An appeal to humanity does not move the capitalist

Social Reaction or Social Revolution, Capitalism or Communism – thus stands the question. This question must be answered in our favour. For the spirit of socialism rises over the entire world.

Capitalism, with its competition, incites nations, races and continents against one another. Capitalism is the instigator of wars. Instead of uniting the world for peace, it works for its irremediable division, for perpetual conflict. Capitalism becomes the Destroyer. The permanent war economy continues with all the key social and economic questions are decisively determined by the course of national antagonisms and preparations for war.

The rise of a socialist movement depends today on the rise of a politically-conscious working class, on its separation from the capitalist ideology. Socialists should dedicate themselves to the purpose of hastening and influencing such a development. What is required of us above all is steadfastness in the face of continuing adversity. That is the duty of every conscious socialist who has stuck by his or her principles and ideas.

Many left-wing groups fancy themselves as “vanguards” of the working-class. We say that workers should spurn these would-be elites and organise for socialism democratically, within political parties without leaders. Leftists insist that they are very much concerned with working-class consciousness, but an examination of their literature shows that “consciousness” means merely following the right leaders. When it is suggested that the majority of the population must attain a clear desire for the abolition of the wages system, and the introduction of a worldwide money-free community, they reply that this is “too abstract”, or “too academic.” Some say, when push comes to shove, that they look forward to such a world without wages “ultimately,” but since this “ultimate” aim has no effect on their actions it can only be interpreted as an empty platitude. They are even muddled about the various capitalist reforms they will introduce if they get power. Bernstein’s dictum “The movement is everything, the goal nothing” sums up the left-wing outlook very well. Left-wing people need to chase feverishly down every reformist cul-de-sac, a practice known as “developing consciousness through struggle. Struggle is apparently a sort of metaphysical driving force which is supposed to turn reforms into sparks of revolution. Action for its own sake is lauded to the skies. The Left constitute the officer corps and the ringmasters who order the working-class to jump through hoops, manipulated by slogan-shouting demagogues brandishing reformist bait. What is needed is not leadership (the labour movement is full of “revolutionary leaders” as it is) but a working class equipped with an understanding of socialism. The left wing are a valuable asset to the capitalist system, thanks to the confusion and disillusionment they produce.

Those who march in protest about the effects of capitalism would do better to look for a more radical approach—or else contribute towards generations to come suffering the same sore feet, the same sore heads—and the same bitter disillusionment. Even when the politicians, the economists and the experts listen they are still powerless to end the misery and exploitation of capitalism.

Nationalists share the illusion that the problems facing workers in Northern Ireland or workers in Wales or in Scotland are caused by some faulty political arrangement: rule from London rather than from Edinburgh, Cardiff or Dublin. In actual fact, however, these problems have an economic cause: the capitalist system of class ownership of the means of production and distribution. As long as capitalism continues to exist these problems will remain, however the political superstructure is re-arranged and no matter how radical or violent the rearrangement. The experience of the South of Ireland since independence in 1921 is proof enough of this.

The Socialist Party is internationalist. It strives to join together of workers of all lands in order to end capitalism, and all the scourges which accompanies the system. It is nationalism that divides workers so that the workers of one nationality are struggling against the workers of another nationality for a few illusory crumbs the rulers throw out exactly for that purpose. It is nationalism that pits groups of workers against each other to the advantage of their mutual exploiters and oppressors. Nationalism is an ideology which developed with the emergence of nations during the rise and development of capitalism. Nationalism serves the capitalists in the sense that they are seeking a market for their goods, and their national market is always primary as capitalism develops. And nationalism serves to help the merchants, traders and manufacturers secure its home market from foreign competitors by promoting patriotic protectionism. Yet the nation-state also offers the spring-board for acquiring foreign markets by demanding free trade for its exports. Nationalism does not serve the interests of the working class but is a tool of the capitalist class. The hold of patriotic sentiment and the havoc wrought by capitalists by playing upon it, have been abundantly demonstrated.

Nationalism means exclusion and isolation. Any nationalism finally implies that those people are better than all others. We are the victims of a nationalism that preaches superiority and inferiority. Nationalism isolates the oppressed from their foreign brothers and sisters and delivers them into the hands of the exploiters of their own nationality. The destroyer of capitalism is the collective workers struggle, the victory of the multi-national working class.

Capitalism is a world system and cannot be replaced by socialism except on a global scale. Just as socialism in a single country is not possible, so a successful socialist strategy cannot be developed except on a worldwide scale.

The SNP is a capitalist party. It works on behalf of business. The difference between the SNP and the other parties is not that it is calling for a different social system. What’s different is that they are simply looking for a new way to divide the spoils. The sharing will still just be between groups of capitalists.

We Need a Revolution of the Brain and the Heart

In order for the working people to fulfil their historic role of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism, it is necessary that they be organised as a class. The task of the Socialist Party is not to channel class struggles into programmes of reform but to extend transform them until they are seen as part of the path to the abolition of capitalism and the taking of power by the working class. The Socialist Party is the conscious expression of the class struggle of the workers against capitalism. Its aim is to direct the struggle to the conquest of political power as the means of introducing the socialist society. The Socialist Party maintains that the problems of the working class are identical with the problems of the workers around the world. Every country to-day is in the hands of billionaires-owners of the biggest corporations, the biggest banks, the biggest computer companies; in short, owners or CEOs of Big Business. They use their power to make themselves richer and richer—at our expense. They hire workers to make profit out of their labour; their capitalist production is for profit, not for use: and to get more profit they slash wages, carry through speed-up and worsen conditions. This mad race for profit ends in a crisis; and then they try to get out of the crisis—at our expense.

Poverty, insecurity and malnutrition making their inroads in the homes of millions of workers: low wages, increased work-loads, to the point of physical exhaustion, is the lot of the workers and it increases the number of accidents, sickness and a high death-rate among the working-class. This is the world to-day for working men, women and their families. Unless we put an end to capitalism, conditions will become worse and worse. Poverty and insecurity and unemployment which threatens the majority of people. Workers must face with full and serious determination the situation as it is; face the fact that all capitalism has to offer them to-day is wage-slavery; and that neither they nor their families have any hope or future under capitalism. There is no need for a single worker to be overworked or in dread of losing his or her job; no reason why an unemployed worker should lack the necessaries of life. All over the world millions of workers are year by year coming to realise these facts and to see that nothing except the existence of capitalism prevents them building up for themselves a decent and secure world. Everywhere the workers are becoming less and less willing to put up with an entirely unnecessary state of semi-starvation. They are showing themselves more and more determined to insist upon their right to food, clothing and shelter for themselves and their families. But to get this, capitalism must be overthrown. To get this is only possible by the building up of socialism, giving peace and prosperity, happiness and new life to the whole working population. All over the world the tide of working-class resistance is now rising. The workers have the power to overthrow capitalism. It is the capitalists who are powerless. It is the workers who are strong from the very moment that they unite and move towards the essential reconstruction of society.

It will mean that the capitalists will be deprived of their ownership and control of the factories and offices, mines, farms and transport. All these means of production which they have used and misused only to pile up profits for themselves and poverty for the workers will be taken from them. The workers will put an end of production for profit and will carry on production for use. The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the working class will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation and extension of production.

The future of the world depends upon the people themselves, upon the working class above all as the most cohesive and progressive class in society. The future of humanity depends upon the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a class-free society; it depends upon the abolition of exploitation and production for profits, and its replacement by a State-free society. Central to the capitalist economic system is the exploitation of workers by capitalists. This determines that the great mass of people, the working class, have no choice except to work for capitalist employers so as to earn a money wage to buy the goods and services, the commodities, necessary for them to survive. On the face of things this relationship between capitalist and worker seems to be a fair and equal one: the worker agrees to do so many hours work for the capitalist and in return the capitalist agrees to pay a certain amount of money in wages. In reality this relationship is an unequal and exploitative one because the wages paid to the worker are less than the value of what he or she produces. The difference between the value of what workers produce and what they receive in wages constitutes the profits of the capitalist employer. Massive exploitation of the working class is an integral part of the capitalist economic system and will persist for as long as does capitalism.

Who owns the North Pole?

This blog has comprehensively covered the struggle by the capitalist countries to assert their power over the arctic region. 

Continuing this ongoing process the United States warn other counties but in particular Russia and China, that American interests will not be threatened by them.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US would strengthen its Arctic presence to keep in check what he called the "aggressive attitude" of China and Russia.

Pompeo said: "The region has become an arena of global power and competition. Just because the Arctic is a place of wilderness does not mean it should become a place of lawlessness," Pompeo added.

Surface air temperatures in the Arctic are warming at twice the rate as the rest of the earth, according to some researchers. Some experts say the ocean could be ice-free during the summer months within 25 years. The melting ice has made some of the earth's undiscovered reserves of oil, gas and mineral deposits more accessible. Environmentalists are concerned that the Trump administration is focused on exploiting resources and pushing back on Russia and China for strategic and security reasons at the expense of the Arctic's fragile environment. 

 China, which became an observing nation on the Arctic Council in 2013, has tried to boost its presence in the Arctic region. It has been one of the countries scrambling to claim territory as thawing ice allows for the exploitation of some of the world's remaining untapped resources. Last year, China outlined a plan for a "Polar Silk Road" as melting ice has opened up northern shipping routes. The US warned earlier this month of the risk of Chinese submarines in the Arctic.

https://www.dw.com/en/us-vows-to-check-aggressive-china-russia-in-arctic/a-48612809

End the yoke of private ownership

Throughout the world, without exception, the picture is one of increasing chaos and crises. Capitalism is manifestly exhibiting symptoms of deep crisis. Throughout capitalism the policy of the ruling class is to try to find a way out of the crisis by throwing its burden upon the shoulders of the working class. The result is real destitution, verging into actual hunger. Cities and towns and villages are now full of food-banks, the modern day equivalent of the soup-kitchens. While people go without, the stores and warehouses that are crammed with the necessaries of life. The worker’s life has become an endless round of worry and misery. Never until capitalism appeared upon the world scene was such an anomaly possible—starvation in the midst of plenty. It is a crime against humanity. Global warming has dealt a shattering blow to capitalist complacency. Greatly alarmed, the capitalists dimly perceive its seriousness, without understanding its causes. Across the world system of capitalism there grows a brooding fear of rising discontent and looming revolutions. The capitalists cannot cure their deepening crisis of climate change and have been unable to check its progress. Confusion and pessimism are beginning to appear. Rebellions not prosperity are just around the corner. It is no more mere crisis, but the beginning of a catastrophe. Dark forebodings and fear are now pervading the consciousness of people.

As the capitalists intensify their drive against the workers and in the face of growing hardships and mounting attacks on living standards in every sphere of society, growing numbers taking matters into their own hands to fight back against the owning class of capitalists. Despite decades of attempts to divide, derail and divert the workers’ movement, it continues to survive and engage on the class warfare battlefields. Out of the welter of crisis and misery and war, there is now hope a new social system will be born.

The basic contradiction of capitalism, the source of all its weakness and of its final dissolution, is found in the fact that this system does not carry on production for the benefit of society as a whole but for the profit of a relatively small owning class. The great industries by which society must live are owned by private individuals who ruthlessly exploit the masses who work in these industries. Under capitalism production is regulated not by the needs of the masses but by whether or not the capitalist class can make a profit by such production; commodities are not produced primarily for use, but for profit. The system of private ownership and production for profit generates the whole series of contradictions and conflicts—economic, political and social—which torment present day society, causing disruption in the economic life and violent struggles between individual capitalists, between social classes and between countries.

Capitalist society is based on the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class and that all the evils of this society arise from that. Only by the overthrow and elimination of capitalism can move society forward. The abolition of capitalism will put an end to the division of society into classes and bring about a completely new era in human history–socialism–where mankind as a whole, through it cooperative efforts and conscious planning, can continue to advance to heights undreamed of in the past. There is only one way that all the suffering caused by capitalism can be finally ended–by wiping out its source, capitalism. And there is only one force in society that can bring this about–the working class, uniting against the capitalists. This is why the aim of the working class, through all its daily battles against the capitalists, must be to build the strength and unity of the working class for the day when it will be able to overthrow the capitalists altogether.

The capitalists, of course, try to present their rule and their system of exploitation as eternal. They say that there is no alternative to capitalism. Capitalism is doomed. The capitalist system of private ownership of industry and land, production for profit, and exploitation of the workers is reaching the end of its course. It has outlived its historic mission. In its earlier stages capitalism was a progressive system; it constituted an advance over feudalism, which preceded it. Under capitalism there has been built an industrial system, at least in the imperialist countries; industrial technique has been developed; the proletariat has been created and disciplined. But even the limited progress that capitalism has accomplished for humanity has been achieved at the cost of incredible misery, poverty, ignorance and slaughter of the working class. Capitalism has created the objective conditions for Socialism. But it can go no further. It cannot carry society to higher stages of development, to social harmony. It has become an obstacle in the upward path of humanity, a means of condemning hundreds of millions of people to mass starvation and death. Capitalism has provided its own executioners and grave diggers, the proletariat. The workers of the world are getting ready for their great social task of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism.

No Party can represent both capitalist and worker, for the capitalist lives by exploiting the worker and the worker lives for the day he and she can end this exploitation. And election can bring freedom for the working class because freedom for the working class means the ending of capitalist wage-slavery. The Socialist Party openly declares that it represents only the working class and seeks, as the highest interest of the working class, the overthrow and elimination of capitalism by the working class itself.

Onwards to World Socialism

This society, based upon artificial scarcity, in which there exists the capacity to produce for all has reached a point where we cannot be expected to tolerate it any longer. According to the food experts, there are 800,000,000 people between now and next harvest, who face malnutrition or actual starvation. The food shortage will, as always, hit the poorest the hardest. There are several reasons for this critical scarcity of food, and varied as are these reasons they are all the fault of the capitalist system, with its wars and its profit motivation. For the uncontrolled floods that ruined the crops, for the drought that blighted crops world capitalism must also be blamed, if its science and technology served a system dedicated to human needs and not to power and profits. Hungry people are the tribute we pay for continuing the capitalist system, the price for allowing the ascendancy of the power of money over the needs of man. What must be done? Feeding profits to the capitalists is hardly the way to feed people. Let working people send food to their sisters and brothers. But not through the medium of the capitalist government and the profiteers, while human lives hang in the balance. Let's organise send food to the stricken abroad, on the basis of humanity according to the plan and guidance of a socialist society. On this planet there is not room for both the capitalist system and the solidarity of mankind. Economic security under capitalism is impossible. One or the other must go. Let us end the profit system.

Capitalism has reaped fabulous profits yet the benefits have not accrued to workers who have not gained in an era of prosperity on the stock-markets of the world. Scarcity amid abundance is as striking a fact. Employed workers have fared little better than those on benefits. The process of lowering the wages of workers has been an accomplishment for employers. Strikes have either been prevented or, once under way, emasculated by legal injunctions. 

The world we are living in is shaken by heavy convulsions from end to end. There is the struggle of the people to make ends meet with frozen wages and rising prices. There is the shortage of decent homes, of doctors and hospitals, of teachers and schools. There is a new crisis of capitalism. The gravity of the environmental crisis afflicting all humanity is frightening many people and confirms how deep the transformation humanity has to carry out. Socialists oppose capitalism, period. We oppose capitalism with socialism. The continued survival of capitalism is contingent solely on our fellow-workers to permit it.

How is a socialist movement to be built? The bloggers at Socialist Courier do not pretend to have a formula but do believe that certain steps can and should be taken. Although the defeatism of recent years must be replaced by increased confidence there is no point in making pronouncements of invincibility at a time when few see a real possibility of victory. We need to stress the advantages that socialists have today. The capitalist class and its governments are having increasing difficulty coping with climate change and new opposition is appearing to provide opportunities to win large numbers to socialism. It is now clear to all, there is an awakening of resistance.

Marx formulated his theories not merely as a contribution to analysing the capitalism of his day but they were intended to provide the evidence for revolutionary replacement of the system. Marx was firmly convinced that capitalism would inevitably lead to increasing exploitation and relative impoverishment of the working class, that economic crises of growing frequency and severity would disrupt the reproduction cycle. By virtue of their economic status, workers would undoubtedly acquire revolutionary consciousness until, with circumstances revealing inexorably the obsolete and senseless face of capitalism, they would rise in revolt. These conclusions were premature but remain relevant for a long time to come. The capitalist system spells deprivation and misery for wide sections of the population, providing fertile soil for revolutionary ideas.

The struggle between master and servant seems never to end. As long as such excruciating social contradictions as those that are rending capitalism asunder can be found all over the globe, as long as there are such extremes between abundant wealth and the misery of millions, all sorts of solutions are going to be put forth. The workers show their best qualities in struggle, the bourgeoisie their worst. Socialists are appealing to the democratic, egalitarian and intelligent side of people, and not to the herd-like attitudes that have been greatly encouraged by the media and educational systems. Socialism may be possible, and even necessary to eliminate the evils of capitalism, but it is not inevitable. the future will be what we shall make it with greater participation, more activity, and more militancy. The next stage in history is socialism. This is a system which eliminates recessions, hunger and wars because it operates in a different way than capitalism. It operates them directly for the benefit of the people. It produces for use and not for profit. To be real socialists we should understand why capitalism is dying, and why socialism will inevitably be born.

For economic security and permanent peace – World Socialism.

Make a Revolution

To make revolution and put an end to capitalism, the working class must have a plan. Standing in the way of socialism is the capitalist class. The capitalists are our enemy. It is the ruling class. It holds state power and is responsible for the hardships facing working people. Against this minority stands the vast majority of the rest of the population. The conditions of life for 98% of the people cannot fundamentally improve without the overthrow of the ruling class of capitalists. The working class is daily thrown into conflict with the capitalist class. The capitalists are a powerful enemy and it will require protracted efforts to overthrow them. Only by winning over all those who are oppressed by capital to the banner of socialism can the working class succeed in overthrowing capitalism. Despite its huge numerical advantage, the powerful potential of the working class has been frustrated by divisions and lack of class consciousness. The majority of workers at this time do not understand the need for fundamental change to society. They have difficult lives but do not see how their problems can be resolved. They want an improvement in their lives and often struggle against their employers, but do not yet see the need for revolutionary change. Many are generally content with their situation or feel that, even though things could improve, monopoly capitalism is the best system. They do not favour change and many are affected by racism and chauvinism. It is a major obstacle to the struggle for socialism. Through well-organised struggle and education, workers will realise that their interests lie in the overthrow of capitalist private property and the establishment of socialism.

The state dampens down class struggle by promoting class collaboration. Although the capitalists rule, they do not do so through open violence and coercion. Working people enjoy a wide range of freedoms - we can vote in regular elections, we can organise in trade unions and political parties, we can set up pressure groups, publish newspapers and leaflets, go on strike, hold public meetings and protest march on demonstrations, and travel freely around the country. If we get arrested for anything, we are not held in detention without trial and we have the right to legal defence.These rights are vital for the working class to defence and promote its interests. Without the civil liberties and human rights we would be at the absolute mercy of every whim of the employers. 

But these rights have not always existed. Nor were they generously granted by the employing class. They have been fought for with great effort and sacrifice by many generations of working people in a struggle that goes back to Chartism. Neither are these rights in any sense eternally guaranteed under capitalism. Whenever a crisis develops in capitalism the employers attack democracy in order to limit the ability of the workers to resist. Despite the importance of the democratic rights that we have won over the years, the working class can never achieve complete political freedom under capitalism. In this society only the capitalists have the wealth and influence to use capitalist democracy to the full. Formal equality that exists for all citizens is undermined and restricted by the power of capital. Until the working class gains control of the means of production, democracy can never be more than a partial achievement. 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. We are carrying out the socialist revolution in the UK to make our contribution to the struggle world socialism. Socialism must be worldwide system. Capitalism is global and it will do everything in its power to defeat a working class revolution. The only insurance of the victory of socialism is international solidarity of workers.

If we look at the production of wealth in present-day society, we find that that production of wealth can only take place through the co-operation of many diverse trades and industries interlocked one with the other. Within a given workshop, the whole variety of workers, manual and mental, co-operate together in order to produce a common product. Within society as a whole all industries co-operate together in order to produce wealth, the raw material of one industry being the finished product of the other. Without this co-operation of all the useful elements of society in production, there can be no society as we understand it to-day. Wealth to-day can only be produced and industry maintained through this co-operation. 

The vast industries in which men and women co-operate to produce wealth to-day can only be maintained by the co-operative labour. The technical knowledge, the science which is utilised by these industries is the common product of men and women co-operating together in society. This technical knowledge, this application of science to industry, is constantly increasing, and with it, the power to produce wealth quickly and efficiently. Within the lifetime of comparatively young men and women, we have seen tremendous progress in the application of new technology to industry. The ability to produce wealth grows every year, and with it, in a rational system of society, the welfare of the mass of the people should grow also. In capitalist society the opposite process is taking place. Alongside growing power to produce wealth there is growing poverty. The wealth which is produced by the co-operative labour of all active workers in industry is divided in most hopelessly unequal fashion. The cause of the unjust distribution of wealth lies in the nature of the capitalist order of society. Whilst wealth is cooperatively produced, while industries can only be maintained by the co-operative labour of millions of workers, these industries are not owned by the workers who operate them, but by a small idle class owning the land, the banks and the means of production. Because this class owns the means of life, it is able to dictate to the producers the terms on which they will work. These terms may vary for different classes of workers, in accordance with their scarcity, skill, or organisation, but they are always of such a character as to allow to the employing class the lion’s share of the wealth which is produced by the labour of others. 

In addition, capitalism wastes many of the advantages of science and technology because of the unplanned character of modern commerce taken as a whole. In a single workshop, or even within a single industry, production may be planned according to the most scientific methods, but in capitalist society as a whole there is no plan regulating the production and distribution of wealth. The whole system is based on the pursuit of profit by the owners of the means of production. The regulator of the whole system determining whether industry shall be expanded or shall go on short time is the rise and fall of prices on the market, reflecting the rise and fall in the possibilities of profit for the capitalists whose industries produce for the market. The unplanned nature of capitalism taken renders it incapable of completely utilising the results of modern invention or of overcoming the crises in the basic industries in this country. No capitalist will make any effort to reorganise an industry on more efficient lines, however, unless there is the prospects of a vast profit accruing from the expenditure on that reorganisation. Unprofitable industry is left to drift to ruin, while the capitalist class divert investments into the new areas of industry or export their capital abroad where the promise of greater profits lie. The scramble for profit leads also to the scramble for markets for sources of investment and raw materials on an international scale, and leads inevitably to military conflicts. 

Our media often concentrates our attention on economic growth and a rise in GDP. The idea behinds this is that the more capitalism produces wealth the better off everyone will become. This is not the case. A look at history and we see in the periods of the greatest expansion of capitalism, colossal wealth existed alongside the most heartrending poverty. The more wealth capitalism produces, the greater its difficulties as a functioning system; the more difficult it is to obtain markets, the more intensive international competition becomes; the greater becomes the danger of the antagonisms created by this competition ripening into war. A scramble all over the world is taking place for control of oil fields, mineral deposits and sources of supply of all kinds. The result of this scramble is inevitably military confrontation, sometimes directly but most often by proxy in various civil wars.

The capitalists have only one solution for economic recession, the increased exploitation of the working class. There are two ways in which the capitalists can increase this exploitation: (1) to reduce wages , and (2) to speed up the working class while continuing to pay them the same wages by intensifying working conditions to increase productivity. These methods are not mutually exclusive. Very often both of them are adopted by the same body of employers, one after the other. When workers agree to facilitate production by abandoning their safeguards, there is no guarantee that they would get a share of the increased production. The division of the increased product would be settled like always, by the relative economic muscle of the workers on the one hand and the strength of employers on the other. Offering the capitalists the certainty of increased profits, hold out no hopes to the workers at all. The idea that collaboration with the capitalist class, can overcome a recession is absurd. Britain is not the only country in crisis. All capitalist countries are engaged in the same policies. Thus those leaders who believe that a far-reaching improvement in the workers’ wages and conditions of life can be got not by overthrowing capitalism, but by co-operating with the capitalists to make their system more efficient, are simply surrendering to the capitalist class, misleading the workers, and creating conditions which will inevitably make the rich richer and the workers poorer. 

The more the workers unite their forces and commence to struggle against the capitalist offensive, the more the struggle becomes a political struggle, not just between the workers and any group of capitalists, but between the workers and the capitalist state representing the capitalist class as a whole. The Socialist Party, therefore, believes in the necessity for capturing political power. The question of whether the workers should attempt to seize power before or after obtaining a Parliamentary majority is entirely a question of time, place, and circumstance. The workers are engaged in a struggle with the capitalist class and cannot determine their policy without reference to the policy of their capitalist adversaries. The capitalist class grew up within the framework of pre-capitalist society and became an economically powerful class without any revolution. Their revolution was designed to secure for them such political control as would enable them to break down all restrictions and secure the fullest possible development for their industry and trade which they already controlled. With them economic power preceded political power. The workers, on the other hand, cannot get economic power without first, by a political revolution, breaking down the capitalist state machine, building up their political power and on that basis proceeding to secure control of the economic forces of society.

If the working-class desire to beat off the capitalist attacks on their present standards, avoid the danger of war and carry out a resolute struggle to achieve their emancipation through the overflow of capitalism, they must fight more and more within the workers' movement against the reformist policy of co-operating with capitalism. The Socialist Party exposes to the working class the futility of reformism and urges them to go forward to the complete overthrow of the capitalist class. 

Time is Short

It is the workers who represent the decisive force in our society. The capitalists, however, fail to recognise this elementary fact. They still hope to preserve the traditional position of class privilege when conditions have completely changed. They think their class system is eternal.

The Labour Party and its left-wing hangers-on pretend that because they were of us they will be for us, and for our interests.

Technocrats inform us that capitalism is on its death-bed. Modern technology, robots and automation has dealt “the price system” will shortly dispatch it entirely. The wonders of the computer and artificial intelligence will make poverty an anachronism. Meanwhile, we will continue to endure the mass misery. We all stand on threshold of an age of plenty, in which no-one need work more than a few hours a day and receive free money in the form of the Universal Basic Income. When it was just thought that they advocated the abolition of capitalism, we learn that the exchange economy and buying and selling will continue. In Silicon Valley and other places, they repudiate political action and announce that they are preparing for the automatic collapse of capitalism. The technocrats will take charge of production for the common good, instead of catering for the profits of the privileged few but contemplates no other alterations in the existing capitalist economy. At first sight the proposals appears to be a clever scheme for establishing socialism peacefully and gradually. Capitalism is not to be overthrown by revolution, but undermined by the current of cooperation until it crumbles to pieces. And will be supposedly financed by taxation. In other words, it is asking the capitalists not only to consent to its own execution but to pay for the rope that is to hang them.

Without doubt, the world is ripe for socialism, so far as its objective economic development is concerned. What delays the coming of socialism is not the lack of carefully worked out schemes of socialist reconstruction, but the absence of the most elementary means for overthrowing the capitalist masters, first and foremost, a class-conscious working class majority in favour of change. Without this indispensable prerequisite, the most perfect paper plan cannot hasten the arrival of socialism by a single minute. The working class is as yet to appear upon the political arena as an independent agent. A revolutionary party aims at the overthrow of capitalism, not its reform.

Common among working people are a number of illusions preventing them from seeing the underlying cause of their problems and from looking toward a socialist solution. One of these illusions concerns the nature of the state. 

Many have allowed themselves to be fooled into believing that because they can choose between candidates (selected by money-dominated political machines,) they have a government ruling in the public interest. Because the people do not yet understand the class nature of state power they are unable to see through the lie that the government is above class interests. 

The first lesson to be learned – and a socialist movement has no greater responsibility than to instill this lesson – is that state power, for all its pretensions, is ultimately the ruling arm of the capitalist class. In a democratic state such as ours parliament serves principally to settle quarrels among the moneyed interests, although the people can use parliamentary forms to improve their lot in peripheral ways. Too many suffer from the liberal delusion that a parliamentary democracy in a society in which big capital dominates the political parties and communications media can somehow raise the working class to power. On the contrary, the great task of socialism is to destroy the capitalists’ power over the state.

The second widespread illusion is the capitalist notion of “national interest” which in reality is the interest of the native capitalists, not the people. Foreign policy is designed to protect the investments and property of big business, even if it means war on foreign countries.

 Too many people still believe that “our” government stands for peace and freedom. People are coming to understand things, but their understanding proceeds slowly in the face of the almost total control of the media by the capitalist class and those who prostitute themselves for the money and celebrity. People must take their lives and fortunes into their own hands. They must learn to distinguish between their own needs and the needs and interests of their capitalist masters. They must take a critical look at the political system which brings their leaders to power. Socialists must dispel the illusion circulating that the capitalists, out of a newly recognised self-interest, could and would change the predatory character of their system. The possessing class has continued to conduct themselves in accordance with the laws of their system: they have stepped up the drive for expansion in the world market and refused to cooperate with any movement, at home or abroad, that infringes upon their right to exact tribute from the entire human race. They reserve for themselves the power to decide how and where the accumulated profits are to be used – whether to bribe a section of the a nationalist movement here or whether to hire mercenaries there.

The Socialist Party aims to abolish the profit system and replace it by a system of production for use. The working class is beginning to awaken from its long slumber. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness and is responsible for most of the depredation and suffering in today’s world. This decadent social system is daily threatening mankind with the incalculable climate change destruction and devastation of war. Consequently, the Socialist Party redoubles its efforts to organise and direct fellow-workers anger into revolutionary channels. Above all, by preparing the people to establish a democratic socialist society.

Will working people achieve their destiny?

Modern capitalist society rests on the relations between the two main classes in capitalism, the working class and the capitalist class. Marx discerned the clue to understanding modern capitalism and indeed all class society in the existence of the class struggle between contending classes, in modern times, the struggle between the two main classes of workers and capitalists. It is true that the working class is weighed down and kept in bondage by the capitalist class and that the capitalists spread backward ideas in the working class and use that as one of the methods of keeping them down. Yet, for the first time it becomes possible to see beyond the seeming labyrinth and chaos of events to their underlying cause, the class struggle. We are just at the beginning where socialism can be realised, and mankind can proceed to develop a class-free society. But it is a beginning. Class unity is the key to the future. Once again the working class will pronounce its contempt for the “condescending saviors” who really work to save capitalism, knowingly or not. Once again the working class is coming to recognise itself as the inheritor of the entire history of humanity’s struggle for a better world. Capitalism, although through the brutal means natural to it, has created the social and technical basis for future abundance. Through the working class, humanity will be able to rid itself of problems now unnecessary and insane — starvation, war, exploitation, racism, sexism, chauvinism and human degradation in all its forms. Our fellow-workers will be motivated to produce abundance not by the lash of the market but by a common consciousness of their common ability to build a human, egalitarian world in which creativity and culture can flourish. Only the working class by changing the social system can bring peace and undreamed of abundance for all.

In “Wages, Price and Profit “Marx insisted that if workers were to abandon their battles around wages and working conditions, then “they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation ... By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.”

But these battles are not ends in themselves. In the very next paragraph Marx also warned against exaggerating the importance of such battles and becoming “exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ending encroachments of capital...”

Thus while this struggle is necessary if the proletariat is to resist everyday attacks and still more to develop its fitness for revolutionary combat, such struggle is not itself revolutionary struggle. Moreover, unless the economic struggle is linked to building a consciously revolutionary movement – unless, as Marx puts it, it is waged not from the view of “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” but under the banner of “abolition of the wages system” – then such struggle turns into its opposite, from a blow against the capitalist to a treadmill for the worker. A handful of capitalists control our world and make vast profits on the labour of the working people and the natural resources of the land. All the major means of production - the factories, forests, farms, fisheries and mines are in the hands of a few hundred capitalists.

Capitalism is a system of exploitation. A handful of parasites live off the backs of the workers and could not care less about their situation. Every bit of the capitalists' vast wealth was stolen from the working people. The capitalists get rich from the fruit of our labour. At the end of the week a worker collects their pay. The capitalists and their apologetic flunkies claim this is a fair exchange. But it is highway robbery. In reality, workers get paid for only a small part of what they produce. The rest, the surplus value, goes straight into the hands of the capitalists and their flunkies. The bosses get rich, not because they have "taken risks" or "worked harder," as they would have us believe. The more they keep wages down and get fewer workers to do more work, the more they can steal from us and the greater their profits. If the bosses think they can make more profit somewhere else, they just close their factories and throw the workers out on the street. People live in misery so a small clique of very wealthy individuals can live in luxury. Capitalist society also callously mistreats people because everything is geared to the drive for profits

The idea that everyone can get rich under this system is a lie invented by the rich themselves. Under capitalism, the only way to get rich is to trample on someone else. There is only room for a few capitalists - at any time the great majority must work and be robbed. This is why workers have only one choice: either submit to this wage slavery or fight it!

Capitalism is a global system of international exploitation. The corporations invest their capital abroad, penetrate foreign markets and plunder the natural resources of developing countries. They also attempt to dominate other countries politically and to a degree militarily. This international exploitation brings enormous profits for the big corporations, and wretched lives for the people of the developing world.

Capitalism is a system of economic chaos and crisis, plagued by periodic economic crises, such as recessions, which are becoming more serious and complex. It is the very nature of each business to try to maximise its profits by pushing production and cutting expenses, especially the pay of workers. Productivity tend to go up and wages down. The result is that companies find they cannot sell all they have produced, and they lay off workers. This only worsens the situation and the economy sinks even further until they have eliminated their surpluses. Economic crises are aggravated by speculation, hoarding and other schemes of the bankers, financiers and industrialists. Each tries to profit in the short run, but their individual greed eventually throws the whole system into turmoil, leading the working class and people to suffer. Capitalists have always tried to put the burden of the crisis onto the shoulders of working people. It has tried wage freezes, cuts in benefits, cuts in expenditure on health and education, and bail-outs to business. For working people the future is less and less certain. Wages fall or remain stagnant while hours and working conditions deteriorate. Working people make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population. But in nearly every country they are the oppressed majority, labouring to support the luxury of a handful of exploiters.

This anarchic system wastes a great deal of social wealth. Capitalism is an obstacle to the further advancement of the material well-being of society. It is unjust, wasteful, irrational and increasingly unproductive. This exploitative and oppressive system, where profit is master, has choked our entire society with economic crises, political reaction and social decay. The drive for profits holds thousands hostage to hunger and want; it has poisoned the very air that we breath and water that we drink; it spawns cynicism and violence, drugs, crime and social devastation. The problems of capitalism - exploitation, anarchy of production, speculation and economic crisis, oppression, and the whole system of injustice - arise from the self interest of the tiny group of capitalists.

The planet is capable of satisfying the needs of all its people. But today the great majority of people are faced with poverty, deteriorating health, education and other social services. Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism. Today the whole system of production is socially interdependent, but it is controlled by private hands. In place of private control of social production there must be social ownership if society's problems are to be addressed. Socialism will be won through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Having overthrown the capitalist class, the working people will take over the economic forces developed by capitalism and operate them in the interests in society. Socialism will be a better society, one which will present unprecedented possibilities for the improvement of peoples' lives. Because working people will control the great wealth they produce, they will be fundamentally able to determine their own futures. The end of exploitation of one person by another will be a liberating and transforming force. Socialism will not mean government control. The State serves the interests of the ruling capitalist class. When the government intervenes in the economy, it does so to help, not hurt, capitalism. What will not be developed in socialism are the massive government bureaucracy and repressive state apparatus (police, courts, prisons) which are used to control the people and defend the privileged. A socialist society would have no such needs.

The exact features of socialism will emerge as our struggle against capitalism develops but we can visualise some features. The means of production - the factories, mines, forests, big farms, offices, transport systems, media, communications, retail chains will be taken into common ownership. Private ownership of commercial enterprises will end. The personal possessions property people will be left alone.

The economy will be planned to serve human needs rather than simply profit and luxury consumption by the rich. This will release the productive capacity of the economy from the limitations of profit maximisation. A great expansion in useful production and the wealth of society will become useful. Rational planning will replace anarchy. Coordination and planning of the broad outlines of production by public agencies will aim at building an economy that will be stable, benefit the people and steadily advance. Redirecting the productive capacity to human needs will require a variety of economic methods and experiments. There could be a combination of central planning, local coordination. Various policies might be used with changing conditions. But no matter what means are chosen, a socialist economy must uphold the basic principles of social ownership, production for the people's needs, and the elimination of exploitation. Factories and other manufacturing facilities will be modernised to eliminate back-breaking labour and ecological damage. 

Transforming the main productive enterprises from private to social ownership will allow workers to manage democratically their own work places through workers' councils and elected administrators, in place of the myriad of supervisors and consultants today. In this way workers will be able to make their work places safe and efficient places that can serve their own interests as well as society's. Productivity gains will be used to shorten the working day and improve living standards, rather than create unemployment. Construction of housing, schools, medical, cultural and sporting facilities for working people will be a priority.

With socialism, goods and services will be distributed on the basis of from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. No longer will employers, investors, landlords and speculators live off the labour of others. Every person will get the opportunity to contribute to society as much as they are able. To administer socialism, the people will establish a social democracy, for the people by the people. The people will elect officials and representatives at all levels of government and the economy. There will be the right of recall and referendum. The voices and the will of the people would be heard, not simply those of the rich.