What is the difference between "socialism" and "communism"?

The answer is Nothing. The two terms are interchangeable: both describe the class-free, state-free society of equal producers advocated by the co-founders of scientific socialism, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Initially they used "communism" to describe the future classless society because of the popular association of "socialism" with the Utopian "socialists" of that time.

 As Engels explained in his 1888 preface to the English translation of The Communist Manifesto:

"When it [the Manifesto] appeared, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. Two kinds of people were regarded as socialists in 1847. On the one hand were the followers of the various Utopian systems, especially the Owenites [followers of Robert Owen] in England and the Fourierists [followers of Charles Fourier] in France, both of which at that time had dwindled to mere sects that were already dying out. On the other hand were the numerous social quacks who, with their various panaceas and every type of patchwork, wanted to do away with social evils without, in the slightest, harming capital and profit. In both cases they were people outside the labour movement and looked far more for support from the 'educated' classes. 

"On the other hand, that part of the working class which was convinced of the inadequacy of a mere political revolution and demanded a fundamental transformation of society -- that part at the time called itself communist.... In 1847 socialism signified a bourgeois movement and communism a working-class movement. Socialism, at least on the Continent, was respectable enough for the drawing room; communism was the exact opposite. Since we were already then definitely of the opinion that 'the emancipation of the workers had to be the task of the working class itself,' we could not for one moment be in doubt as to which of the two names to choose. Nor has it ever occurred to us to renounce it since then." 

Subsequently, as the Utopian "socialists" faded into oblivion and were largely forgotten, Marx and Engels generally preferred to use the term "socialism" in their writings.

Today, both "socialism" and "communism" have been wrongly associated with false and pernicious definitions. Thanks to the so-called social democrats, or reformist "socialists" (for example, the Socialist Party of France, the Labour Party in Britain, the Democratic Socialists of America, in the United States), many people have come to equate "socialism" with any industry or program that is administered by the capitalist political state, be it a nationalised healthcare system, the postal service or a welfare program. 

"Communism," meanwhile, has come to be associated with the system of bureaucratic despotism, the state-capitalist command economy run by the so-called “Communist” parties, that unraveled in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but which still prevails in China and Cuba. 

Further adding to the semantic confusion is the false concept that the Communist parties and other Leninist organisations have promoted for many years -- the concept that a post/capitalist society first goes through a lengthy "socialist" stage, before arriving at the classless society of "communism."

This is a distortion of Marxism, invented by Lenin in his work, State and Revolution. Marx did describe a "first phase" and "higher phase" of "communist society" in his Critique of the Gotha Program. But he was not describing a "transitional" stage in which classes and the state would still exist, and a "higher" stage in which they would disappear, and he did not describe the "first phase" as "socialism" and the "higher phase" as "communism." Rather, he was describing a development that would occur after the classless society, based on social ownership and democratic workers' control of the means of production -- a society that could be described as either "socialism" or "communism" -- was fully established. In the "first phase," some measure of labour time would still be needed to govern the exchange and distribution of the workers' product; in the "higher phase," distribution could be conducted according to the principle: "From everyone according to his faculties, to everyone according to his needs." 

Lenin described Marx's two "phases" as "the scientific difference between socialism and communism." Subsequently, in the ideology of the Soviet Communist Party and its progeny, "socialism" became associated with the state-ruled society of bureaucratic state despotism, and "communism" with the classless society that somehow would arrive some day in the distant future. But these false and confusing definitions of "socialism" and "communism" have no basis in Marx's writings or in scientific socialist thought. 

Naturally, the capitalist class and its leading propagandists in the United States have been all too happy to seize upon any and all of the false definitions of "socialism" and "communism" in order to confuse the working class and discredit both words in workers' minds. 

Standing against such misinformation, the Socialist Party have a well established history of fighting to uphold the correct, scientific, Marxist meaning of socialism or communism. In defending and advocating Marx's and Engels' conception of the future class-free society, though, we have focused on winning over workers by using the term that Marx and Engels preferred in their later years -- socialism. You've heard bad things about socialism. It's because the capitalists who own the industries don't want people to know that there is a better and fairer way for society to be organised. They don't want socialism because socialism would mean that they would have to give back all the wealth they've made off the backs of working people. So they spread a lot of lies and confusion about socialism. 

If you want to know what socialism is really about, get in touch with the Socialist Party. Take a look at what we have to say, learn the truth about socialism, and give it a fair chance in your mind. 

Organising socialism sustainably

Marx was fond of quoting the 17th century writer Sir William Petty’s remark that labour is the father and nature the mother of wealth. Marx’s materialist conception of history makes the way humans are organised to meet their material needs the basis of any society. Humans meet their material needs by transforming parts of the rest of nature into things that are useful to them; this in fact is what production is. So the basis of any society is its mode of production which, again, is the same thing as its relationship to the rest of nature. Humans survive by interfering in the rest of nature to change it for their own benefit. That humans have to interfere in nature is a fact of human existence. How humans interfere in nature, on the other hand, depends on the kind of society they live in. Humans are both a part and a product of nature and humans have a unique significance in nature since they are the only life-form capable of reflective thought and so of conscious intervention to change the environment. It is absurd to regard human intervention in nature as some outside disturbing force, since humans are precisely that part of nature which has evolved that consciously intervenes in the rest of nature; it is our nature to do so. True , that at the present time, the form human intervention in the rest of Nature takes is upsetting natural balances and cycles, but the point is that humans, unlike other life-forms, are capable of changing their behaviour. In this sense the human species is the brain and voice of Nature i.e. Nature become self-conscious. But to fulfil this role humans must change the social system which mediates their intervention in nature. A change from capitalism to a community where each contributes to the whole to the best of his or her ability and takes from the common fund of produce what he or she needs. Competitive pressures to minimise costs and maximise sales, profit-seeking and blind economic growth, with all their destructive effects on the rest of nature, are built-in to capitalism. These make capitalism inherently environmentally unfriendly. Attempts to “green” capitalism, to make it “ecological”, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth. The only framework within which humans can regulate their relationship with the rest of nature in an ecologically acceptable way has to be a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, freed from the tyranny of the economic laws that operate wherever there is production for sale on a market. Humans are capable of integrating themselves into a stable ecosystem and there is nothing whatsoever that prevents this being possible today on the basis of industrial technology and methods of production, all the more so, that renewable energies exist (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal and whatever) but, for the capitalists, these are a “cost” which penalises them

Another important point not to overlook is that we are seeking a "steady-state” economy or "zero-growth" which corresponds to what Marx called “simple reproduction” - a situation where human needs were in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them. Such a society would already have decided, according to its own criteria and through its own decision-making processes, on the most appropriate way to allocate resources to meet the needs of its members. This having been done, it would only need to go on repeating this continuously from production period to production period. Production would not be ever-increasing but would be stabilised at the level required to satisfy needs. All that would be produced would be products for consumption and the products needed to replace and repair the raw materials and instruments of production used up in producing these consumer goods. The point about such a situation is that there will no longer be any imperative need to develop productivity, i.e. to cut costs in the sense of using less resources; nor will there be the blind pressure to do so that is exerted under capitalism through the market. Of course, technical research would continue and this would no doubt result in costs being able to be saved, but there would be no external pressure to do so or even any need to apply all new productivity enhancing techniques. And we can set out a possible way of achieving an eventual zero growth steady state society operating in a stable and ecologically benign way. This could be achieved in three main phases.

First, there would have to be urgent action to relieve the worst problems of food shortages, health care and housing which affect billions of people throughout the world. There would be need for an immediate increase in the volume of production of many kinds of goods to relieve those people who were suffering from the effects of the old system and to supply the needs of those who were in the process of transferring themselves from obsolete to useful occupations. For example, the agricultural parts of the world, freed from the restraints of the present money-based system would pour out the abundance of health-giving foodstuffs to feed the half-starved populations of the world. Secondly, longer term action to construct means of production and infrastructures such as transport systems and for the supply of permanent housing and durable consumption goods. For the first time, the conditions would exist for turning into reality the beautiful plans for housing people in real homes instead of the sordid slums which the present social system has called into existence. These plans exist today - on paper - and will remain so, while it is necessary to have money to get a decent home. Released from the money-necessity, architects, builders, designers, artists, engineers, and scientists would be enabled to get together to build towns, homes and work-places which would be a joy to live and work in, a job at which even today their fingers are itching to get. How long this period would last depend on the size and mess left by the present system. We don’t think it would take very long since we have seen how quickly even the obstacles of the present social system can be overcomed and how backward countries can be developed by modern industrial methods. It should not, therefore, take very long for those parts of the world which are already highly industrialised to turn out enough goods to make the whole of humanity tolerably comfortable as far as the fundamental necessities of life are concerned. Thirdly, having got rid of the worst relics of the old order, production would then be adjusted so that there could be an eventual fall in production, and society could move into a stable mode, making due provision by storage for the possible natural calamities such as earthquakes.This would achieve a rhythm of daily production in line with daily needs with no significant growth. On this basis, the world community could live in material well being whilst looking after the planet. Socialism will seek an enviromental friendly relationship with nature. In socialism we would not be bound to use the most labour efficient methods of production. We would be free to select our methods in accordance with a wide range of socially desirable criteria, in particular the vital need to protect the environment. What it means is that we should construct permanent, durable means of production which you don’t constantly innovate. We would use these to produce durable equipment and machinery and durable consumer goods designed to last for a long time, designed for minimum maintenance and made from materials which if necessary can be re-cycled. Many consumer goods are used occasionally. Perhaps sharing them in a neighbourhood will replace the idea that everyone needs one of everything. This will reduce the number of these items required. That means reduced production. In this way we would get a minimum loss of materials; once they’ve been extracted and processed they can be used over and over again. It also means that once you’ve achieved satisfactory levels of consumer goods, you don’t insist on producing more and more. Total social production could even be reduced. This will be the opposite of to-day's capitalist system's cheap, shoddy, throw-away goods with its built-in obsolescence, which results in a massive loss and destruction of resources.

Liberation and Emancipation

Private ownership and control of the means of production demonstrates over and over again what a menace it is to workers, their families and to society in general. Capitalist production, with its all-consuming drive for profit, has proved unable to halt or even appreciably slow down its damage to the environment. The failure of our present form of government to solve global warming is a matter of record and is being demonstrated again and again. Hence, lies, distortions and falsifications in the service of profit-making is "freedom of speech." Joining the ever swelling chorus of voices dissatisfied with present-day society are those of the many men and women active in the climate justice movement expressing the growing rage at the destruction of our environment. Sadly most of their demands are for reform measures within the capitalist system. Nothing short of the elimination of the profit motive as the basis of production amounts, will protect the environment. It is time that workers begin taking matters into their own hands and begin building a movement for socialism -- to save our families, our children and society's future.

Transnational agri-capitalists corporations, sometimes collaborating with local landowners, have dispossessed peasants from subsistence farming. They have turned much of the best land over to producing cash crops for export to American and European markets because profits are higher than in producing foodstuffs for local consumption. Compounding this capitalist-produced underdevelopment of the Third World, displaced peasants can't find jobs as wage workers. Millions starve, not because food isn't available, but because they don't have the income to buy it. To a lesser degree, the spectre of hunger also haunts exploited workers in the advanced capitalist countries, especially the growing numbers of permanently unemployed. Starvation amid plenty strikes many people as an absurd paradox. However, under a system in which commodities -- including food -- are produced for sale with a view toward profit, it is perfectly logical. 

Why are things this way? It is because of the very nature of capitalism. Capitalists control the entire economy, and capitalists care about nothing except what is profitable to them. They care about the well-being of their workers only if this well-being leads to production and profits. They care about the nurture of working-class children only as new workers to replace a spent generation in the years ahead. Today, however, capitalists are caught up in the current "downsizing" phase, and apparently care very little whether the workers reproduce themselves. As automation and productivity rise, the number of workers needed to produce a certain amount of goods diminishes, and the number of available replacement workers increases. Thus, individual workers become disposable because it is so easy to replace them. It is not necessary to keep an employee who is less than satisfactory in any way because another worker can be employed instead. And it certainly is not necessary to support a worker who is spending time and energy on a family, because that worker is easy to replace with a worker who will spend this time and energy on the job. 

The whole system is quite insane. OUR MAIN REASON FOR EXISTENCE is to produce goods and services that our capitalist employers can sell for profit. It is not even meeting the basic needs of people. In a sane society, things would be different. Production schedules would be determined by needs, not by profits. Workers would no longer have to support these parasites that make up the capitalist class, and so plenty of material goods would be available for all workers and their families as well. The necessary work would be shared by everybody, spread among a large number of workers. The workload would be lighter and the working week would be shorter. All workers would have time to spend with their families.

Since its inception, the Socialist Party has been concerned with identifying the cause of society's evils, and with developing and presenting policies suited not only to eliminating that cause, but also to rearing in its place a viable and equitable society. Based on Marxist ideas, we recognise that the social relationships between people and the institutions they establish are basically determined by economic relationships. The Socialist Party calls for unity. On the political field, the working class must express its revolutionary will, via the ballot, to put an end to the private ownership of the means of wealth production and to make them the collective property of all of society to be democratically administered in its own behalf. 

Production will then be carried on for use, rather than for profit. Exploitation will no longer be possible, for we, the useful producers, will retain the full social value of our labour. Class division and class rule will come to an end. Government will again be an administration of "things," rather than of people over people. The day-to-day decisions affecting our lives, and the power to carry out those decisions, will once more be put into the hands of all of the people-the only safe place for such power to reside. Men and women will once again be free and equal because the solid economic base for their equality will have been established. 

A socialist reconstruction of society is required to eliminate the cruel and preventable absurdity of people going hungry and starving in a world choking on "too much" food. In a sane society, with a socialist economy, workers could enjoy all the wealth they produce, because they wouldn't have to support themselves and the capitalist class, too. It would take only a fraction of the time now spent to obtain the material goods a family needs to thrive, because the necessary work would be spread out over the whole population. There would be plenty of time for everyone -- men, women, young and old -- to exercise their talents, fulfill their potentials and grow to be all they could be. Sane and sensible social relations and economic conditions do not exist under capitalism, and they never will. That day will not come until the working class wakes up to these facts and organises its political and economic power to take over control of production and reorganise the economy on socialist principles. The first step is for those who already understand this to act on their knowledge by coming forward to help spread the Socialist Party's message. 

Abolishing Economics

The motivating force of the capitalist system is the never-ending quest for profits and accumulation. It must continually expand. It impacts on every aspect of people's lives. We can’t just reform the current system. There can be no lasting solution to the world’s environmental crises as long as capitalism remains the social system on this planet.

People demanding change are not united in focusing on the political economics at the root of most global problems but they are moving in that direction. This shows that many can understand the situation. Because of the climate crisis people are actually questioning capitalism, because they’re being forced to. Capitalist "truths" are being delegitimatised by experience on the ground. People are talking, reading, and thinking. Many people understand that we have reached a critical turning point that demands radical change in how and why we produce for a ever-contracting minority which amasses incredible wealth while the vast majority are approaching poverty. How do we unite in a way where we keep the diversity of multiple movements but still work together in solidarity? The answer is a common vision. If a movement does not have some vision of what it wants to become, it cannot know whether it is heading in the right direction or not. Capitalism constantly throws up alternative futures for itself. There is so much mythologised that ignorance is more common than knowledge even among the best informed.

The science of ecology gives us powerful tools for understanding how nature functions — as interrelated, integrated ecosystems. It gives us essential insights into humanity’s impact on the environment, but it lacks a serious political social analysis. There exists a reformist fallacy that capitalists foreseeing an environmental apocalyptic future would stop investing their capital in unethical enterprises. Capitalists are the servants (“the functionaries” as Marx described them) of capital. They cannot but accumulate more and more capital: that is their function. Let us suppose that many capitalists do perceive that their interests are facing an ecological threat. What good would it do them to withdraw their capital? The capitalists are incapable of class unity, and no sooner would one withdraw investment than another would take his place as a new functionary of capital.

Socialism can make an ecologically balanced world possible, which is impossible under capitalism. The needs of people and the planet will be the driving forces of the economy, rather than profit. It will set about  restoring ecosystems and re-establishing agriculture and industry based on environmentally sound principles. The only way we can change the world is to be fighting for the goal of socialism today. The longer we take to get started, the harder it will be. We present our objective as an immediate solution to the problems of the present and not as a futuristic utopia. All serious socialists do this. What on earth would be the point of proposing an alternative to capitalism which will only be capable of liberating workers after they are dead? 

It is frequently claimed, not just by apologists for capitalism but even avowedly socialists, that it is impossible to have an economy which excludes such things as wages, prices and money, and that any society’s economy is necessarily going to include those concepts, particularly wages and prices. Regardless, it is well documented by anthropologists, that there has been many societies which has not involved a monetary economy – in fact some still exist even today in isolated parts of the world. Dollars and cents and price tags on goods are not an intrinsic part of the human essence as claimed. 

The Socialist Party desires to abolish economics. No exchange, no economy. socialism is more than just not an exchange economy; it is not an economy at all, not even a planned economy. Economics, or political economy as it was originally called, grew up as the study of the forces which came into operation when capitalism, as a system of generalised commodity production, began to become the predominant mode of producing and distributing wealth. The production of wealth under capitalism, instead of being a direct interaction between human beings and nature, in which humans change nature to provide themselves with the useful things they need to live, becomes a process of production of wealth in the form of exchange value. Under this system, production is governed by forces which operate independently of human will and which impose themselves as external, coercive laws when men and women make decisions about the production and distribution of wealth. In other words, the social process of the production and the distribution of wealth becomes under capitalism an economy governed by economic laws and studied by a special discipline, economics.

Socialism is not an economy, because, in re-establishing conscious human control over production, it would restore to the social process of wealth production its original character of simply being a direct interaction between human beings and nature. Wealth in socialism would be produced directly as such, i. e. as useful articles needed for human survival and enjoyment; resources and labour would be allocated for this purpose by conscious decisions, not through the operation of economic laws acting with the same coercive force as laws of nature. Although their effect is similar, the economic laws which come into operation in an exchange economy such as capitalism are not natural laws, since they arise out of a specific set of social relationships existing between human beings. By changing these social relationships through bringing production under conscious human control, socialism would abolish these laws and so also the economy as the field of human activity governed by their operation. Hence socialism would make economics redundant.

What we are saying, in effect, is that the term exchange economy is a tautology in that an economy only comes into existence when wealth is produced for exchange. It is now clear why the term planned economy is unacceptable as a definition of socialism. 

Socialism is not the planned production of wealth as exchange value, nor the planned production of commodities, nor the planned accumulation of capital. That is what state capitalism aims to be. Planning is indeed central to the idea of socialism, but socialism is the planned (consciously coordinated) production of useful things to satisfy human needs precisely instead of the production, planned or otherwise, of wealth as exchange value, commodities and capital. In socialism wealth would have simply a specific use value (which would be different under different conditions and for different individuals and groups of individuals) but it would not have any exchange, or economic, value.

Neither nationalism nor unionism – but socialism

The Socialist Party does not defend the constitutional unity of the United Kingdom in any way nor does it align itself with the dominant unionist/nationalist ideology in in the UK. Revolutionaries do not, of course, defend the bourgeois State. Our refusal to stand by the status quo, however, does not mean to say that we support Scottish secession. We are not in favour of separatism. Nationalism poisons the minds of workers. The Socialist Party does not spread the illusion among Scottish workers that independence would be any gain for them. We insist that a sovereign Scotland will leave the workers in exactly the same position as before, exploited wage-slaves.

The appeal of Scottish nationalism to some working people in Scotland is, of course, a result of the failure of the Labour Party, dominant in Scotland for decades, to deliver their promises. The discontent can be funnelled into nationalism. Scottish nationalism does not strengthen the real force for socialism, a united, class-conscious working class, but fragments and weakens it. Socialism is international or it is nothing. Socialism sets out to abolish the antagonisms and divisions between the peoples of the world. We value the international unity of the working class. So we disregard any-reshaping of the frontiers of individual states. We do not favour the Scottish employing class over the British or European or of whatever nationality they may be. The nation state is an outmoded anachronism from the point of view of production, of finance, and of a harmonious development which can protect the climate, environment and eco-system of the world. It is not for sentimental but for entirely practical reasons that we are for a world plan of production to replace the anarchy of capitalism, production based on private property and the nation state. Socialism means taking industry and services into common ownership and running them democratically with need replacing profit as the motive. It means no privileged elite, only the right of people themselves to manage their own affairs. It means creating a brotherhood and sisterhood. The task before us is a vast one – the workers need to take on the entire ruling class without regard for ethnic divisions. Working class unity makes it impossible for the capitalists to go on in the old way of divide and rule. Working class unity is revolutionary.

The way out for the working class is not to be exploited by native as opposed to foreign capitalists but through the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of socialism which by its nature must be worldwide. The socialist transformation of society will not be achieved unless working people reject nationalism. Our slogan is for world socialism.

 The world is irresistibly being driven to internationalism and interdependence, the only race remaining is that of the human race as a whole.

There is more than plastic to be drinking from the water, there is ash from wildfires.

The City of Calgary is studying the effects of widespread wildfires on drinking water, which some researchers say has been overlooked and misunderstood until recently. Water treatment engineers and hydrologists employed by the City said that as climate change has increased the number of wildfires in Canada and that scientists are starting to realize that fires can have a significant effect on drinking water years after the fact. After a fire, rain and melting snow wash ash and other debris into the water, often leading to more sediment, changes in the concentration and type of dissolved organic carbon, and phosphorous. This may lead to different methods of treatment, though at present they are not sure which methods, but are sure that failure to solve the problem would be injurious to people’s health. Harpreet Sandhu, Calgary's leading watershed planner, said that: "Though Calgary has multiple sources of drinking water, they are increasingly at risk due to the changing climate.'' 

The answer should be obvious, stop climate change - and there's only one sure way to do that.

Yours for Socialism, 
SPC contributing members 

What’s good for the goose is not always good for the gander.

The Hamilton Spectator newspaper will close its printing and mailroom operations on August 24. Printing work will be transferred to TC Transcontinental Printing and other external printers owned by, that champion of the underdog, the Toronto Star. The move is expected to save the Spectator between 4 and 6 million dollars annually. This means that 73 full time and 105 part-time workers will be laid off. To quote, Torstar executive, John Boynton, "The Spectator is a strong news brand with a great history and a great future'' - try telling that to the folks who will get laid off.

Yours for Socialism, 
SPC contributing members.

BUILD A NEW SOCIETY

It is the aim of the Socialist Party to create a society in which wars will be but bad memories, a society in which poverty will have disappeared, where economic freedom will allow people to live in secure comfort in harmony with their surroundings. Today ownership and control of industry rest in the hands of a small capitalist class who contribute nothing to production - a parasitic class, which contributes nothing to human welfare, yet nevertheless exists in luxury based on the exploitation of another class The rest of us (the working class) own nothing but our ability to work, whether it be physical or mental, or both. We, the useful producers, who constitute the vast majority, produce everything. But we are permitted to work only so long as a market exists for the goods we produce. When there is no profitable market for our products, production goes into recession and closes down. Despite producing everything worth while, we exist in permanent fear of degrading misery.

Socialism, as advocated by the Socialist Party embody the hopes and dreams of the ages, a society of peace and abundance. In a Socialist society there will be no private ownership of the land and the industries. When we say this, we are not talking about; your house, or your car, or any of your personal possessions. What we are talking about are the means of production and distribution, the factories, the mines, the transport systems. We say that these must belong to society as a whole. In our Socialist society, there will be no wage system where the workers receive in wages only a fraction of the value of the goods they produce. Instead, We shall produce for use, rather than for sale with a view to profit for private capitalists. We shall produce the things we want and need rather than the things for which a market exists in which the goods we produce are sold for the profit of the private owners. in our socialist society we shall have a complete democracy - an industrial democracy. We repeat, there will be a complete and full democracy. Democracy that will truly be based on the broadest lines. Democracy in which the final and only power will be the people, the useful producers, which in socialist society will mean everybody. No more will society be split into two contending classes. Instead, we shall all be useful producers, collectively owning the means of production and distribution, collectively concerned with producing the most with the least expenditure of human labour, and collectively jealous of the rights of the individual to a full, free and untrammelled life of happiness.

We of the Socialist Party believe that all this can be attained peacefully. In Socialist society we shall collectively own the factories and means of production, we shall have full and free access to the means of wealth production and distribution. There will be no unwanted surplus. We shall collectively produce the things we want and need for full and happy lives. It will be to the benefit of all to find new inventions, new means of production, improved means of distribution. Society as a whole will have a vital interest in providing opportunity to each individual to find the work for which he is best suited and in which he will be happiest. There will be the fullest opportunity for all. Peace is possible. But it requires that all the people who perform the useful functions of society and who have NO property interests to blind their judgement to unite politically to outlaw private ownership at the ballot box. Peace is possible -- but not until production for sale and the profit system is supplanted by production for use.

How can we get such a society? The answer is easy. It is within the power of the working class to establish such a society as soon as they recognise the need for it and organise to establish it. the Socialist Party offers the sign-posts that points the way. Our obligation is to reorganise our society in such a way as to eliminate war-breeding competition and replace it with peaceful cooperation and brotherhood. The workers have more than the necessary numbers to vote capitalism out and socialism in, as proposed by the Socialist Party. This means we must each of us begin now to educate ourselves so that we may understand and educate others. We seek real socialism, not the phony socialism of government ownership, not the State despotism of former Soviet Union, but a genuine socialist society, resting on the basis of economic freedom. This new social system the workers alone can bring into being, thus forever putting an end to wars, and establishing the society of human brotherhood based on freedom, peace and abundance. 

A Red Flag For Our Future

Some environmentalists promote green capitalism which is really a greenwash attempt to create a new model of capital accumulation for global corporate capitalism, based on "the commodification of the commons." Green capitalism, like the first Industrial Revolution, is based on a large-scale process of primitive accumulation (a technical term Marxists use that simply means massive theft). The primitive accumulation preceding the rise of the factory system in industrial Britain involved the enclosure of common lands. The new green model of corporate-state capitalism partly based on agricultural land-grab but also on enclosing digital information and innovation, heavily reliant on patents and copyrights than the existing version of corporate capitalism. The "green capitalist" model is intended as a response to the primary threat facing corporate capitalism and its model of capital accumulation: the technological potential of abundance. If allowed to operate without hindrance, the free adoption of technologies and freely replicable digital information would not only destroy most existing corporate profits but render most investment capital superfluous. It's this threat, all the "progressive" rhetoric aside, that "green capitalism" is intended to head off. It's a last-ditch effort to rescue an entire system of class privilege and economic exploitation based on artificial scarcity from the revolutionary impact of abundance.

The failure of the all the climate summits provides proof that the nation-state system cannot tackle global environmental threats. They were all about using sustainable development pieties to target development projects create market-based "solutions". Advancing social and environmental justice in ways that Paris and others actually meant perpetuating poverty for people in developing countries, and reducing living standards for people in wealthier countries. The object of those conferences as all equalising scarcity – except for ruling elites. The health and welfare, dreams and aspirations of the world's poor and their pursuit of justice and happiness were given only lip-service and then brushed aside. The proceedings were controlled by bureaucrats who see humans primarily as consumers and polluters, rather than the creators of the world's wealth and the stewards of it common treasury. Instead, they blamed the victims. The world we want must begin with actually defining what sort of world we want. We can't rely only on the bureaucracies of governments to address the problems facing our planet. We must start doing it ourselves. Our liberation will only come about when we, ourselves, for ourselves, do the hard work of organising, which needs class-conscious workers doing the equally hard work of convincing our fellow-workers. At the end of the day , as revolutionaries, it is not in our interest to try and save capitalism but rather to destroy it and to encourage current struggles to develop on an independent, self-organised, class basis and extend across national boundaries which may well give rise to an escalation of the social crisis and starts to challenge capitalism as a whole from a position of some class strength. Only the self-organisation of working people contains the potential to defend its own interests both in the short-term, economic and the longer term, political. A working class that can't defend itself is also a working class that is incapable of making a revolution.

Only by the campaigns for socialism will people be made capable of understanding their position as wage slaves, and the consequent necessity for the abolition of capitalism, and not of patching it up, as advocated with monotonous persistence by the generations of mis-leaders. Socialists point out to our fellow workers that they possess, as a class, all the needed energy and intelligence to erect a new social system based upon the common ownership of the means of life, in which system they will no longer need to sell themselves piecemeal as articles of merchandise. They will be free to enjoy to the full the results of their collective labour. Having arrived at this understanding, the workers will recognise that their political power must be put to an infinitely better use than that of providing fat jobs for nimble-tongued tricksters and seek the achievement of their own emancipation. The vote is not useless if backed by a class-conscious understanding.

Wage-Slaves Versus Capitalist Masters

Sustainability. That’s a popular word these days. Within the capitalist system sustainability means not only those practices that are good for managing soil, water, and land, it also means a few things practical to the commercial side such as managing to stay profitable and in business, or managing the land in a way that brings opportunities to future generations. At its basic level, sustainability can only mean profitability. Whatever the specific definition of ‘sustainable’ one thing is for certain: economics drive solutions within capitalism.

Any conception of socialism must include the empowerment of the working class to be the master of its own destiny. Whilst we can debate and sketch visions of what a future society might look like, all these discussions will prove meaningless unless we can find away to acquire the power required to make them concrete. Given the seeming powerlessness of the working class at present what means can the working class be elevated to power? In a sense the working class already has a massive latent power over society just waiting to be realised, the task then is unlocking this power. The workers’ movement is lacking political clarity. The problem is the lack of consciousness. Why don’t workers put an end to capitalism – given its destructiveness to humans and the environment. If you don’t know where you want to go, then no road will take you there. As long as people look upon the requirements of capital as “self-evident natural laws”, those struggles occur within the bounds of the capitalist relation. Sooner or later the worker will accept his or her subordination to capital and the system keeps going. People commonly think that there is no alternative to the status quo. To go beyond capitalism, we need a vision that can appear to workers as an alternative common sense, as their common sense.

Being a socialist means first and foremost to be on the side of the working class. The Socialist Party is not against reforms but opposes reformism as a political practice. The Socialist Party supports any reform that will help the cause of working people. Workers can win concessions but only for a certain period before the ruling class tries to take these reforms and concessions back. In a class society, the struggle between wage-slaves and the capitalist masters is of a permanent nature. The intensity of this class conflict and struggle can vary and there can be lulls at times. Both classes have different interests and clash with each other to protect and further their interests. The ruling class wants to exploit the working class to the maximum. On the other hand, the working class has no other option but to fight back for their survival.

The root of exploitation under capitalism is not insufficient wages per se, or the depredations of finance. The process of exploitation under capitalism necessarily implies that for accumulation to take place on one end, the worker must be paid less than the value of their labour-time on the other. The more capitalist production expands, the less time the workers has for themselves. The struggle over exploitation is fundamentally the question of whether the worker has the time to fully develop her intellectual, social, and creative powers, or must devote this time instead to the reproduction of a hostile, alien, and benumbing society, with no time to call their own. This is a ‘bread and butter’ question in its own right. Socialism is to create a world where labour-time for all workers can be reduced to a minimum to leave the  maximum time for leisure pursuits, socialising, sports, art, music, writing, debating, and all those things that have been considered the good things in life. There is no known process of capitalism that can achieve this aim.

The establishment of socialism involves workers taking power themselves and exercising collective and democratic control over workplaces, and resource allocation through democratic planning, the complete democratisation of society. Socialism is "a movement of the immense majority, acting in the interests of the majority".

Understanding what socialism is

What is socialism? If we are socialists, what are we actually seeking to create. Too often we are offered definitions given new meanings from their original usage. There are “socialists” who wish the term to be associated with various nationalisation schemes despite them often being promoted by certain capitalists interests who have come to realise that private enterprise is failing to provide proper investment and that state aid is required. To call such policies ‘socialist’ is highly misleading. 

State ownership and control is not socialism. The same despotic rule remains. Those who work the most and hardest still get the least remuneration, and the work-force are still deprived of all voice in the administration of their industry, just the same as in all private enterprises. Schemes of state and municipal ownership are but schemes for the improvement of the mechanism of government policies to make the capitalist regime respectable and more efficient to serve the purposes of the capitalist. They also represent the class-conscious unity of the business man who feels that capitalist should not prey upon capitalist, yet all may unite to prey upon the workers. Opportunist politicians and reformists have been agitating for various nationalisations for decades, while never daring to pose the real issue of private property as an institution and as the basis of the social order. Nationalisation and municipalisation are palliatives and meagre ones too. Those who talk about this as “socialism” in any sense at best confuse workers on what really constitutes socialism – namely, the common ownership and control of the means of production and distribution by the community and the ending of the profit system. 

Under state ownership, profits continue for private investors; that is, the bankers, capitalists, etc., who purchase, bonds and receive their profits in the form of interest and dividends. In a limited and small sense, they can benefit the masses avoiding being gouged by the predatory profiteers.

Capitalism does not consist merely in the private ownership of the necessaries for production. If such ownership were the determining feature of capitalism, then capitalism reigned in the days of serfdom. The serf owned his tools, the feudal lord owned the land, two necessaries for production. Yet that was not capitalism. Capitalism is that social system under which the tool of production (capital) has grown to such mammoth size that the class that owns it rules like a despot. 

And there are competing sectors of capitalism, always striving for supremacy:

1. Commercial capitalism, dominated by merchant traders, buying cheap, selling dear.

2. Industrial capitalism, dominated by manufacturers

3. Finance capitalism, dominated by bankers seeking interest on their lent-out money.

4. Land-owning capitalism, those real property magnates living off rent. Like financiers they are parasites upon the industrialists, who in turn leech off their workers

So socialism does not consist merely in the overthrow of private ownership in any or all of the necessaries of life. If such overthrow of private ownership were socialism, then the overthrow of the one-time private ownership of military forces, and the present State-ownership of the same, would be socialism. Obviously, that is not socialism. A limb of a human being is not a human being. Socialism is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled, and administered by the people, for the people, and under which, accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at end. That is socialism, nothing short of that.

The conscious support of our fellow-workers is what we want. We are fighting for their hearts and minds. The Socialist Party exposes the real nature of capitalism and reveals the futility of reform.

THE ONE WAY OUT

Where politics are concerned a lot of Americans just no longer believe anymore in what politicians say or do. That's quite understandable after all the times they've been betrayed by phony campaign promises and let down by these “sure-fire” cures for their steadily worsening problems. However, many have not turned their backs on politics yet. They're watching the present Democratic Party presidential nomination race campaign and still believe that hearing what the various candidates propose can enable them to elect men or women who will get problems solved. There are two opposite views: The majority "believers" still hope to find the "right person" to put America in order. The minority "non-believers" have come to doubt that such a person exists.

There is, nevertheless, a third view on the subject -- a position which, besides agreeing that no "right person" are available, goes even further by denying that our country's desperate problems have been caused by "wrong men" chosen to run its government in the past. Instead of blaming political officeholders, this view claims that the real cause of our social problems lies partly in the form of government we have and mainly in the capitalist system on which the government rests. It therefore also claims that the ballot should be used to fundamentally change both. We have fully created the material conditions for socialism - a highly developed industrial society capable of producing an abundance and a superbly trained working class that, alone, is capable of running it. Moreover, we have an organisation embodying the only program that makes possible the change from capitalism to socialism – the Socialist Party. The crying need of our time is determined, resolute action to awaken the working class to the imperative need for a socialist reconstruction of society. At this late hour on the social clock it is the only way to strike a decisive blow for peace and freedom for the workers of all lands.

Capitalism ensures worsening conditions. A revolution means a complete change, and it need not be accompanied by violence. For a successful revolution there most be a constructive phase when new institutions are established to replace those that are dismantled. In an age of great technological and economic complexity such as the present one, when prolonged economic paralysis can have devastating consequences to great masses of people, especially to the masses crowded into the great urban centres, this constructive phase of the revolution must be carefully planned and prepared for. In socialist society we shall be able to enjoy the material well-being our productive capability makes possible. We shall be secure, healthy and happy human beings living in peace, harmony and freedom, in marked contrast to the capitalist jungle of strife, misery and insecurity in which we live today. Fellow-workers must face the fact that the task confronting them is to organise their political and economic power -- not to demand merely the amelioration of the horrible conditions of ghetto life, but to demand the abolition of the capitalist system of wage slavery, and to effect an orderly socialist reconstruction of society. 

Socialism for Survival

The problems that make living so difficult today -- problems of poverty, slums, unemployment, crime, either droughts or floods, CO2 emissions, air and water pollution and many more -- have been with us for a long time, a very long time. These problems exist in varying degrees in every nation. Every politician who has run for office has promised to do something to alleviate or eliminate these evils. Despite these promises, and despite the reform efforts these problems have defied solution. We all know this is so. Whatever the problem is, it is worse now than it was. And if we keep electing politicians to office on the basis of their promises, it will get even worse in the years still to come. Surely, at one time or another, you have asked yourself why are things rapidly going from bad to worse, in spite of all the so-called expert counsel.

The reason is simply that the politicians at all levels of government persist in dealing with effects and ignoring the cause. The cause must be something that exists everywhere. After all, the politicians who hold office in our government do not administer the affairs of the other nation. Yet they share the same problems we have. The basic cause of our problems is the capitalist system under which we live. Capitalism today is an outmoded decadent social system. It has been so for a long time, and history fully justifies this conclusion. Consequently, the solution to our problems is not to be found in men, but in a whole new concept of society - a society for which the material basis exists right now. Technological development clearly dictates the course that must be taken. Modern industry is thoroughly socialised in its organisation and operation. It has outgrown private ownership of industry and production for sale and the profit of the owning few. We are now at a point where we can produce an abundance for everyone. By establishing a new society we can prevent worsening crises and ultimate catastrophe toward which our present society is taking us. What we are saying is that we can and must establish a socialist society.

When private and State ownership have been eliminated, there will be no way for social parasites, capitalistic or bureaucratic, to exist. In the nature of things, it will be impossible for any individual or group to acquire economic power and use it to exploit or suppress another human being. Nor will those elected to the socialist administrative bodies possess, or be able to acquire, economic power. There will be no material basis on which a bureaucracy could establish and perpetuate itself. No one will be able to hand out offices or appoint lackeys. All who will serve in the administration, in whatever capacity, will be elected by the rank and file and subject at all times to re-call and popular control. In short, we, the workers, shall be in complete control of the source of all power, the economic resources of the land. We have all the material requirements for producing an abundance. It is common knowledge that we have developed the most productive machine in the world's history. In Socialist society there can be no poverty or involuntary unemployment. The more producers, the better for all.

Technological improvements (automation, for example) will be a further blessing. The greater the number of workers, the better the tools, the more modern the methods, the greater and more varied will be the wealth we can produce; and the shorter the hours each of us will have to work. So great is our capacity to produce abundance that we can easily insure that our youth will be educated, the aged provided for, and the sick and disable given the finest care possible. All this will be done without depriving anyone of a more than adequate share. It will not be charity but the rightful share of every human being in the affluent socialist society. In the socialist climate of abundance and cooperation, we shall achieve the highest standards of mental health and physical well-being. We shall enjoy great material well-being individually and collectively, but it will not be at any one else's expense. We shall be secure, healthy, happy human beings living in peace, harmony and freedom, in marked contrast to the capitalist jungle of strife, misery and insecurity in which we live today.

Mankind's survival is being threatened from a number of directions. There is the dread of a pending possibility of the climate crisis, a potential nuclear show-down and a sharpening conflict of commercial interests in a trade war. There is the peril of a Doomsday.

Unite politically to vote down capitalist ownership of industry. Unite industrially to take social possession of economy. In socialist society, the citizens will have a voice and vote where they work and will thereby retain constant control over those they choose to plan and manage the nation's economic activities. Workers of the world, use your vote to abolish capitalism and establish socialism.