HELP US TO PROPAGATE SOCIALISM.

Socialism stands for a society of equals in which the distinctions between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, no longer exist. Opponents of this revolutionary conception assure us frequently that no such form of society has ever existed, or ever will ; that there always have been rich and poor, and always will be .These claims are false. These assertions  are based on a very scanty acquaintance with the facts, and are effectively refuted by numerous anthropological studies. The things required to satisfy the needs of the world are to-day wrested from nature by one section of society, the working class. The other section, the master class, appropriate the results of the workers' efforts, the wealth produced, by virtue of the fact that the workers have "behaved" and "voted" in such a way as to enable the masters so to do. Thus the master class determines who shall have, who shall have not, and in what proportion—determine who shall eat and who shall starve.

The remedy? The antidote to the poison pushed into the minds of our fellow-workers is that they must, behave, think, and vote differently. You must think for yourself, instead of absorbing the propaganda dressed up to look like real knowledge. You must vote for your own class, and not that of the banker. You must see to it that your fellow-worker has the real position of the working class laid in front of him, instead of the dope issued by the capitalist-financed media daily. The Socialist Standard is the instrument for your

purpose ready to hand. Bring it to the notice of your work-mates. Push it for all you are worth. Its only mission in the insurance line is to point the way to the workers by which they can insure against the evils of capitalist society, by ensuring a speedy termination of the system that robs them of the fruits of their labours.

A worker never gets much more out of employment, even when he or she is lucky enough to be always at work, than the necessaries of life required to keep them fit and able to support a family.

The cost of living is the mean level around which the industrial war takes place. Supply and demand plays its part, but nearly always on the side of the masters, because there are nearly always more workers than jobs. Represented by leaders who do not understand the economic laws of the capitalist system nor how to direct the workers in times of crisis, the latter are always at a disadvantage in disputes over wages. Human labour-power is the worker's only commodity; we live by the sale of it or starve if we cannot sell it. Let every worker understand once for all the real meaning and significance of labour-power as a commodity. Let us realise that our wages can seldom rise above what it costs to maintain ourselves and our families. That wages are more likely to fall below that level as competition increases. We only delude ourselves if we imagine that high or low taxes affect us in the long run.

Mass production is the latest and most callous form of capitalism; it manufactures cheap and shoddy goods to feed and clothe its overworked and poverty-stricken slaves. It drives the wage-slaves to despair through long periods of unemployment and dread of the sack.  The inevitable consequences of mass production are increased unemployment and lower wages. Mass production is not a thing of the future; it is with us now in all its hideousness, and promise of worse to come. May it startle the workers of all lands out of their lethargy, strip the blindfolds from their eyes, and force them to examine the claims of the Socialist Party; for only then will they understand that they are slaves, why they are slaves, and how they can be free. The role of a revolutionary party is to spread revolutionary ideas and not to propose palliatives for the system it seeks to overthrow.

The Socialist Party and the Cooperative Commonwealth

Working people have suffered untold miseries under capitalist domination. The present and future outlook of the working class is extremely gloomy. The economic signs and portents point to increasing difficulties and increasing misery for the workers. The "Good Old Times  have fled, never to return. Outside of socialism there are no "Better Times " ahead for the working class. A number of developing countries have stepped up production and can meet, to a great extent, their own requirements; this limits the available world's markets. But such countries also step in as competitors, in foreign markets; this further curtails the available markets. This all-round competition intensifies the struggle for markets and brings about a greater concentration upon the question of lowering the cost of production of articles.

What are the elements required in order to produce wealth to-day? Raw material, machinery, and labour-power of various degrees of skill. Is there any shortage of raw material? The planet is teeming with raw material, and the untapped resources are as relatively unlimited as the development of human ingenuity. Is there a shortage of machinery? There are numerous first-class manufactories of all classes of machinery working short time for want of orders to execute. Is there a shortage of labour-power? The hundreds of thousands of unemployed of all degrees of skill searching anxiously, and so often unavailingly, for work can provide a complete answer to this question.

The Socialist Party promotes the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of a commonwealth of workers throughout the World, ensuring from everyone according to his or her ability and to everybody according to needs, under the motto “All for each and each for All”. 

This social revolution is the objective of the World Socialist Movement, the end towards which every step it must directly tend. It is idle to deny the war between the classes, or to pretend there can be conciliation between the opposing classes. It can be solved by nothing short of the worldwide destruction of the capitalist power. It is time for our fellow-workers to heed the call to discard its futile reformism, to jettison labour mis-leader’s careerism and opportunism. 

The Socialist Party holds aloft the red banner of the World Commune to be, when the class war shall have been for ever stamped out, when mankind shall no longer cower under the bludgeon of the oppressor, when the necessaries and amenities of life, the comfort and the culture, the honour and the power, shall before all,  when none shall be called master and none servant. The Socialist Party advocates the social administration of the co-operative commonwealth of the future, A system of society in which the factories, the transport, the mines etc,  shall be owned by all in common.

The Socialist Party lays emphasis on the fact that it is a movement fundamentally different from the Labour Party and from left-wing parties.

We come before the working class with a reasoned explanation of the economic ills of the world, and with a reasoned plan for placing the social system on a new basis in keeping with the development of man’s productive forces.

We appeal to the working class to understand and act upon socialist principles. We preach that the method of achieving socialism is by constitutional, majority, control of the political machinery through the vote. workers must abandon their present apathetic attitude and take a lively interest in their present social position — they must study socialism and find out what it means to them.

We come not to create chaos and civil war, but to bring order to a disordered world.

We are not political gangsters threatening the lives or well-being of any individual. We are not bent on revenge, or on penalising our political opponents or the members of the propertied class. While it is necessary that the means of production shall be brought under social ownership and control, socialism will offer to the whole community—ex-capitalists included—the comfort and security which rational use of modern productive forces renders possible.

Indeed, it is our boast that the increasing insecurity of life under capitalism and the chaotic conditions at home and abroad will, in time, drive more and more capitalists, as well as the workers, to recognise that the socialist movement is the only guarantee of ordered development for society as a whole.

Our answer to appeals for unity is, therefore, what it has always been. The Socialist Party is always prepared to welcome socialists to join us on the basis of our Declaration of Principles, which points the only road to socialism. Never, under any circumstances, are we prepared to unite with those who—however well-meaningly—are travelling to a different objective or who preach a policy of civil war, which, if acted upon, destroys all present hope of socialist propaganda and organisation and delays progress towards emancipation.

 The Socialist Party argues that capitalism as a world system has become reactionary and that it has no progressive role to play anywhere in the world. This is because socialism, the next stage in social development which will involve the emancipation of all mankind, is possible. Only socialism is progressive, and this alone is what workers everywhere should strive to establish.

‘No justice, no peace’,

Thousands of protesters have turned out to anti-racism demonstrations in Glasgow and Edinburgh . Large numbers gathered on Glasgow Green and Holyrood Park. A socially-distanced poster protest has been taking place across Aberdeen at Duthie Park and Victoria Park, fixing posters and placards to railings throughout the day. People in Inverness tied messages and artwork to Ness Bridge in the city centre in support of Black Lives Matter.

The Black Lives Matter protest started at Glasgow Green at midday after it was moved from George Square to allow easier physical distancing. The largest event was held in Glasgow Green, with chants of ‘No justice, no peace’ and attendees dropping to one knee in a show of solidarity. Numerous people in Glasgow Green held placards demanding justice for Sheku Bayoh and held a minute’s silence in his memory. Kadi Johnson, Mr Bayoh’s sister, drew parallels between his death and that of Mr Floyd. In a powerful video message released ahead of the protests, she said:

 “George Floyd died at the hands of the police, who are supposed to be our protectors - same like my brother, Sheku Bayoh. “George Floyd died of asphyxia, which is depriving the body of oxygen to travel to the brain and the rest of the body - same like my brother, Sheku Bayoh. 

“George Floyd cried out, ‘Get off me, I can’t breathe’ - same like by brother, Sheku Bayoh.”

She added: “For how long are we going to suffer like this? For how long? Black lives do matter.” 

The Evil of Capitalism

Armament manufacture and wars, unemployment and poverty are only features of capitalism. They should not be isolated, and efforts concentrated on their abolition, because that is impossible while the system lasts.

The Socialist Party does not pick out one or two disagreeable things which exist, and concentrate all his energies in "demanding " of those who are responsible for their existence that they shall forthwith abolish them, for that would be foolish. While the Labour Party is organising to "demand" changes within the capitalist system, the Socialist Party is organising to overthrow the system. There's the difference.

The abolition of poverty can only be accomplished when the workers understand that the material conditions for producing wealth as water flows from a tap are here; they will then march on direct to the goal, the possession of the political machine, and in the name of society convert the land, factories and tools from private into common property.

Millions of people all over the world are dying of starvation while food is used as fuel, millions of workers forced to starve in idleness because the land and tools required by them to produce the necessaries of life for themselves are owned by a small class who will only allow them to be used when profits come to them as a result. In a word, unspeakable poverty in the presence of means and methods that could satisfy every need, could flood the world with a cornucopia of abundance. There is no doubt whatever that all the people at present living could, by their own labour, satisfy all their wants, if it were not for the fact that the ruling class own the land and machinery of production and will not permit them to be used for that purpose, but only to obtain surplus value for themselves. Even if it were true, however, that population would increase beyond the means of subsistence inside socialism, that would be no excuse for prolonging capitalism with its wage-slavery, hunger, conflicts and many other evils. Capitalism is so obviously a system of robbery—robbery of the wealth producers by an idle class—that nothing could justify its continuance once it became generally understood that all these evils were due to the system and would cease to exist under a sane system where profits were no longer the only incentive to production.It requires very little knowledge of modern technology, to see that unemployment, poverty and war are the results of a system of production and distribution based on the class ownership of the means of life, and production for profits; and that a system based on common ownership of the means of life with associated production for use, would not only abolish these evils but would entirely eliminate the competitive struggle for existence, or supremacy, as we know it under capitalism.

Every system of the past is recognised by its class struggle ; feudal barons and serfs, slave owners and slaves, etc. ; to-day it is capitalists and wage-slaves. As all ruling-classes in the past have had to give way to the class below, who struggled against them, and as the working-class today is engaging ever more keenly in the struggle against the capitalist class, there is little doubt that the latter will share the same fate and that capitalism will give way to a new system more in harmony with the interests of the working-class.

The basis of society having then undergone the revolutionary change, that freedom which poets sing of will be possible; no man, woman or child will be patronised, for each man and woman capable of work will take his or her part in the social labours required by society's needs, and the fruits of those labours being owned by the whole of society must needs be distributed in conformity with that basis. When the working class understand the principles of Socialism they will take the necessary action to abolish capitalism with its attendant evils of poverty and canting humbug, removing once and for all the obstacle which stands in the way of equality liberty and fraternity. The evils of capitalism are quite plain to every man and woman who possesses average common sense. It needs no great scientific knowledge to see that these evils are due to the system; nor does it require super men with giant intellects to tell the workers that they can achieve socialism by first understanding it and then organising as a class to gain political control.

There is nothing in socialist principles or objects beyond the comprehension of the average worker; but what there is must be understood by them before they can become organised to establish it.

Glasgow Honours

Anti-racism campaigners have placed alternative names underneath Glasgow slave trade street signs. 

Buchanan Street was renamed George Floyd Street in honour of the 46-year-old's killed by police in Minneapolis on May 25, which sparked worldwide protests.

Cochrane Street was changed to Sheku Bayoh Street in honour of the 32-year-old who died in 2015 after being restrained by police in Kirkcaldy.

Glassford Street was renamed Fred Hampton Street.
Wilson Street became Rosa Parks Street
Ingram Street was subbed Harriet Tubman Street.

Take The Knee

People across the UK have been ‘taking the knee’ - a stance first adopted by American Football star Colin Kaepernick - in the streets and on their doorsteps in tribute to the dad.

The largest Scottish event is set to take place in Glasgow’s George Square tomorrow on Sunday - with more than 3,000 people expressing an interest via social media in attending.

Police Scotland officers have been permitted to ‘take the knee’ in solidarity with protesters at Black Lives Matter rallies this weekend.

The Ascent of Mankind

The establishment of socialism will mean the ascent of humanity from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. The fact is that with socialism, social forces will be under mankind’s control to an extent never previously reached, and further, that this would be the inevitable result of the development of society, as the dissolution of capitalist society is mainly a question of time, plus the action and interaction of social forces in their entirety. The socialist philosophy of life is born by the knowledge that capitalism can never be made to function in the interest of those who produce the means of living, or even of making the essential needs of social life its primary concern. 

Society to-day may have an orderly appearance, but the chaotic character of its foundations produces effects that are constantly felt. One might take it for granted that the needs of society as a whole would be the first concern, but ,this is not so in class society. Were it really so, the trash that passes under the name of human requirements would never be placed at our disposal. At the very basis of this social system, in the course of the production and distribution of its wealth, there exists, despite the social form which production takes, a considerable degree of anarchy. It is not for its usefulness that production takes place but for the capacity to bring profit to the capitalists. No profit, or prospect of profit, then no production is permissible. Businesses in capitalist society cannot be run without profit. As workers, we know our exploitation is the source from which profit is derived, and hence is inseparable from capital’s existence.

What, then, of the future of human society? Are we to relapse into a state akin to barbarism, which some fear? or is society to move forward along the path marked out for it by the laws of social development? 

The Socialist Party declares for the latter course, not merely on the ground of the wish being father to the thought, but because, as indicated above, history shows that when any given form of society reaches a stage where further development is hampered, those whose interest it is to take the step for advancement, invariably do so; even though the immediate consequences of the act may serve as a deterrent. It is demonstrably clear that capitalism has outgrown its usefulness to humanity, and stands as a barrier to social advancement. How this increasingly affects certain sections of the capitalist class itself, causing them to cry out for world organisation, the cancellation of debts, and the thousand and one other nostrums now proposed for the rehabilitation of capitalism, is no concern of ours or the working class in general.

 Our only concern is the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. Our fellow-workers are denied the possibility of enjoying the fruits of their labour, as they are hampered in sharing the real benefits bequeathed to society by all past history. It is they whom social laws have selected to bring the next stage in the development of society.

There is one difference between the ancient and modern slaves. To-day the slaves has a political status. They vote their masters into power who in their turn are compelled to solicit workers’ votes, to obtain the mandate and sanction to govern, because the workers are in a majority over the masters. This being the case, it is easy to see that once the workers realise that capitalist candidates are seeking power for their own ends, and that questions of taxation are purely capitalist questions; they can themselves organise and exercise their voting power purely in working-class interests as opposed to all sections and parties of the capitalist class.

This is the first step towards the emancipation of the working class and the establishment of a system of society where the means of wealth production will be owned in common and democratically controlled by the whole of the people. By educated, conscious and organised action the workers of the world will thus break up the last, most efficient, and brutal form of slavery that has ever flourished, and replace it with a system where production will be arranged according to the needs of all. Where no class will rule because classes will cease to exist, and where the producers of wealth will neither be chattels bought and sold nor the owners of labour-power which they must sell in order to live, but free men and women associating and organising to satisfy their needs with the least possible expenditure of effort, that they may have leisure for the enjoyment of a fuller life.