, socialism is impossible. The socialist revolution is the overthrow of capitalist despotism and the establishment of workers’ rule.

Capitalism is a world system, and it can be ended only on a world scale. The Socialist Party is internationalist because it considers nationalism reactionary and it is the brotherhood and equality of all the human race which is our aim. We consider that national frontiers have become an obstacle to further economic and social progress and a direct contributing source to conflicts and wars. It is internationalist because it understands that the class-free socialist society cannot be established within the framework of one country alone. Socialism cannot conceivably be restricted to one country, no matter how big it is. Socialism is world socialism, or it is not socialism at all. Just as socialist economy could not exist side by side with a capitalist economy in one country, so a socialist nation could not exist side by side with capitalist nations in one world. A socialist people would understand, to begin with, that “socialist” and “nation” are mutually antagonistic words. Socialism is worldwide , and to the extent that more and more nations wipe out the national divisions and unite their economies for socialist production, to that extent would the benefits flow more lavishly to all the people.

The struggle for socialism can best be conducted under conditions that are most favourable to the working class. The most favourable conditions are those in which the working class has the widest possible democratic rights. Hence, it is to the interests of socialism and of the working class to fight for the unrestricted right to organise, the right of free speech, free press and free assembly, the right to strike and the right to vote, the right of representative government, and against every attempt to curb or abolish these rights. It is the capitalist class which is, by the very nature of its position in society, anti-democratic. Its monopoly of wealth and power denies the common people real equality in the exercise of democratic rights. The more the ownership and control of the means of production and exchange are concentrated in the hands of the few – the greater is the centralisation of authority and power in the hands of the state and the further are the masses removed from control of economic and political conditions. Without the attainment of democracy all talk of the conquest of power by the working class is deceit or illusion, and that without the realisation of complete democracy all talk of the establishment of socialism is a mockery.

First ,it must be pointed out that there is no socialism “in practice” in Britain or anywhere else. A few nationalised industries which pay profits to the recent private owners in the form of interest on government bonds – profits at the same rate as under private ownership – can hardly be called socialism. A few nationalised industries directed and controlled by the late private managers now given fancy positions on government boards, while worker participation in industry control is only an empty gesture, is not socialism. Production for the market, with emphasis on export trade, as is the case in the UK, is not socialist production.

Scots in Debt

Nearly 700,000 people in Scotland have problem debts or are at risk of having them, a  Debt advisory charity StepChange Scotland report has warned.

StepChange Scotland which helped 30,000 people struggling with money issues last year, said council tax arrears were a problem for 46% of them.  The charity said those they helped had on average £12.64 a month after paying housing, heating and council tax.

Problem debts were "primarily a symptom of poverty, poor housing conditions, welfare cuts, ill-health and insecure work", the report said.

Sharon Bell, head of StepChange Scotland, said, "The vast majority of StepChange clients are in problem debt due to circumstances they could not have prevented or planned for, such as unemployment, ill-health or reductions in income. We are seeing a record level of demand for help with problem debt with over a third of our clients having an additional vulnerability, such as illness."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-47860914

Who we are

The Socialist Party is the party of the working class despite not receiving its mandate at the polling booth. The working class, the only class without which society could not exist, is the coming ruling class, and its emancipation, which will follow the abolition of the wage system, will mean the freedom of humanity, based upon cooperative industry; and it will also mean the end of the brutal struggle for existence in human society and the beginning of the first real civilisation the world has ever known. If someone seeks to make his or her vote count against the private ownership of the earth and the tyranny of class rule and for industrial democracy and the freedom of the race will cast that vote for the Socialist Party. It is the only party that believes that the people have capacity for economic and political self-government; the only party that proposes to make this in fact a government of and by and for the people. The Socialist Party proposes to transfer the sources, means, and machinery of production and distribution from the private hands to the collective people, so that wealth may be produced in abundance, not to enrich a small class, but for the comfort and enjoyment of all. The Socialist Party insist that the basis of exploitation — the use of men and women for personal profits and power — lie in the capitalist system. Reforms do not remove the villain of the piece from the scene of action. 

The ideas, demands and movements of workers’ participation, workers’ control, self-management, direct workers’ rule, workers’ democracy, etc., are deeply rooted. These ideas imbue and permeate, in one way or another, the rise of world socialism. The Socialist Party’s declared purpose is to abolish the wage-system, and supplant it by a system of industrial co-operation in which the workers themselves shall have full control for the community’s benefit, and to this end recognise the necessity of organising the political power of the working class to attain industrial democracy. To gain control of production and distribution for the benefit of mankind instead of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party. 

Socialism is not about getting more wages, less hours and better conditions, but of acquiring political power and social control as the means of solving social problems for the workers, and of making the workers themselves representative of a new society working for the good of all and the profit of none. Socialism is industrial democracy. The Socialist Party is the great foe of capitalists and is intent upon insuring the free development and the liberation for the workers in society and the liberation of society. The capitalists are a class, a useless, dangerous, parasitic minority that can be dispensed with. 

Socialism is not government ownership or control of industry. Socialism struggles for the end of the state, not the enlarging of its functions. The state is an instrument of capitalist class rule. The present parliament, army, police and courts serve the interests of the capitalists. Socialism, in the words of Engels, is not the government of persons, but the administration of things. Socialism is the reorganisation of society on the basis of ownership by the working people of the land, mines, factories, means of transport, as well as the health, educational and cultural services required to fulfill their needs.  A true socialist society must be change from a capitalist system of ownership, exploitation and control to one of ownership, administration and control of the affairs of a nation by the men and women who produce its wealth. In the place of the present system of society where crime and poverty are rampant, a new society will arise. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of working people. No attempts to reform the system can do away with this exploitation. The only way workers can come to control society and create a society based on freedom and a decent life for all is through revolution.

The Socialist Party is internationalist. The working class is an international class and socialism must be an international system. We campaign for solidarity with workers in other countries. We oppose everything which turns workers of one country against those of another. We are only "patriotic" for our class, the working class. We realise that as workers we have no country. The flags and symbols mean naught to us but oppression and tyranny. As long as we quarrel among ourselves over differences of nationality we weaken our cause, we defeat our own purpose. The whole world is now chained to the capitalist system. Socialism must be achieved by the independent action of the working class. The liberation of the working class can only be won by the struggles of workers themselves.

Ideas must be met with ideas

The distribution of wealth begins in the process of production and the fight over the surplus it produces. This is the heart of the labour-capital relationship and of the accumulation process. Capital accumulation will become a source for further expansion and greater exploitation, strengthening the hand of the bourgeoisie over the workers and intensifying the exploitation. The working class has always been inspired by one idea—the overthrow of capitalist society, built on slavery, exploitation and violence. In this struggle of labour against capital, the working class can win only by mustering all their forces against the common enemy, bound in one strong proletarian organisation. This is why for the working class, in order to save itself from economic enslavement and from the menace of war—unity is imperative. It is up to the workers to be ready, and resist with a might never exerted before. Every determined fight binds the workers together more and more and so prepares for the final conflict. Every battle lifts the curtain more and more, clears the heads of our class to their robbed and enslaved conditions, and so prepares them for the acceptance of socialism, and the full development of the class war to the end of establishing socialism.  A win at football is the result of many moves and counter-moves. We do not lie down when our side loses a goal. No, we pull up our sleeves determined to get two goals in return. Let us be up and at ‘em. We attack where we are strong and we attack when the opposition is weak. It’s the “battle plan” for the working class in class warfare.

Without a clear understanding of basic questions, we will hesitate and flounder in confusion. And the capitalist class will gain and keep the initiative. There is no logic, no pattern to the capitalist system. Its apologists and its defenders are almost always wrong. The enemy’s cynicism, the demagoguery and the ability to shift principles are there for all to see.

Certainly, the day-to-day struggle over conditions of work and pay do not automatically lead to revolution; these struggles have been going on in Britain for 300 years; and we would surely have had a revolution by now if they were sufficient. And near on a hundred years of experience of the Labour Party politicking should be enough to convince us that reformist roads to socialism are doomed to fail. The capitalist state is strong enough to accommodate the gradualist manoeuvres of the left wing. Revolution will only occur in Britain when the working class mobilises to assume overthrow the whole capitalist class and assume control over its state machine. The working class is fighting – it has always had to fight for its survival – but that fight is not yet conscious. People learn through the ability of the Socialist Party to sum up the experience of the working class, not simply by hearing abstract calls for socialism.

Racism, nationalism and sexism are the scourges of the working class. It is used by demagogues to set working people at one another’s throats, to prevent a united working class from confronting the capitalists in a powerful class struggle that could put an end to oppression and exploitation once and for all. Capitalism only survives because of its ability to divide and conquer. For peace and good will among the workers of all races, creeds, sexes and nationalities is the beginning of the end of the rule of the bosses. The ruling class knows this all too well. The workers have been slow learning this lesson. The destruction of every barrier; racial, religious, national or otherwise that divides the workers is the first step in strengthening our class. Clearing away all the differences that have been planted in the ranks of the workers by the employers and their stooge politicians, will demonstrate the solidarity of the working class. This solidarity will inevitably express itself in the economic struggles. 

More importantly, these economic struggles will intensify the class struggle, heighten the political thinking of the workers and impel them to decisive political action against the bosses. The employers of the workers are members of another class, an enemy class that conducts continual class warfare against the workers as a class. The bosses know the source of the workers’ dissatisfaction and unrest, that it springs from work, living conditions, and place in society. The argument often used was that if the company’s profits went up by such and such a percent, so the workers’ wages should go up that much, too. With a better understanding of the workers’ “fair share” of the capitalists’ pie-in other words, the crumbs, we try to show how it boils down to a question of one class against another, with no common interests between them.

On with the battle of ideas

The Reality of the Real World

Something dangerous is happening. Manipulation of the media has become one of the growth industries where fake-smiles present fake news offering fake facts. People are abdicating their power to control their own lives to those committed to the continuation of their exploitation and whose task is to trample all over their political intelligence. All sorts of people who profess to know the facts go on telling us that the old inequalities have disappeared and the rich are no longer with us. Something dangerous is happening and it is only if we all organise ourselves for ourselves that it can be overcome.

But the facts are not really in dispute. The ownership of land, factories, transport, etc, is still predominantly vested in the numerically small capitalist class. Capitalism has performed the historical task of clearing the way for socialism; apart from anything else it has reduced the class struggle to one where there are only two classes. When the working class have won the struggle they can set up socialism immediately; there is no need for any half way house.

The proponents of a transitional society never define it in any concrete terms; what sort of class structure will it have; who will own the means of production; will there be a coercive state machine? When the international working class want socialism they can have it; the socialist revolution is the next step in social evolution and there is nothing in between.

The Socialist Party stands in opposition to capitalism, a system of minority power where the productive machinery is possessed by a minority class: 10 per cent of the British population own more than half the accumulated wealth. Under capitalism the vast majority of people own no major stake in the productive machinery—they only own their mental and physical energies which they must sell to capitalists. The working class is in a position of compulsory exploitation, and are only permitted to produce wealth if it can be sold on the market. And it will only be sold on the market if it is profitable for the capitalists. In other words, wealth is produced under capitalism for profit and not for use. If there is no profit there are devastating consequences: food is dumped in the sea while people starve; cars are left standing in fields; homes remain unoccupied; workers are actually paid not to produce wealth. The Socialist Party seeks to end the profits system, not to re-arrange the furniture within it. Our message is quite clear: abandon the broad church; reject the high priests of the Labour Party and their self-appointed vanguards; dismiss the archaic dogma of reformism.

When workers understand socialism they will consciously and democratically organise their own emancipation. You cannot get social change in the interest of the majority of the people unless the majority of the people want it. If the state is not used by the working class it is going to be used against the working class. So a socialist majority must gain control of the state machine. The socialist majority will elect delegates to do what the workers want, not leaders to act on our behalf. The ruling class cannot rule without the acquiescence of the working class. Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto that the socialist revolution will be unlike all previous revolutions because it will be a revolution of the majority. It is true that Socialist Party does not support demonstrations demanding capitalist reform. We do not kid workers that the system can be humanised.

We run society from top to bottom; workers produce all the wealth. It is the working class which possesses the power to determine the future. Any attempt to establish socialism which left power in the hands of a parliament committed to the running of capitalism and armed forces committed to the defence of capitalism would be bound to fail. The present system survives because of minority power. Any conception of revolution or social change which is based on working class followers placing their faith in an enlightened vanguard is fundamentally anti-socialist. Where access to the state does not exist, workers must establish political democracy. The Socialist Party wants socialism without leaders or followers. We don’t need shepherds because we’re not sheep. It is claimed that the average worker cannot understand the case for socialism and that we are too bookish. It is elitism to imagine that workers cannot understand what we can understand. The Socialist Party relates theory to experience in all our propaganda: we talk about and analyse capitalism and socialism. The Socialist Party will not participate in struggles to appoint new leaders because we are not followers. The Socialist Party has a clear analysis of capitalism and our case against what exists is based on a clear idea of the future socialist system. Unlike the non-socialists and the reformist organisations, the Socialist Party seeks to make the working class aware of the nature of capitalism, the necessity of establishing socialism in its place, the need for democratic political action to achieve this and the impossibility of doing so by means of social reforms.

It is true that the struggles for reforms of the working class, their resistance to exploitation, have helped to gain “elbow room” and that these struggles, along with the needs of industrial capitalism, have brought about, in varying degrees, the electoral franchise and the possibility of organising and carrying on propaganda. Nowhere has it produced socialism, nor will it do so. That will be done only after the working class have been won over to socialism—the function of socialists and carried on by no-one else. How much farther and faster the movement for working class emancipation from capitalism would have gone if, instead of allying themselves with sterile movements to “reform” capitalism, and nationalist movements to establish one capitalist rule in place of another, the working class had understood and acted upon the international socialist message of the Socialist Party.

The age of scarcity has passed.

“...When the workers come into the world, we find that we are outcasts in the world. The land on which we must live is the property of a class who are the descendants of men who stole the land from our forefathers, and we who are workers, are, whether in town or country, compelled to pay for permission to live on the earth; the houses, shops, factories, etc., which were built by the labour of our fathers at wages that simply kept them alive are now owned by a class which never contributed an ounce of sweat to their erecting, but whose members will continue to draw rent and profit from them while the system lasts. As a result of this the worker in order to live must sell himself into the service of a master – he must sell to that master the liberty to coin into profit the physical and mental energies…There is only one remedy for this slavery of the working class, and that remedy is the socialist republic, a system of society in which the land and all houses, railways, factories, canals, workshops, and everything necessary for work shall be owned and operated as common property...” James Connolly

The working class asks very little, just peace, homes, security, decent working conditions, a reasonable education leisure and recreation. Yet capitalism still fails to provide these basic necessities. Workers have undergone years of treachery and betrayal and still political parties try to lull us with fairy tales about how wonderful things will be if we just give them a parliamentary majority. Has history not provided us with sufficient evidence to prove that capitalist politicians have nothing to offer us but more, and larger doses, of the same old medicine – exploitation, unemployment and war? They have proofed themselves to be loyal servants of the ruling class and ardent defenders of the capitalist system, fundamentally no different from one another. The voters are right to be concerned about the candidates’ obvious lack of integrity. Their mistake is to consider such corruption and hypocrisy to be an individual matter, not an absolute necessity of capitalist politics.

We believe that the working people deserve better. We need a socialist party to challenge the fundamental social, economic and political basis of capitalist society and expose the condition of hunger, misery and war that are bred by it – one who will advance the fight for socialism. A party of which the elected delegates will remain the servants – not become the masters. Our goal is socialism – everything we do is in the direction of that objective. Socialism will be victorious only when the working people take possession of all the basic means of production. The attitude of the Socialist Party is clear and definite. It claims that the wealth of society is created by the workers. It claims that the workers, through various industrial and administrative councils, must own and control all the processes of wealth production. We carry this struggle on to the political field in order to challenge the power which the present ruling class wields through its domination of the State which it wins at the ballot box.

Capitalism promotes competition, strife, and bloodshed. In its path to destruction hundreds of millions of helpless people are being crushed by increasing poverty and insecurity. The clinging to capitalism, the ownership of the world by a small propertied class, is driving the people of this planet swiftly along the path to ruin. The hope of humanity and the road to progress lies in the revolt of the wage-earners against the propertied class, the capture of political power from the propertied class, and the appropriation of the land and the means of production from the propertied class. Only when the world is run by the workers of the world for their own benefit, and not for the benefit of a capitalist class, will security of livelihood and peace between the nations be obtained. That is socialism, the social or common ownership of everything managed by the chosen representatives of the workers. To transform capitalism to socialism is a revolution. In that sense we call ourselves revolutionists.

New struggles are now looming on the horizon and the working class can be expected to begin the writing of a new page in its history. The future lies with socialism. No amount of misinformation and disinformation will be able to hold back the development of socialism. Socialist ideas will prevail, preparing the way for the overthrow of capitalism and the transformation of society. The only possible hope of the working class is common ownership of the means of production.

Why we need socialists

The change from capitalism to socialism is going to be the greatest event in human history, ending as it will, the age-long rule of private property and with it the exploitation of man by man, and establishing in its place the socialist commonwealth where money rules no more. The changes on all aspects of life will be correspondingly profound. Let the businessmen, the stock market gamblers and politicians laugh or weep or tremble at such a prospect. But what can they offer as an alternative to socialism? Nothing but the continuance of Hell under their system of capitalism. It is for you to choose, fellow-workers. Should we placidly accept that the present world-wide system of society— capitalism? Without an understanding of the present social system and a desire to bring about the social changes needed if we are all to have a future, simply rioting in the streets will not bring about the social revolution required to implement real global cooperation.

What makes socialists? The Socialist Party's advocacy is one factor in the process of education but far more powerful is the economic development with its increasing the insecurity of life for everyone who lives by selling his or her labour-power to an employer. It is this great factor that usually forces workers to listen to the Socialist Party case for socialism. The class division between workers and employers is more clearly shown. No wage slave is sure of his or her job. Long before the Socialist propaganda will reach the majority of these people the growth of the contradictions in capitalism will have forced them to examine various supposed ways of escape, and they will be compelled to take up the study of socialism as furnishing the only solution to these problems. Without the poverty of the poor there could be no riches for the rich.

Despite the Trotskyist belief in "revolutionary situations,"explanations of the nature of socialism are rarely found in their press or on their websites. As the revolution will take place at any moment, there is no need for this painstaking work. The line of their propaganda is rather like the instructions of a general staff to its army — " "Workers must fight for equal pay.” etc. Despite of their claims to be revolutionary, their platforms and policies contains the usual reformist nonsense, such as the "Nationalisation of the land, mines, banks, transport and all big industry.” etc.

The protests and demonstrations by workers against the effects of recurring capitalist economic crises are understandable but misplaced. Instead of agitating for a fair day's pay for a fair day’s work the working class should be engaged in political action with the object of abolishing the wages system completely. It must be obvious that the bumblings and blusterings of hypocritical politicians and “labour leaders’’ can no longer disguise the fact that they arc powerless to influence the actions of the market system.

Capitalism has run its course. The only question is how much longer the working class are prepared to see capitalism thrash about continuing to do untold harm to millions of workers. The working class has a choice. It can continue to choose to support a social system which brainwashes them, which bullies them, which suppresses them, which makes them homeless, which makes them hungry, which makes them poor, which exploits them and which kills them. Or the working class can choose to realize that we are many and they are few. It can choose to stop its own exploitation and decide to hasten the demise of capitalism and bring about a social system based upon common ownership of the means of production and distribution. The working class can choose to abolish poverty, abolish famine, abolish want, abolish lack of opportunity, abolish the wages system. abolish capitalism.

The Socialist Party's aim is to see established a democratic world community without frontiers—in which the natural and industrial resources of the world have become the common heritage of all humanity, and are used in co-operation to produce wealth directly for needs, with free access for all to the available goods and services, according to their own self-defined needs.
A money-free, state-free world commonwealth is the only framework within which current social problems can be permanently solved, since it is only on this basis that production can be oriented towards satisfying human needs. This social revolution can only be carried out when once a majority of wage and salary workers throughout the world want it, fully understand its implications, and organise democratically and politically to achieve it. Abolish prices once and for all, and replace this outdated system with a society of free and equal access for all, based upon self-defined needs. We don't need political confidence tricksters to run the world; we can do it ourselves for ourselves. We still see an inconsistency in being committed to the establishment of a free, socialist society through the democratic self-organisation of the working class without leaders and believing that humanity needs to be saved by some supernatural being who supposedly lived and died 2000 years ago and will return some day to establish his kingdom on Earth.

The social revolution has begun and no-one can stop it

Everyone is aware that usually a person gains office on the strength of fiery impassioned speeches, which strangely contrast with those given at a later date after a period in office. It is now a difference from a person who reflected the working-class conditions and now who is remote from them. The person is removed from the rank and file, meeting a new class of people, and mingles in separate circles from before. Things which were once primary are now secondary. Not that the person has ceased to feel interested, or has become dishonest but the influence of new factors results in a change of outlook. As long as leaders are in the fore, little thinking is done by the mass. If one can sway the crowd in one direction, another can move them in the opposite direction. We desire for men and women to think for themselves. Hope replaces fear; trust replaces repression; abundance replaces poverty.

The members of the Socialist Party are class-conscious revolutionaries who devoted their energies to the great cause of freeing humanity from the poverty and wars of the capitalist system. This, they believed, could be accomplished only through construction of a worldwide socialist society of peace and prosperity. We adhere to the basic conceptions of Marxism because they have proved again and again that their essential elements have proved to be true. No better set of ideas has been shown to be superior to Marxism – and not because no attempts have been made to think of better ones. On the contrary, the attempts have been countless. 

Socialist consciousness lies in the awareness and understanding in which the workers themselves realizes that they and they alone are the creators of socialism. So long as capitalism exists, so long as an exploitive society resting on industrial production exists, so long as a working class remains indispensable to modern production, the necessity of socialism will remain. All socialists recognise the class struggle as a vast school of socialist education. Marxists, however do not believe socialist consciousness arises automatically. Ideas about socialism are also necessary to differentiate between the need for social change, or just an improvement of conditions under the existing social orders. Socialist knowledge is a weapon with which to change the world.

Labour politicians talk about socialism. We judged them by their deeds, not just by words. In practice, they carried on running capitalism.  They did introduce certain reforms which ameliorated the effects of some of the worst features of capitalism in the spheres of health, housing and family support. Collectively, these became known as the ‘Welfare State’ – but they were not socialism. The essential feature of capitalism, that very thing which makes the system one of exploitation and robbery of the mass of wage workers by the ruling class of capitalists, namely the private ownership of the means of production and exchange, this remained untouched.

In a class society, a small number of the community, by virtue of the ownership of the means of production, has control over the whole productive process and possesses corresponding privileges, together with the control of government. The other much larger part of the community possesses nothing but a minimum of personal goods, the ability to work, and a few hard-won political rights. Conflict of interest is inevitable. Sooner or later the dominant class will be actively opposed by the dominated class. 

Capitalism subjects men and women to the restrictions of organised labour and then robs them of its fruits. Less than a tenth of the population possess anything but a pitiful minimum of property. Not less but more private property is needed. But it must be the right kind of property. There are two kinds of private property. Private property in the means by which things are made – factories, land, mines, gives to the owners power to control the lives of others. That must cease. It is wrong private property. The other kind of private property consists in consumer goods – food, clothes, houses, personal possessions– all that ministers to comfort. The two can readily be distinguished. Private property in the means of production yields money income. Private ownership of personal property yields none.

The working class must strike out on the road to independent political action, independent of pro-capitalist parties. The working class needs a socialist party. The working class need to break with the bourgeois parties and forge their own political trend to establish socialism.

Be Careful…be VERY careful

Eugenics inspired Hitler and it was much studied and admired around the world in many countries. It gained the approval of numerous intellectuals such as H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw (today it is Chris Hedges, David Attenborough and so is Bono), as well as leading politicians of the likes of Churchill. Eugenics fostered the justification for the colonial logic and white supremacy. The Nazi regime modelled its sterilisation programs on those of the American segregationists. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the research of German eugenicists, sponsoring major eugenic institutes. In recent years, eugenics forms part of the core belief of the over-populationists, a new “scientific” racism. Even supposedly liberal environmentalists have adopted the underlying premise with their “people pollute” arguments and their advocacy of zero population growth. When today one hears particular phrases such as “carrying capacity” or the “tragedy of the commons”, beware because it is pure Thomas Malthus. Ecologists offer a future tending toward the pastoral idyll and little is said on improving the conditions of the poor crammed into urban slums and shanty towns that were spreading across the globe. The poor are to be blamed for migrating from rural destitution and devastation. 

One reads all manner of extreme predictions couched in academic language of ecologists. Forced sterilisation of the unworthy has become family planning for the undeserving. Are we surprised that Bill Gates’ philanthropy concentrates resources on contraception? They are careful not to blame the economic reasons for large families, instead it is unchecked copulation making new babies. The enemy is the people, not corporations or class exploitation. The poor are being blamed for being poor. 

As Ian Angus wrote in 2012:
“[Over] Populationist ideas are gaining traction in the environmental movement. A growing number of sincere activists are once again buying into the idea that overpopulation is destroying the earth, and that what’s needed is a radical reduction in birth rates. Most populationists say they want voluntary birth control programs, but a growing number are calling for compulsory measures.”

The road to survival does not lie in prescriptions to eliminate surplus people, nor in birth control, but in the effort to make everybody on the face of the earth productive. Hunger and misery are not caused by the presence of too many people in the world, but rather by having few to produce and many to feed. Missing from the over-populationist’s arguments is any notion that people are capable of effecting positive social and environmental change. By placing the onus on the individual and personal life-styles the ecologists obscure the role of capitalist systems of production, distribution and consumption in causing global warming. Overpopulation per se has become the new scapegoat for the world’s ills. Overconsumption by the rich has far more to do with global warming than the population growth of the poor. The few countries in the world where population growth rates remain high, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, have among the lowest carbon emissions per capita on the planet.

 “Would the grow-or-die economy called capitalism really cease to plunder the planet even if the world’s population were reduced to a tenth of its present numbers? Would lumber companies, mining concerns, oil cartels, and agribusiness render redwood and Douglas fir forests safer for grizzly bears if — given capitalism’s need to accumulate and produce for their own sake — California’s population were reduced to one million people? The answer to these questions is a categorical no… We have yet to answer what constitutes the “carrying capacity” of the planet… Viewed from a distance of two decades later, the predictions made by many neo-Malthusians seem almost insanely ridiculous… the most sinister feature about neo-Malthusianism is the extent to which it actively deflects us from dealing with the social origins of our ecological problems — indeed, the extent to which it places the blame for them on the victims of hunger rather than those who victimize them.” explained Murray Bookchin in 2010

FREELY ADAPTED FROM THIS ARTICLE
https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/04/population-bomb-or-bomb-the-population/#more-90757

If Socialism is a dream. Capitalism is a nightmare.

The revolution for socialism is a social revolution. Socialism emerges from an ocean of blood and capitalist lies. The workers now have it in their hands the means to establish and build socialism. The State is controlled by the capitalists is used as a means of oppressing and exploiting the workers. It directs production and distribution in the interests of capitalists, and it is to them that the profits will go. Its function is to rob the worker. This must be changed. The workers of the world must see to it that private property and interests, whether vested in the State or individuals, are overthrown. Socialism is not a solver of all problems but of the major problems of our time.

The workers are much better equipped to more speedily establish socialism than can the capitalists can reconstruct the capitalist system into a humane system. For capitalism there is only one way—the way of increased exploitation. To create its wealth there can have only one source—the already over-burdened workers. They will be forced to toil harder than ever before. They will be inadequately paid. The capitalists enforce their will on the workers using the State. The State compels the workers to live in misery and poverty. The State maintains armed forces for the purpose of keeping the workers in subjection—paying one section of workers to suppress the others. The State regulates production in the interests of the capitalists. The State takes commerce and industry under its protection—making workers State employees. It turns workers into slaves of the corporation. The State is the most relentless of exploiters. Capitalism will use the State to save capitalism, and to extract for themselves an ever-increasing surplus wealth. Capitalism is defined by and erected upon an economic base. The superstructure of socialist society will be built up on the economic base peculiar to it, namely on common ownership and democratic control of the means of life, production for use, and distribution according to need.

Science wedded to socialism would be working for the good of mankind and not the means of mass destruction. The workers could welcome and not fear fresh discoveries. Our culture seems to be increasingly all sad, bad or mad. The ideas prevalent in society today are no longer of the illusory sentimental kind. Today, people face the brutal realities of life without relief or hope. The ugly realities of life under capitalism are apparent to most people—only the socialist solution eludes them. One thing certain. Only the spread of socialist knowledge will provide optimism for more happy and contented lives.

The Socialist Party’s claim for working class support lies in our contention that only the abolition of capitalism can solve the problems of the working class, and that in this country only we stand for the object of ending capitalism and establishing socialism. Capitalism causes poverty, unemployment and war. To get a living, workers are forced to hire themselves to the capitalist class. Workers are employed in order to produce a profit for their hirers. Only so long as profit is realised are goods produced. Production for profit is in the interests of the capitalists. Raw materials and ready markets are essential to capitalism. In pursuit of these, Governments are driven to conflict. At best the worker keeps a job, which reduces him to a lifelong struggle to make ends meet, finishing as he started, with nothing. During slumps and consequent unemployment millions eke out an existence in direst poverty and destitution. Such conditions arise from capitalism, be it democratic or dictatorial, planned or unplanned. It is not possible under capitalism for workers to be anything else but workers.

Since 1904 the Socialist Party has never deviated from its object. We have always argued that workers in this and other lands must understand and accept socialism before capitalism can be abolished. Capitalism is global, so will be socialism. The task of the Socialist Party is to make socialists and speed the day of achieving socialism. As for as the Socialist Party is concerned, socialism is an end in itself. The Party’s work is done with the advent of socialism. Organisation inside socialism will be the responsibility of society, not of the Socialist Party. Socialism as a system of society is distinct from a form of government. Our end as a political body is the establishment of that society.

Socialist production will be to satisfy the needs of society. Everyday life will be from each according to ability and to each according to need. Under such conditions, money, trade and employment have no place. Socialism does not exist anywhere to-day. 

The three stages of any society are Growth, Decay and Death. Capitalism has passed beyond the growing stage, now moving from one crisis to another. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness. The next stage in social evolution is socialism. The unfulfilled needs of present society demand the end of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. Experiences of the past, present and future will continue to hammer that fact home.

We need to save ourselves

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet” - Albert Einstein 

Unhealthy diets are responsible for 11 million preventable deaths globally per year, more even than smoking tobacco, according to research of the Global Burden of Disease study by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle, published in the Lancet medical journal.

But the biggest problem is not the junk we eat but the nutritious food we don’t eat, say researchers, calling for a global shift in policy to promote vegetables, fruit, nuts and legumes. While sugar and trans-fats are harmful, more deaths are caused by the absence of healthy foods in our diet, the study found. Heart attacks and strokes are the main diet-related causes of death, followed by cancers and type 2 diabetes,

The study found that eating and drinking better could prevent one in five deaths around the world. Although diets vary from one country to another, eating too few fruits and vegetables and too much sodium (salt) accounted for half of all deaths and two-thirds of the years of disability attributable to diet.

“Our findings show that suboptimal diet is responsible for more deaths than any other risks globally, including tobacco smoking, highlighting the urgent need for improving human diet across nations,” they write.

Rather than trying to persuade people to cut down on sugar, salt and fat it would be better to promote healthy options, they say.

Prof Walter Willett from Harvard University, a co-author of the study, said, “Adoption of diets emphasising soy foods, beans and other healthy plant sources of protein will have important benefits for both human and planetary health,” he said.

The issue about vegetarianism these days is not so much the moral case that can be solved by individual choice but the environmental one which will require social decisions about food production methods being made. Our eating habits and manner of food production is not just a personal issue but a social question, as it is an environmental question. We cannot create a vegetarian/vegan world by individual conversion or changing personal taste inside capitalist society. We are not, despite our advocacy of less-meat eating, trying to impose a lifestyle on to others but suggesting that such a conclusion will be by collective politics in the interests of society as a whole when socialism is established.

Preventing catastrophic warming is dependent on tackling meat and dairy consumption, but the world is doing very little. A lot is being done on deforestation and transport, but there is a huge gap on the livestock sector. There is a deep reluctance to engage because of the received wisdom that it is not the place of governments or civil society to intrude into people’s lives and tell them what to eat. Livestock-related emissions and associated issues are not in the spotlight of international climate negotiations, partly because of the difficulty of measuring the emissions accurately. The result is a lack of awareness on the subject among global policymakers. A shift to an omnivore (or flexitarian) diet can dramatically slow down the global warming trend.

The Socialist Party avoids associating socialism with one particular lifestyle choice and it is not on a crusade to proselytise for vegetarianism or veganism but as socialists, we envisage a rational well-planned society that will endeavour to be sustainable as far as possible which leads me to reach certain conclusions. We associate ourselves with the steady-state, zero-growth model of economy for a socialist society, explaining that we envisage an anti-consumerism trend to prevail and expect a drop in consumption levels with the important caveat that there will be an initial phase of higher production to raise people to a decent standard of living We say this sustainable future can come about because with socialism there will be little need for conspicuous consumption and public ostentation's to show status. Meat-eating is deeply embedded in our culture and the multi-billion-dollar cattle and dairy industries are powerful and politically connected, making change difficult.
Meat-eating will decline over time in socialism, because the profit system will have been scrapped. We don`t expect to see the hunting and eating of individual animals necessarily disappearing, or even the raising of animals for food, until quite some time, if ever. Socialism will provide a democratic forum which no one has today other than the capitalists, who will also have disappeared. Local and regional factors will also apply, with democracy working at a local as well as a global level. We don`t see anything being compulsory. Coercion is not compatible with socialism (except, perhaps, some coercion necessary initially in dispossessing the capitalist class.)

Only within a socialist framework can a rational food policy not involving the mistreatment of animals be put into practice. Present society is not providing for people because of its economic imperatives and that we can change those by political action which will then permit people access to a better life, a better well-being both physically and mentally. Socialism is all about aspiring to live in togetherness with our fellow human beings and from that will arise living in harmony with the planet, whether a wild forest or tamed farmland.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/03/bad-diets-killing-more-people-globally-than-tobacco-study-finds

The problem is capitalism

A socialist is one who endorses the necessity for common ownership to eliminate private, state or sectional capitalism, and secure the advantages for the whole people by the common ownership and control of the land, the factories and transport. By the co-operative commonwealth is meant ownership of the whole people in the common interest. The present capitalistic competitive system is aimed at making for each capitalist, but never for securing the public welfare. Capitalists own and control in every manufacturing country, competing in the world’s market against all other capitalists also seeking a share in the market. To compete effectively, they must place the commodity on the market as cheaply as other competitors and in order to do this they must ever have regard to cheapening the cost of production and keeping wages down to the lowest possible margin. There is not an exception to this rule. It necessarily follows that each group of capitalists is continually on the lookout to save on wages, and therefore every new technology termed labour-saving is really wages-saving constantly increasing proportion of output going as profits to the capitalist. This is the direct effect of private ownership of the means of production for the purpose of making profit for the capitalists, instead of working co-operatively in the common or public interest. The present system stands condemned. Society is divided into two opposite classes, one, the capitalists and their sleeping partners, the landlords and bankers, holding in their hands the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and being, therefore, able to command the labour of others. The other, the working-class, the wage-earners possessing nothing but their labour-power, and being forced by necessity to work for the former.

Socialism can only exist when the people commonly own the instruments and agencies of production and distribution currently possessed by a plutocracy. Socialism does not aim at making citizens the slaves of Big Brother governments, but to get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free citizens. There can be no real socialism where exploitation exists and no person can live idly in luxury on the labour of others by receiving unearned income in the forms of interest, profit or rent. Therefore, socialism means the, complete replacement of the present capitalist system, of private ownership and control of land, machinery, and money. declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers and the object of socialism is to get rid of the employing owning class as speedily as possible. Socialism stands for the abolition of robbery and the abolition of poverty. This social transformation means the emancipation not only of the proletariat, but of the whole human race, which suffers under the conditions today. But it can only be the work of the working class, because all the other classes, in spite of mutually conflicting interests, take their stand on the basis of private ownership of the means of production, and have as their common object the preservation of the principle. 

The battle of the working class against capitalist exploitation is necessarily a political battle. The working class cannot carry on its economic battles or develop its economic organisation without political rights. It cannot effect the passing of the means of production into the ownership of the community without acquiring political power. To shape this battle of the working class into a conscious and united effort is the object of the Socialist Party. The interests of the working class are the same in all lands with capitalistic methods of production. With the world market, the condition of the workers in any one country becomes constantly more dependent on that of the workers in other countries. The emancipation of the working class is thus a task in which the workers of all countries. Conscious of this, the Socialist Party declares itself one with the class-conscious workers of all other lands. The Socialist Party fights not for new class privileges but for the abolition of class domination and of the classes themselves, and for the equal rights of all.

The socialist principle is common brotherhood based on the socialisation of the means of production and distribution in the interests of the entire community, and the complete emancipation of labour from the domination of capitalism. Our object is the cooperative commonwealth founded upon the socialisation of land and industry where the storehouse of all the necessaries of life should be declared and treated as public property. The future of the world is to be co-operative, and not competitive, supplying the needs of all, with modern methods of production, effectively applied, an abundance of commodities can be provided to satisfy the needs of all.

The object of the Socialist Party is to secure economic freedom for the whole community, that all men and all women shall have equal opportunities of sharing in wealth production and consumption untrammelled by any restriction. The clearly avowed object therefore of the Socialist Party is to hasten the change and to aim at securing for the highest standard of social well-being.
We are engaged in prolonged class warfare, not the mere shuttlecock game of ordinary party politics. It’s a battle of ideas not of parties. The struggle is not confined to one people but covers the whole of mankind. Humanity cannot possibly remain in its chaotic condition. We are suffering from a capitalist system that fosters environmental destruction.