Everything for Everyone

Why must the working class, which produces the wealth, constantly fight for sufficient wages to maintain a decent standard of living? Why is there poverty in the midst of plenty? Why must we live in out-dated and run-down buildings when there is enough material and skilled labour to construct decent homes for everyone?

The capitalist class manipulate the means of production to serve their selfish profit interests. They have converted the means for potential plenty into a monstrous exploitative mechanism creating scarcity, terrible depressions, starvation wages, poverty, wars. Capitalism has turned the world into a mad-house of conflicting economic rivalries, state boundaries, tariff walls, culminating in military conflicts.

The only “management” truly capable of organising and administrating industry for full and efficient production and for the needs of the people are the workers themselves. Socialist planning, on the other hand, begins with the expropriation of capitalist property, the expansion of the productive machinery, and the raising of the standard of living. The whole possibility for socialism rests on the feasibility of enormously increasing the productivity of world society. If economic plenty is unrealisable it follows that socialism is not inevitable. Socialists have determined how this can be done through the efficient utilisation of present resources, transport and factories, the elimination of unemployment, the cessation of war, the ending of economic chaos through rational planning and the early expansion of the productive system through the intensive application of science. Many surveys have been made of the possibilities of plenty; the most modest revealing grandiose perspectives if no more were done than to run the existing machines at full capacity. So long as scarcity prevails, ruthless struggle for the major share endures. When scarcity disappears, however, then rational planning of world society not only becomes feasible, but inevitable. A planned socialist economy would rapidly guarantee a rising standard of living on the basis of an abundance of goods produced in the interests of the many and not for the profit of the few.

The Socialist Party does not hold that our fellow-workers can be delivered from poverty, unemployment, degradation, war, by any reform of the capitalist system under which we live. That system must be abolished, wage slavery must be done away with altogether. The workers must own and control the machinery of production. As for curing the ills of the workers by reforming capitalism, we have lived through years of Labour Party governments and you know only too well what that has got us. The gains we have made have been eroded away as the Welfare State and the social services are cut back. During the recession the bail-outs were provided not for the workers, but for the capitalist class. There is always some one who promises to fix things. Isn’t it about time that the workers realised that it does not make any difference how well-meaning these capitalist saviours may be in offering salvation, there is no way out under capitalism? Palliatives has not ended the system of want amidst plenty.

Under capitalism the general trend is toward greater misery for the workers. Capitalists make their profits by paying the worker in wages a smaller value than he creates by labouring. The capitalist thus gets what Marx calls surplus value. It is the only way profit can be created. Under modern conditions expensive plants and equipment are increased, but the work is done with fewer workers. Thus they must be exploited ever more fiercely in order that surplus value – profit – may be squeezed out of their labour, the only possible source of profit. Capitalism will forever force living standards lower and again lower. Things could be better. Plenty and security might be had. But first workers must become convinced that capitalism cannot be reformed and that it must be abolished. They also must reject the idea that we can gradually replace capitalism with socialism though a policy of ameliorative reforms. The gradualism idea of running a capitalist and a socialist, a profit and non-profit, system side by side is absurd. It is like trying to ride on two horses going in opposite directions. 

The capitalist system remains under all these “socialist housing schemes” etc. and the crisis is not resolved; it gets worse. There was a time when capitalism was able to make concessions to the workers, better the standard of living, without cutting into profits which brought certain results. Now capitalism maintains itself only by taking away concessions – wage rates, welfare benefits, etc. – which it once gave. Capitalism must drive the standard of living lower all the time. There is only one solution and it is no more quack remedies offered such as wage indexation, tax indexation, designed to hoodwink the people.

Towards a Planet of Plenty

Permanent plenty, no longer a Utopian dream. We socialists have always contended that capitalism should be abolished because it mismanaged the means of production so that a very few – those who own the means of production – reaped great profits while the masses of the people were deprived of a secure standard of living. We would often prove this assertion by demonstrating the tremendous capacities which the modern industrial machine has; how it could satisfy the needs of everyone if it were run for that purpose; and how capitalism, instead, ran the industrial machine for profits. All that was and remains completely true. It remains the great and tragic paradox of our age – poverty in the midst of plenty. When the capitalists realise there is no profit in selling their goods, there are layoffs and slashing of wage’s. Food is left to rot in the granaries and storage houses, and hungry people starve in the midst of plenty. people starve in the midst of plenty and food is dumped when people cannot buy for they may not have the jobs or the money.

Capitalism is a wasteful and inefficient system. It cannot plan on either a national or an international scale. It deprives the mass of the people of products. Socialism could plan better, provide the people with all necessities. Socialism could take the vast resources which are available and use them for constructive purposes. The inefficiency due to capitalist competition; the shortages and high prices due to capitalist monopoly; the wars due to imperialist rivalry; the inefficiency and economic inequality due to the impossibility of constructive economic planning under capitalism – all would be things of the past. In their place could arise the new society of peace and plenty. That is why socialism is the burning need of the hour. Families go without in the midst of plenty. We have the natural resources, the machinery, the labour. Modern science has made comfort and culture and leisure possible for all. Who will deny the great potentialities for good inherent in our advanced economy? The owners of production have at their disposal all these wonderful opportunities, but have they used them to end poverty, maintain security and a high standard of living and keep the peace? No. Where, then, does all the wealth go to? The 1%. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer is always true under capitalism.

The capitalist system won’t work, for the very root of capitalism is all wrong. It is based on a contradiction, namely, that the man who owns the tools of production (the capitalist) does not work them, and the man who works them (the worker) does not own them. The working people themselves should own and operate the industries cooperatively, through common ownership. This would end production for profit and the waste of competing businesses. There would be planned production for the first time, increasing the output of wealth so that there would be plenty for all. We have all the means necessary to a high standing of living, shorter hours and certainly full employment for every able-bodied person. The kind of planned economy we envisage would, for the first time, make possible an end to wars between nations. Because the planned economy would include all countries. The aim of the working class would be to end capitalism and all forms of exploitation everywhere; and everywhere introduce a planned economy. The Socialist Party's aim is to create a socialist world. Science and new technology can make all the wheels of industry turn to produce the things people need. We must make this come true.

In the final analysis, the solution is that the profit-grubbing obstructionism by the capitalist class must be ended and it is unattainable only for those who think in terms of capitalist profits and the perpetuation of capitalist power. Workers cannot obtain plenty and security, deliverance from misery and war, by trying to reform the capitalist economic system. We have to abolish it. Then and not until then, can working people use the productive forces to provide plenty and security. The capitalist system, though the development of productive forces makes plenty possible yet it presses the standard of living of people ever lower.

Socialism is a system which is based upon plenty for all. Its aim is to raise the standard of living of all humankind far higher than that reached in the most advanced capitalist country. It means, therefore, the utilisation of the most modern and advanced means and methods of production. It means the most scientific utilisation of all the natural resources of the entire world. It means the closest cooperation of the peoples of the entire world. Socialism cannot be based on scarcity and want, for these breed inequality, rivalry, class divisions. Socialism seeks to eliminate these forever from the face of the planet. The capitalist system came into being only after a number of revolutions and half-revolutions. The period of its birth lasted for decades, The change from the feudal system to capitalism was not as drastic as will be the change from capitalism to socialism, for the latter implies not the change of one system of exploitation for another, but the elimination of all exploitation and class rule.

For world socialism. To this inspiring task, we summon all the workers oppressed by capitalism. Only a socialist world can give us peace and plenty. Look how the capitalist world totters on the brink of climate change destruction. The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism. We, socialists, refuse to join the reformists in leading the workers into the camp of capitalism. The working class must overthrow capitalism and that road does not lie through support of palliative reforms. The only road is the socialist road. It is the ballot that we use against capitalism. Vote, then, for socialism. Vote for the Socialist Party, the only party that keeps the revolutionary banner unfurled. The working class can organise and run society in the interests of all the people; the working class, and the working class alone, can and will open the door to the new socialist society of peace, plenty, freedom and security.

Towards A New Freedom

This is an era of change. Automation and robotics are in the hands of the ruling class, and are replacing the workers and impoverishing the people. The coming social revolution must place the new technology in the hands of the people to lay the foundation for a whole new world. Abundance, created by robotics and people working for the common good rather than the profit of the few, will forever end poverty, exploitation, oppression and war. It is up to us as socialists to realise that we do have a vision to offer. Socialists ask why we have the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty, and scarcity in the midst of abundance. For the first time in history, scarcity – with all its endemic misery, starvation, wars and pestilence – is no longer an inescapable part of human life.

Socialists at the present time are in short supply but now is the real possibility that the socialist movement can be reborn. Our numbers are small, but the potential is huge. The myth of an ever expanding economy with the trickle down of wealth to the poor is over.

Equality of distribution is possible only in two circumstances—starvation conditions and supreme abundance. The age of abundance belongs to world socialism. In this world we have vast regions of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvellous productive technology , and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labour to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes. It cannot be blamed nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of all humanity. The Socialist Party holds that the people ought to own and control its own industries, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all. The Socialist Party seeks to help implement the greatest social and economic change in history, to establish the universal commonwealth—the harmonious cooperation of every person with every other person on the planet. , the dawning of the better day for humanity.

Socialism, and only socialism, will create a world without master and slave, a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, and, hence, a world without war. Its primary purpose will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, joblessness, hunger and general insecurity. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people. Socialism will destroy the root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life. With socialism, these will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth.

In abolishing classes in society, socialism will change the form and type of governments which exist today. Governments will become administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class. The preoccupation of government under socialism will be to assist in the elevation of society, to improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to heighten the cultural level of the whole world.

In abolishing classes, class government and war, socialism will at the same time destroy all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. World socialism will be the freest, most democratic society the world has ever known, with a world federation truly representing the majority of the population and subject to its recall. A citizen of a socialist society will look back upon the capitalist era with its wars, destruction and bloody and cruel dictatorships as we now look back upon the dawn of written history.

World socialism will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment. Socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent housing for all the people.

Socialism will provide for a multitude of schools for all the people. Socialism will no longer regard schools primarily as institutions to produce trained labour to help operate the profit economy. Socialism will create a system of health preservation in which the well-being and improvement of the people would be the paramount consideration.

Above all, socialism will provide jobs for all. But this will be work without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of labour, but the utilisation of machinery, technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress. Socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help create an ever-improving social life for mankind. Under capitalism, scientists are mere wage workers hiring out their skills to private industry. The fruits of their intelligence, learning arid research become the exclusive property of the capitalists who profit from the labours of these scientists. Thus, science has become subordinated to profits rather than to the common good of all mankind. Yet the future society depends in large measure on changing this relation of science to society. Only socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.

Today's modern world contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism. All around us we observe the technological marvels which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Man has developed robots and automated production, which make it more possible to control our natural and social environment to create a fruitful life of abundance. Mankind is at a crossroads. We can travel the road of capitalism, the path towards chaos, war, poverty and barbarism, or we can take the socialist road to freedom, peace and security, the road toward a society of plenty for all which would end the exploitation of man by man for all time.

Food Bank Scotland

The Trussell Trust said its food banks provided  210,605 three-day emergency food supplies given to people in crisis by the trust last year, nearly 70,000 went to children in 2018-19.

It was a 23% jump from the previous year and the charity described the situation as "unacceptable".

Trussell Trust said the cost of living and delays to benefits were cited by clients as the main reason for them visiting the food banks. 

Scotland operations manager Laura Ferguson said: "What we are seeing year-upon-year is more and more people struggling to eat because they simply cannot afford food. A 200% increase in just five years is not right. Ultimately, it's unacceptable that anyone should have to use a food bank in the first place. No charity can replace the dignity of having enough money to buy food. Our benefits system is supposed to protect us all from being swept into poverty."

Campbell Robb, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation charity, said: "It is just wrong that in our society a growing number of people, including children, are going hungry because of our consistent failure to get to grips with poverty."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-48043856

The Choice for All - Abundance for All

For the first time in history, humankind can produce such abundance that society can be free from poverty, hunger and homelessness. The only thing standing in the way is the capitalist system of exploitation and wage-slavery. The struggle for education and health care is the beginning of a revolution for a better world. We seek to liberate the thinking of working people and unleash their energy. We will win them to the cause for which they are already fighting with a vision of a world of plenty. New technology provides better, cheaper and more products with less and less labour. Society now has the capacity to devote the energies and talents of its people to satisfying the needs of all. The magic of robotics and automation which sprang from the inventive genius of man, has been created the possibility of fabulous abundance. But, alas, instead of blessing mankind, it has become the means of enslaving it.

Each day, increasing Artificial Intelligence is throwing people out of their jobs. Their work has become worthless to a system that values only what it can exploit to make a profit. People who until very recently trusted and defended capitalist economic structure are now searching for political direction and for solutions to their problems. More and more, people from every walk of life and every pocket of struggle against this system are looking for a plan for what has to be done. The ruling class tries to keep people confused and to keep them from fighting in their own interests. For it to continue, capitalism must retain the faith of workers and middle class; it must spread the impression that it still can work. We have to counter the ruling class’s intensifying propaganda in the class war. The day when our fellow-workers recognise that so long as capitalism exists they are doomed to degradation and poverty amid the greatest potential in the world – that day will have seen the dawn of social revolution and the overthrow of capitalism. Only with the profit system removed, can they find abundance. The arguments for overthrowing capitalism now finds ready listeners. Conditions are ripe for revolution.

Dramatic changes in the way a society produces its wealth call for radical changes in how that society is organised. The capitalist class cannot convince the people to believe in their system while they are destroying their hopes and dreams. The Socialist Party aspires to inspire our fellow-workers with a society organised for the benefit of all, built on cooperation, that puts the well-being of people above the profits and property of a handful of billionaires. When the property-less class which has no place under the capitalist system takes control of all productive property and transforms it into common property, it can reorganise production so that abundance is distributed according to need. We endeavour to empower people with the understanding of their role in striving for this new society and imbue them with the confidence that it’s possible to win. We call on you to join us in campaigning for this cause. The fight for what people need in order to live for justice and happiness is the revolutionary struggle today. Conditions are ripe for revolution.

The material and technical resources for a society of free access, a world based on the principle from each according to ability, to each according to needs, unquestionably exist today. Surely no competent enquirer doubts that everybody could have a comfortable and attractive home, abundant food, decent clothing, opportunity for recreation and education, security against accident, sickness, and old age; and the sense of independence and self-respect that goes with these things. The appalling contrast between what might be and what is, arises from the nature of the economic system – capitalism – under which we operate. A revolution in technology has occurred and is still in process. Private possession and control over it via intellectual ownership and patent laws provides the right to make profit from it and to exploit the labour of those engaged in it. This antiquated system of private ownership and profit continues to function and acts as a brake upon production so that, as the phrase goes, you have “want in the midst of plenty.” The Socialist Party seeks to end immediately private ownership and control over natural resources and over production, distribution and communication which generations of workers applied their toil and skill to build. Ownership and control would be vested collectively in society. It will be the people, not the industrialists and financiers who who will benefit. The spectre of insecurity will be removed. The despotic domination of the few over the many will be at an end. The rational and scientific use of natural resources and sustainable manufacturing will mean an immediate and substantial improvement in the standard of living of the mass of people. Capitalism can save itself only by fiercer exploitation, cutting living standards, taking away even such concessions as were previously made. Since capitalism must keep pushing conditions of working and living ever lower and lower, it must eventually undermine every vestige of democratic rights and the means of resistance workers may have, for clearly no matter how meek, peaceful, conservative an organisation might be, at. some point it will try to resist the imposition of further impoverishment and distress.

There is only one course which can save people from capitalism – revolution. We must make every struggle, on every battlefield, a step towards that end, the abolition of the capitalist system of society, based on the exploitation of man by man, and to build a socialist society based on common ownership of the means of production, with economic life planned in the interests of the masses of the people – a society which will develop material; abundance and the construction of a society based on the principle “to each according to needs”.

The Promise of Revolution

Every day workers sweat on the production lines and experience the exploitation on which the capitalist system is built. They take part in struggles, together with fellow workers against the abuses and outrages of the capitalist system. The handful of billionaires who dominate the political and economic life has no right to rule. They have built an empire on the foundations of exploitation, oppression, and inequality. We know their interests are international as much as national and they are the most powerful group since their control of the means of production and of the state is most extensive and absolute.

Is there is an alternative to the system we live under? Is socialism a better system? Can it be achieved? Many people have asked these and similar questions. Intellectuals, academics and the mass media have rushed to defend the capitalist system. The aim of these apologists for capitalism is to turn workers away from socialism and to discredit Marxism, claiming that its ideas are no longer relevant. They claim socialists have been incapable of explaining the failures of socialism and the restoration of capitalism in previously “socialist” countries. It requires socialists to redouble our efforts in the ideological struggle against these arguments. We must show that socialism is a valid and necessary alternative and remains an effective guide for the working class. The productive forces developed in capitalist society have outgrown the form of private ownership of the means of production. Fundamental changes are imperative. The mission of rebuilding society on a basis of social justice to-day rests with the workers' movement.

Socialism does not arise automatically out of the development of the productive forces themselves. If it were purely a question of the automatic change in society once the productive forces are developed, revolution would not have been necessary in the changes from one society to another. As has been explained many times, the nationalisation of the productive forces alone does not abolish all social contradictions. The State is not an autonomous, self-determined structure hovering over the social and property relations of a particular regime. It is the fully conscious expression of the collective interests of the dominant class in a particular society. Therefore, to bring something under state ownership does not mean to socialise it where ownership is transferred to the whole of society. To bring something under state ownership, simply by having the workers get their wages from the state rather than from private bosses, is not sufficient to transform social relations in a socialist sense.

Objective conditions, therefore, can create a revolutionary situation or at any rate a revolutionary opening, whether or not there is a subjective revolutionary factor with a mass base. But these conditions alone are not enough for the situation to evolve in some sort of automatic way towards ‘victory’; they are not enough to finish off the process that has been begun. To accomplish this leap, people power has to exert its force.

By bringing men and women together primarily as buyers and sellers of each other, by enshrining profitability and personal gain in place of humanity, capitalism has always been inherently alienating. A socialist transformation of society will return to mankind its humanity and end the sense of being a mere commodity. We will continue to make our contribution to the struggle to break their power and overturn the exploitative system we live under.

Our organisation is not large. While we have had some success in our campaigns, there is no reason to be arrogant or boastful. The oppressed and exploited working people do not need a reformist party. Of those there are plenty to choose from. People need a Marxist-based one. The achievement of socialism awaits the building of a mass base of socialists, in factories and offices. The Socialist Party can be seen as the parliamentary wing of a wider movement dedicated to fundamental social change.

Radical Socialism

The working class battle against the capitalists. The capitalist class has never stopped–and will never stop–its efforts to destroy and weaken the workers' movement. We are living under a system which is more and more clearly revealed as the enemy of humanity. It has vast productive potential, but only means poverty and oppression. It brings hunger and war to the working people. It imposes draconian austerity cuts in living standards on the already poor, simply in the interest of still greater profits for the capitalist class. Capitalism is responsible for the thoughtless destruction of the environment. The profit motive is incompatible with safeguarding the world’s resources. So long as it is profitable, environmental destruction is perfectly ’logical’ under capitalism. Humanity’s problem is not limited resources but the waste of resources which is an essential part of the process of capital accumulation. Socialism will provide the opportunity for a society planned for the majority rather than for profit to be able to flourish, a society in tune with land and nature.

Its armaments industry monopolises and directs most of the world’s research and cynically profits from a series of local wars of unparallelled destructiveness. The root cause of all this is capitalism’s guiding principle, the quest for profit, which takes precedence over any human interest. Capitalism undermines the future of humanity. Capitalism brings nothing but misery and exploitation. From the standpoint of the vast majority of the world’s people it is already an obsolete system, and the productive forces and technology it has created will have to be turned to the benefit of humanity as a whole under a new social system. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It has undergone many changes in its history, but these have simply meant finding new ways to exploit the labouring people. The only solution is to destroy it and build a new social system. If the workers are dissatisfied with capitalism but have no faith in themselves or their class and if they seek to be led by saviours they offer themselves up to be puppets of ambitious politicians.

When workers study conditions and get a true understanding of the essential points, they can neither be chloroformed into inactivity nor carried away by half-baked theories. They do their own thinking instead of trusting to politicians or would-be leaders to do it for them. The science of economics gives the key to the understanding of conditions. Economics is the science which has to do with satisfying the material needs of man-with the production and distribution of wealth. Wealth is any form of natural resources adapted by labour to suit the needs of man. All wealth is produced by labour, but it is taken by the capitalists, who give the workers in the form of wages just enough to keep them in working condition and to reproduce their kind. The capitalists own the natural resources and machinery of production. Two percent of the population-the big capitalists-own sixty per cent of the wealth, while sixty-five per cent-the workers-own only five per cent. The capitalists live in luxury and extravagance never before heard of in the history of the world. They control government and all institutions of society by means of their wealth; they get their wealth by means of controlling the job, the source of all wealth; and they control the job because they are organised. Being comparatively few in numbers, it was easier for them to organise than for workers. Consequently they have organised first, and, as long as the workers remain unorganised, there is none able to dispute their power. By controlling industry, they control the means of producing all the necessaries of life-all that satisfies the material needs of man. Their power is economic. In their hands they hold the meal ticket of the world. Economic power is the basis of political, military, and all other forms of social power. As long as the capitalists retain control of industry, nothing can break their power. Governments bow to them, courts hasten to do their bidding, politicians grovel at their feet, media distort facts in their interest. While the capitalists indulge in luxury and in extravagance, the workers are condemned to lives of poverty, ignorance, toil and privation. They lack economic security. Poverty and the fear of poverty render their lives miserable. The average worker is not more than a few weeks removed from a state of dependency. If he should become sick or injured, he would soon become a burden to friends or relatives or to public charity. Thousands are killed annually in the industries. Hundreds of thousands die from occupational diseases. Millions of children are deprived of education and are stunted and dwarfed physically and mentally by slavery in factories and mills. Other millions go hungry to school and suffer from countless diseases brought on by malnutrition. Having no standing before the law, workers are hounded by the police, victimised by the courts and subjected to all kinds of abuse, injustice and tyranny.

It is useless to trim the branches or cut them off, for as long as the root is functioning, new branches will grow. The only way to abolish capitalism is to strike at the root, and thus kill the tree by cutting off the sources of its nourishment. This is radical action and it is the only radical action. The word "radical" is derived from the Latin word "radix," a root. It means "pertaining to a root." Radical action means action that deals with causes instead of tinkering with effects. The workers have a power infinitely greater than that of the capitalists. That is their power to produce wealth-to run industry-to carry on production. They can do this without capitalists, while without workers, capitalists are helpless. But the power of the workers is unorganised and therefore ineffective.

Global Revolution Is Civilisation’s Last Chance.

The working class is the main force of revolution by its social condition, in the struggle to overthrow the capitalist class and its system. The capitalist system is behind all the ills that burden humanity today. Poverty, deprivation, racism, sexism, inequality, economic insecurity, political repression, unemployment, homelessness, corruption and crime are all inevitable products of this system. For sure, they have all existed before capitalism but all these problems have found a new meaning in this society, corresponding to the needs of capitalism, drawing their rationale from the needs of the system that rules the world today and serve specific interests in this society. The capitalist system itself continually and relentlessly resists efforts to eradicate and overcome these ills, standing in the way of the people to change the system. The reality of capitalism today bodes a horrifying future for the entire people of the world. The domination of the capitalist mode of production has posed before humanity the alternatives: Socialism or Barbarism. Capitalism has long been the central obstacle to social progress. The only definitive solution to these problems is the elimination of capitalism and its institutions, and the establishment of common ownership of the means of production, rational economic and social planning. The fundamental task of the Socialist Party is to build toward the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.

Just as the capitalists have solidarity against the workers, so must we have solidarity of labour. The hope of humanity and the path to progress lies in the revolt of the wage-slaves against the propertied class, the capture of political power from the propertied class, and the expropriation of the means of production and distribution from the propertied class. This great change means that the working people will own the world in common, produce wealth in common, possess in common all wealth produced, and by common agreement distribute that wealth to the benefit of all. This is the task of the workers, but one forced on us by worldwide misery. The impotence of all attempts to patch up capitalism, justifies the Socialist Party's position that only the social revolution can lay the foundations for the political and economic security of mankind.

Wherever a wage worker confronts an employer the possibility of strife and conflict is born. The worker lives by selling the use of his or her body—the employer lives by buying that use. It lies in the nature of things that the buyer should on instinct struggle to buy cheap and the seller to sell dear.

Malnutrition and hunger threaten working people unless the production and distribution of food is taken out of the hands of the capitalists. The bosses of the food corporations will not produce food except for profit. This acute and chronic problem of food shortages can be tackled only by changing the motivation of production. That motivation must no longer be for sale and for profits through sale, but for human beings, to satisfy their needs.

On with the fight, comrades!

The time has come for a new beginning

It has been said often enough that there can be no blueprints for the future because the people themselves will decide how to build the new society as they are building it. Fundamentally, the Socialist Party accepts that, and therefore refrains from attempting to present any detailed blueprints. Nevertheless, it is appropriate to put forward ideas for discussion about what a revolutionary government might do to start building socialism. Consistent refusal to do so suggests no blueprints as a cop-out and an excuse for no ideas. We need to develop a clear statement of the measures a revolutionary movement would aim to take, so people can decide whether or not they want to fight for a revolution. Too many “parties” talk about “revolution” in the abstract, and none at all seem to be serious about it concretely. “Revolution” does not mean that we would “demand” that the corporations do this or that. It means that we, the working class, take over the running of industry and make the decisions ourselves.

There is war. It is class war. It is waged by the representatives of one class, the oppressors, against the mass of another class, the oppressed. In this war, the State is always and invariably on the side of the oppressors. Some of its representatives may try to achieve the ends of capital by cajoling and wheedling. But they always keep the big stick ready. The State — that is the big stick of the owners of wealth, the big stick of the big corporations. The wish of the capitalist is to press sweat and blood out of the workers, and there is the desire of the workers to fight their class enemy, who feeds upon them. Every one who tries to persuade you that the State is your friend, your defender, that the State is impartial and only “regulatory,” is misleading you. Under capitalism you cannot protect both “industry” (meaning the capitalists) and labour (meaning the workers)! When you protect “industry” you give it freedom to exploit “labour”. When you protect labour you make it possible for labour to get more out of industry. The essence of the capitalist State is service in the employ of capitalism for the preservation of capitalism. The capitalist State is a glaring fact. It is flesh and blood of the capitalist system. It stands in the way of the workers’ progress towards a new, free life. You cannot reconcile oil and water .

Abolish capitalism with all its misery and replace it with a system of production for use and not for profit all over the world. The Socialist Party calls for a radical cure and not a reformist salve to heal the ulcer and retain the body of capitalism. Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be lopped off like a gangrenous limb. The injustices of slavery and serfdom were eliminated by abolishing the social institutions of slavery and serfdom themselves, not by prohibitions against maltreatment of slaves and serfs. The injustices of wage labour, including unemployment, will be eliminated by abolishing the social institution of wage labour itself, not by directions to employers to treat their workers better.

Socialism means that political power should pass from the hands of the capitalist class into the hands of the working people. The means of production and distribution, the land, the factories, workshops and mines, the means of communication, should pass into the possession of the working people. That production should be developed not by the competition of the various capitalist enterprises for profit, but on the basis of a planned economic system, whose aim was to raise the material and cultural level of the people, in such a way as to raise the standards of the working people and to enlarge the productive power of the socialist industries, and not, as it is under capitalism, to enrich a powerful class of capitalists and their hangers-on. In other words, the working people would own the industries, plan the industries and work for themselves and their communities not for the capitalist class. There is nothing in common between Socialism and nationalisation, exemplified in pre-privatisation days of the Post Office, the BBC, British Rail and the Coal, Electricity and Gas Boards . The object of capitalist nationalisation is not to lay the foundations of a new society. It is to provide an efficient state service for the industries which remain in private hands. 

The Socialist Party has always criticised the capitalist system because it gave rise not only to recurring economic crises, but to ever more devastating wars. Pro-capitalist leaders challenge socialist principles on two main points. They are denying that it is necessary for society to take over all the main industries in order to plan for the welfare of the people They say that all that is necessary is the existing nationalisation plus some State control. and they are denying that capitalism in its struggle for markets and sources of raw materials, in its struggle to oppress the workers and in order to obtain maximum profits, is really the cause of war. 

The social revolution required to transform capitalist enterprises into communist collectives obviously involves far more than government decrees transferring ownership. The revolution itself would have produced workers’ councils in many establishments, which would have taken over responsibility for management from the previous authorities. Revolution occurs when those who presently hold power are unable to do what has to be done, and when the only way it can be done is for their opponents to take the power to do it. Under slavery, public officials were necessarily slave owners. Under feudalism magistrates were necessarily landowners and under capitalism captains of industry were necessarily capitalists. But social relations change. All it needs is revolution to change them.

Socialism Is the Goal We Fight For

For too long the ideals of socialism has been placed in moth-balls. The labour and radical movements are in general disarray, striving to understand and overcome a heritage of class collaboration. Around the world there is no revolutionary socialist movement worthy of the name. But the elements exist for the development of a mass party. First of all, there is the injustice, inequality and institutionalised oppression of capitalism – a system which generates a growing dissatisfaction among the majority of working people. A better future will not come about automatically or simply because many people want it. It will only come about if we are able to draw enough people into the struggle to create it. But the effectiveness and success of that struggle are not predetermined. The global system of capitalism have adversely affected the living standard of the working class. The latest technologies in commodity production and distribution has created financial and political crises. In capitalist society, despite all the changes which may have occurred, the state remains the centre of decision serving the capitalists.

There is a class war to end wage-slavery, to end capitalism with its evils of misery and degradation. The war to end war. And until that war is ended we do not want peace—because such peace will be the peace of the beggar and the slave. Socialism can be realised only as the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. The class struggle is the motive force of history. All the political actions and judgements of a socialist party must always be directed against the capitalist class, and never be taken in collaboration with them. Every attempt to find another way, by supporting the capitalists, by conciliating them, by cooperating with them has led not toward the socialist goal but to defeat and disaster for the workers. It is by carrying the class struggle to its necessary conclusion, that is, the abolition of capitalism that the socialist society will be realised. Real socialists today rally to the ranks of the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party serves the “have-not” class, the exploited. It stands for the abolition of the profit system, the end of wars growing out of the profit system but most of, for peace and plenty for all. The purpose of the Socialist Party is to stir the apathetic, to capture the attention of the indifferent, to stimulate the faint-hearted as to indicate the way to social harmony. Socialists condemn the competitive system. Production today is left to the care of those whose sole concern is to make profit for themselves, and although life and death depend upon industry, never yet has there been any organised attempt to rationally regulate industry in the interests of the majority.

There is no room for fence-sitting in the class war. You are either for the millionaires or for the workers who are robbed. You either stand for production for sale and profit or for production for use and free access. Either revolution or reform. There is no middle way. Whether we like it or dislike it, if we are conscious, we cannot ignore the stark reality that our society is a class divided society. Until the classes, the class exploitation, the class struggles and the class instrument of oppression and coercion, that is, the state, disappear in course of development of class struggle from the arena of development of human society, the society remains as a field of intense class battle.

You either favour missiles and bombing or you refuse uncompromisingly to fight their bloody wars. The Socialist Party's peace policy starts from this basic fact of the inseparability of war from capitalism. If capitalism makes enduring peace impossible, then the system must give way to a better one, whose aim is not profit-making but the satisfaction of the needs of humanity and whose basic means of expansion thereby calls for free cooperation instead of the intensification of competition and the exploitation of labour. The socialist peace program boils down to the struggle of the workers to end capitalism.

All the arguments against socialism are variations of a single theme – its alleged impracticality.

The first argument against socialism was the theoretical assumption that capitalism had always existed and would naturally always continue to exist because it corresponded with “human nature.” Hard facts upset this naive assumption. Capitalism was shown to be but a newcomer among economic systems; it is less than five hundred years old. Moreover the decline of other systems after their rise indicated a similar fate for capitalism.

Another argument is that socialism represented a beautiful ideal but lacked a basis in reality; socialists were therefore nothing but Utopians. The working class, created by capitalism itself, has shown to have a decisive economic interest in the development of socialism, and since socialism signifies a higher level of economy and culture, leading to a class-free society, the working-class movement in this direction represents the interests of society as a whole. In addition, the worldwide industrial system established by capitalism provides a sufficient base for the enormous increase in productivity required to realise socialism. The growth of socialist sentiment is inevitable, for the development of capitalism itself impels it.