The Socialist 'Freedom' Party

The Socialist Party is fighting for socialist freedom. The working class is on the defencive all over the world. It is confused and disoriented, it has lost a lot of confidence in its power. These are not the happiest days for socialism. We know that. the failure of the proletariat anywhere else to come to power, has raised more than one gloomy doubt about the social ability of the working class to reorganise society rationally, about the very possibility of a socialist future. There are those who declare You cannot free your own self. Wherever you tried it yourself, you failed. You are too weak, too stupid, too undisciplined if left to your own democratic devices. You failed because there have always been the rulers and the ruled, and that is how it will always be. Socialism is but an ideal, a Utopia.

Social interests shape ideas. Ideas serve social interests. The ideological campaign against Marxism is still what it always was: an integral part of the fight against socialism and the interests of the working class. The defence of Marxism is the fight for socialism, the fight to enable the working class to leap forward again with renewed confidence in its own strength, in its great emancipating mission, in its eventual triumph. We are not idol-worshippers. We are not uncritical eulogists of Marx. That the working class can overthrow the rule of capital and the bourgeois state, not in the books of Karl Marx, but in the living struggle of organised workers. Are we supposed to forget the impossible dream? No way.

Our party’s task is to educate the millions of fellow-workers with a guide of what we are all fighting for and how society can be reorganised to put an end to poverty and injustice once and for all. Capitalists make beautiful promises for a paradise on earth, of peace and good will, empty promises supposed to make up for the shortages in happiness and the other necessities of life. What is needed for permanent peace is more than a change of personnel at the controls. Power and profit – the motive force of capital,ism – must perish. The peoples of the world will be able to produce their goods and their resources ACCORDING TO THEIR HUMAN NEEDS.

The Socialist Party’s message in unorthodox. We do not presume to be your political leaders. In elections we make no promises and we do not appeal for your vote. In line with our democratic approach to politics and desire to disseminate the socialist idea, we would use our limited funds to stand token candidates in a few constituencies and local election wards around the country.

Here the real alternatives are made clear: either the continuance of capitalism, with all the miseries and indignities that flow from it, or the establishment of of world-wide social equality based upon the common ownership of the means of living. We seek a mandate for socialism. Nothing less will do.

Faced with a world in which many members of mankind is starving, a class-divided world wracked with war and haunted by insecurity, the Socialist Party is the one organisation which realises that to solve such problems our capitalist way of life which gives rise to them must be replaced by a new social structure. It is both necessary and practical for the working nine-tenths of humanity to organise, consciously and democratically, to dispossess the owning one-tenth, and to place in the hands of the community the means of providing comfort and plenty for all.

Socialism involves far more even than the provision of abundance, of which we would take freely according to our needs. When work ceases to be employment, it will not remain the meaningless drudgery it is when we are forced to do it for a wage or salary. When the world’s resources are held in common and things are made not for profit but solely for use, work will take on a meaning it cannot have today.

Craftsmanship will flourish and the gap between the creative artist and the mass-produced manufacture of products will be closed. We ourselves shall decide where we work, how long, and at what pace.

Technology, now so largely devoted to developing means of destruction, will be diverted towards eliminating undesirable toil. All peoples will live together in harmony. We shall become integrated, creative human beings.

It is a mistake to believe that the Labour Party, with its petty national mentality and its list of palliatives, contributes towards socialism. Like the Conservatives and LibDems they aspire to administer capitalism and, in power, do all the terrible things this task involves. The “socialism” of the Labour Party is a myth.

David Attenborough is Wrong

David Attenborough is to travel to Edinburgh to make an plea for urgent action to protect biodiversity and fight climate change. He will address charity workers at Edinburgh University's McEwan Hall on Wednesday 11 March.

The Socialist Party has been rather critical of this media leading figure for nature conservation and maker of wonderful television documentaries. We are no worshippers of any man or woman and expertise in one subject does not make a person an expert in another where he or she is not qualified. David Attenborough is a highly regarded media figure and respected conservationist and he received an ovation from the festival-goers at Glastonbury but it does not make him infallible. In fact, Attenborough is wrong that there are too many people in the World, particularly in Africa. Attenborough is a patron of Population Matters, a charity that campaigns for government efforts to arrest population growth. It was formerly the Optimum Population Trust and it acquired some notoriety for suggesting that a sustainable human population was about half its present level and arguing for curbs on child benefit. The charity is less strident today but its message is unchanged: we are too many. For years David Attenborough has "never had any doubt that the source of the Earth's ills is overpopulation". This view is sadly far from uncommon among environmentalist activists.

Attenborough is quoted as saying, “What are all these famines in Ethiopia, what are they about? They're about too many people for too little piece of land. That's what it's about.” 

 He has warned that humans have become a “plague on the Earth...It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change. It’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde....Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now...We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia – that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves – and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a co-ordinated view about the planet, it’s going to get worse and worse.”

Attenborough's overpopulation argument is oversimplified and inaccurate. It is true that millions of people are lacking basic resources such as food and water. But the Socialist Party does not equate this poverty to a lack of resources on the planet to support the total number of humans and argues that there are enough resources on earth for all but resources are unequally distributed generating poverty.

The truth is that all those overpopulation claims are actually wrong. It is helpful to set aside any preconceived notions about population and food. For example let us examine his claim about Ethiopia not being able to feed itself because too many people not being able to support themselves. According to Oxfam International, Ethiopia supports the export of fruit, vegetables, and flowers worth $220 million a year.

 Malthusians like Attenborough argue that population growth inevitably leads to hunger, as the resource "pie" is divided into ever smaller slices. The most obvious flaw in this theory is that technology has thus far allowed the size of the pie to increase. The pie as a whole is big enough for everyone, but the slices for the poor continue to shrink. Africans suffer from hunger and thirst because they are victims of plundering dictatorships and  pillaging multi-national corporations.

Overpopulation justifies the scapegoating and human rights violations of poor people, women, people of colour and immigrant communities: Too often the subtext of “too many people” translates to too many poor people, people of colour and immigrants.

Fertility rates - the number of babies that a woman has over the course of her life - in very large parts of the world are now below what is needed to replace the population. Population growth is slowing. There is considerable potential to provide more food for all. We already provide food for 10 billion people on the planet. 

His natural history documentaries has made David Attenborough famous but it is sad to see him use that fame to endorse the overpopulation myth. So long as the capitalist system remains in place, hunger and poverty will continue, no matter what happens to birth rates. It’s this social and economic system that treats food as a commodity, to be bought and sold and puts profit above people. David Attenborough repeats hoary old tales of too many mouths to feed instead of directing attention to the real cause of hunger - capitalism

An Open Letter to David Attenborough
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2019/12/an-open-letter-to-david-attenborough_14.

Wake Up, Rise Up

This is an era of revolutionary change. New technology is replacing human labour with Artificial Intelligence, robots and automation. This system offers unemployment, hunger, homelessness, welfare cuts and the plague of crime and drugs. Capitalism, I mean the system that exists on the basis of your unpaid labour. You as a worker produce commodities to be exchanged on the market. You produce not only enough to pay your own wage, but also an added value, a surplus value, over and above the cost of your maintenance. Surplus labour is your unpaid wage. It is called “profit. ” And that’s what capitalism is all about. Capitalism is the all-embracing social cause of every form of oppression and exploitation today.

We all face two choices – either accept repression and oppression or set out to overthrow this system. We are an organisation built on people opposed to this exploitative system. Our party is based on the revolutionary potential of those who have to fight this system in order to live. In order for the society working people will create to be just and equitable, it must embody socialist ideas.

 SOCIALISM MEANS EXPANDING DEMOCRACY NOT ONLY IN THE POLITICAL SENSE BUT IN AN ECONOMIC SENSE – freedom from want. . Our compass for where we are finally headed should have socialism as its destination. Capitalism is destructive of every interest of the working people or general welfare.

While capitalism creates all the material conditions for the proletarian revolution, the socialist revolution does not solely flow out of the daily development of capitalism. Socialism requires that the people be conscious of revolution and of their planned activity, direction and organization–the subjective factor. We are the people. We are the majority. If we go out and organise, we will change this world. Socialism, based upon the planned organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is the abolition of all classes and class differences. Production would not be organised on the basis of the blind push and pull of the capitalist market, but in accordance with the needs of the people. Production for profit would give way to production for use. Capitalism produces missiles and bombs for the destruction of homes just as readily as it constructs homes. It produces luxurious palaces while millions live in slums. Its motive of production was, is, and always will be profit. It is not the needs of the people that dictate its production.

If, however, production were carried on for use, to satisfy the needs of the people, the question immediately arises: Who is to determine what is useful and what would satisfy these needs? Will that be decided exclusively by a small board of government planners? No matter how high-minded and wise they might be, they could not plan production for the needs of the people. Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, constant control and direction by the people. The democratically-adopted decision of the people would have to guide the course of production and distribution. Democratic control of the means of production and distribution would have to be exercised by the people to see to it that their decision is being carried out.

Socialism is not a utopian ideal, a blueprint for society that exists in the minds of some people. It is a social necessity; it is a practical necessity. It is the direction that the masses of the people must take in order to save society from disintegration, in order to satisfy their social needs. To be a socialist, merely means to be conscious of this necessity, to make others conscious of it, and to work in an organised manner for the realisation of the goal. The workers cannot rid themselves of their sufferings without abolishing the domination that the machine has over them. They can do this only if they gain control of the machine itself. In doing so, they must destroy capitalism and proceed with the complete reorganisation of society. The abolition of private ownership would remove the last barrier to the development of production. Production would be organised and aimed at satisfying the needs of society.

Mankind would no longer be the slave of the machine. The machine would serve mankind. Every increase in productivity would bring with it two things: an increase in the things required for the need, comfort and even luxury of all; and an increase in everyone’s leisure time, to devote to the free cultural and intellectual development of humankind. Men and women will not live primarily to work; they will work primarily to live. Industry, properly organised, can produce the necessities of life for all in a working day of four hours or less. Organised on a socialist basis, even this figure could be cut down. As the necessities and comforts of life become increasingly abundant, and the differences between physical and mental labour, between town and country are eliminated – the need for tolerating even the last vestiges of inequality will disappear as a matter of course. A rationally organised society, efficiently utilising our present productive equipment and the better equipment to come, could easily assure abundance to all. In return, society could confidently expect every citizen to contribute his or her best voluntarily. There is abundance for all. There is ample opportunity for the intellectual development of all