A Better World For All

To change today’s society and to create a better future for working people is the aspiration of the Socialist Party. We hold that building a better world is both necessary and possible.

Capitalism is a system of commodity production (that is, the production of goods for sale and not for direct use by the producer) which is distinguished by the fact that labour power itself becomes a commodity. The major means of production and exchange which make up the capital of society are owned privately by a small minority, the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie), while the great majority of the population consists of proletarians or semi-proletarians. Because of their economic position this majority can only exist by permanently or periodically selling their labour power to the capitalists and thus creating through their work the incomes of the upper classes. Thus, fundamentally, capitalism is a system of exploitation of the working class (the proletariat) by the capitalist class.  Under capitalism social production replaces the individual production of the feudal era. It is based on an ever-greater socialisation of labour. However, although production is social, ownership is private. The working class produces the commodities which constitute the wealth of capitalist society, but it does not own them. They are appropriated by those who own the means of production – the capitalist class. This situation has led to a worsening of the living conditions of the masses, including escalating mass unemployment, and on the other, it has begun to awaken new forces among the working people to the necessity of establishing workers’ control over, and social ownership of, the main means of production.

Production is socialised to an ever-greater degree while the means of production are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Social production and the socialisation of labour are enhanced by the advance of technology, creating a material basis for the transformation of capitalism into socialism. By replacing private ownership of the means of production by social ownership, by transforming the anarchy of production which is a feature of capitalism into planned proportional production organised for the well-being and many-sided development of all of society, the socialist revolution will end the division of society into classes and emancipate all of humanity from all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another.

It seems clear enough that the capitalist system is honeycombed with corruption and that for this appalling condition there is no remedy other than its complete and final overthrow.The masters of finance and captains of industry offer daily and convincing evidence that they have but one incentive in “business” and that is to exploit the nation, control its destiny in their own selfish and grasping interest, and subjugate the working class.

Working people must have their eyes opened to the fundamental fact that there is no possible way to put an end to the political corruption without removing the cause that produces them. There is little to be gained by limiting our activities to the mere evils themselves which inflict capitalist society. As long as the source of these wrongs remains undisturbed the effects, though temporarily curbed, must again express themselves and with added malignancy. Now what is the cause of the many festering ills which we behold all about us if we but have eyes to see? The answer can be given in a single word: Capitalism.

 It is capitalism, that system of society which is based upon wage-slavery, which has divided the people into two classes, the one consisting of a mass of poverty-stricken, ignorant slaves and the other of a coterie of arrogant, heartless, and polluting parasites. Between these two classes there is war — ceaseless, aggressive, and uncompromising. Capitalism has its foundations in wage-slavery and there can never be social peace while the great mass of the people who work for wages are in bondage.

The Socialist Party will excite working  people with a vision of a world of plenty. Society now has the capacity to devote the energies and talents of its people to satisfying the material, intellectual, emotional and cultural needs of all. New technology provides better, products with less labour. Radical changes in the way a society produces its wealth call for radical changes in how that society is organized. The capitalist class cannot convince the people to believe in their system while they are destroying their hopes and dreams.  The Socialist P arty will inspire our fellow-workers with a society organised for the benefit of all. A society built on cooperation puts the physical, environmental, cultural well-being of its people above the profits and property of a handful of billionaires. When the working class takes  control of all productive property and transforms it into common property, it can reorganise society so that the abundance is distributed according to need. These things will unite our movement against poverty and misery with its great cause: the fight to create a society of abundance, free from want. It will see people from all generations, from all ethnicities and from one race– the human race– come together.

It is up to the Socialist Party to show that we do have a new vision to offer.

Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves.

There are times when social and economic problems become so bad that people must choose between the social system that makes their lives difficult and a new one that will improve their lives. Times like that are often called revolutionary times. Many now believe events in the recent weeks show that we are living under such times. But the questions we should be asking is how to make the change and what that change should be. We now face that kind of choice today. Capitalism—the social system we live under—no longer serves the interests of the people. It creates countless problems that it cannot solve. It creates hardship and poverty for millions, while the few who own and control the economy grow rich off the labour of those allowed to keep their jobs. It destroys the cities that we built up. It is destroying the natural environment that is the source of the food we eat and the air we breathe. Technology could and should be used to lessen the need for arduous toil and to enhance our lives is used instead to eliminate jobs and increase exploitation. Poverty is as widespread as it has ever been. Wages go down even as productivity rises. Joblessness, homelessness, helplessness and despair are spreading. Economic insecurity and social breakdown place an unbearable strain on our families, our children and ourselves. Emotional stress, crime, prostitution, alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, and many more signs of unhappiness and hopelessness, are on the rise. Shall we do the common sense thing by making the means of production our collective property, abolishing exploitation of the many by the few, and using our productive genius to create security and abundance for all?

The principles of socialism explains how and why society evolves, how one social system is replaced by another. It is one of the main conclusions of socialist thought that socialism cannot arise BEFORE the economic basis is ripe for it. And this is sound common sense. Each economic system is a growth—out of the previous system. Capitalism grew out of feudalism, and could not, as a system, precede it. A new society cannot come into being until the need for it and the practicability of it, arises. Hence socialism could not precede capitalism, for socialism requires a very high level of production, giant machines, and an educated and trained population to work them. It is capitalism which provides these, and it is because capitalism cannot use the means of production for the benefit of society that the need for socialism arises.

"No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have been matured in the womb of the old society. Therefore, mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve; since looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation." (Preface to " Critique of Political Economy.")

Progressives ignore this very important lesson of socialism. 

What is capitalism? What are the essentials of capitalism?

Every society has a very definite basis, and every class society a very definite method of exploiting its subject class. This exploitation was not veiled in slave society; one man owned another and made him work. The master gave the slave the necessities of life and retained for himself what was produced over and above the slave's maintenance. The exploitation and slavery of present-day society are to some extent veiled. They are there all right, none the less. The capitalist does not own the worker, but still the worker is dependent on the capitalist class for his livelihood. And how is the worker exploited? Before production takes place today we have capital. This is money invested, for the purpose of profit, in the purchase of machinery, raw materials, factories, etc. But these things are useless without workmen, so capital engages too the energies of the worker. The energies of the worker are used up in producing articles for sale, commodities, but the worker is not paid for the produce of his work for the whole duration of the day. In a working day of eight hours a worker may receive wages equivalent to, say, four hours' produce of his work. The other four hours are given free to the capitalist. It is thus that the worker is exploited under capitalism. Were he paid for the full produce of his eight hours' work there would be no profits for the capitalist class. Whatever minor modifications present-day society may undergo, this is, simply and briefly put, an explanation of the productive process. It is plain to see that wage-labour and capital are the roots of the whole system. Machinery, in simple or complex form, may be employed in any social system—but WAGE-LABOUR AND CAPITAL ARE PECULIAR TO CAPITALISM, and it is by their presence or absence that we can decide whether a society is capitalist or not.

In his "Wage-Labour and Capital" Marx rightly points out that the two are complementary. The one does not exist without the other. He writes: "Capital and wage-labour are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other in the same way that the usurer and the borrower condition each other. As long as the wage-labourer remains a wage-labourer, his lot is dependent upon capital" And again: "Capital therefore pre-supposes wage-labour; wage-labour pre-supposes capital. They condition each other; each brings the other into existence." ( Emphasis by Marx.)

It is true that with the development of capitalism and in different countries the form of ownership and control of capital may differ. But the form of ownership of capital is not the vital question. It may be owned by the small private trader, the large owner, the trust or by the state—"the executive committee of the capitalist class." But in all cases its presence proves the existence of capitalist society.

Many liberal progressives do not recognise that the roots of capitalism are wage-labour and capital, that these are the features distinguishing capitalism from all earlier forms of society. It is not surprising, therefore, that they fail to understand the need for their abolition if we would be rid of capitalism. So it happens that in their “new order" we still have wage-labour and capital—which, as we have seen, spell exploitation and poverty for the working- class.

For progressives, the term "modern capitalism" means unbridled competition, and his solution to the whole problem is the scientific planning of capitalism, so as to cut out competition and make the most efficient use of wage-labour and capital. Their "new order," then, is still capitalism, even if they want wages to be paid according to ability and according to the work done. They relegate to the very distant future, socialism, wherein each will give of his or her best to society and partake of society's products according to his or her needs. It is the old story. Reformists, in that not accepting the socialist case, they are bound to put forward proposals to re-model capitalism—proposals which would still leave the worker a wave-slave and in poverty.

To be really free

Instead of the lash of the whip as in ancient times, capitalism uses a more efficient method to make the workers work. That is hunger. We are told that we are free and the bosses are free. He is free to offer us terms of any kind – we are free to starve unless we accept these terms. Marx has described the worker in capitalist society as a “free” worker. In its scientific, social sense, this means that the worker is “free” from the ownership of property in the “means of production”: factories, machinery, land; that he or she owns only one’s labour power, the ability to work, which is sold to the boss in return for wages. In other words, the worker is only nominally free. He or she is, in reality, a wage slave because the social organisation of capitalism makes it necessary for the worker to sell him or herself to the boss or else to starve. Nevertheless, as compared to previous society, slavery and feudal— workers are “free.” Their bodies are not owned as a chattel; they can return home and a family after work, move to another city, or quit a job for another.

The slave was owned outright. He was the property of the master. All the ancient civilisations were based on slavery. Babylon, Egypt, Carthage, Greece, Rome were some of the civilisations that rested, so to speak, on the backs of the multitude of slaves. The slave was given food and clothing, also a place to relax and rest for further toil. There were variations from this rule. A few were given privileges for special services which they had rendered or for their great skill in some particular direction, but they were still slaves. They understood that their life’s energy was at the disposal and for the benefit of the masters. They were under no illusion as to their social status. They did not think they were free.

When the ancient empires perished, feudalism arose with a new form of exploitation – a new slavery – serfdom.

The serf was a land slave, part of the estate as it were. He went with the land, the buildings and live stock, whenever the estate changed hands. He was different from the chattel slave of old; he was not given food and clothing. He could not be bought and sold. He was not paid for his services with money as the modern wage-slave is paid. He was given the use of a piece of land upon which he and his family, by laborious efforts, maintained their existence.

This land – a part of the estate which he was allowed to work upon three or four days each week – has been called the serf-soil. The other days of the week the serf was compelled to serve on the other part of the estate along with his fellow serfs. They all toiled free. They served the feudal lord, cultivating his soil and herding his cattle, sheep, goats, swine and other livestock.

This mode of exploitation made it quite clear to the serf that he was not a free man. He realised that his working time was given for nothing. But the modern slave, the “free” wage-worker, who is exploited to a greater extent than his predecessors, the chattel slave and the serf, is usually under the illusion that he is a free man.

In modern countries, where machine production holds the field, the wage-worker creates values equal to the value of his week’s wage during a period of time equal to the first day or two of the week. During the rest of the time he is producing for the employer for nothing and usually does not know it. Under the cloak of the pay envelope, the “free” worker is robbed to a greater extent than the slave or serf of old.

As we work, we create profits, such huge profits that even in their wildest extravagances the bosses cannot spend them. So there proves to be no more market for that commodity we are hired to produce; no more profits can be gotten so the free boss lays off the free worker to freely starve in the midst of a land of full warehouses which the worker filled. Capitalism, greedily demanding more and more profits, puts faster machines into the factories which produce goods and profits at a faster and faster rate. Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism will wage-slavery be done away with. The society of socialism alone can eliminate the world of waste. Capitalism’s poverty will be replaced by plenty for all. 

The workers are foolishly supporting the capitalist class in wielding political power against them. For the workers still follow the boss parties.

Understanding what capitalism is

The overwhelming mass of the world’s wealth is owned by only a small proportion of its population. That, like all property societies, capitalism is made up of a small number of owners and a vast majority who own nothing or virtually nothing. Equally important is the fact that this pattern has remained fundamentally unchanged over the years. Working class poverty is an inescapable part of capitalism. As capitalism gets older it gets bigger and more concentrated. As it does so. the worker grows more remote and personally insignificant. This is what Karl Marx, said would happen, over a century ago. Nobody listened much to him then and nobody listens much now.

Whenever they are called upon to vote, our fellow- workers display all the bemused docility which we have long grown accustomed to. They will concentrate on the wrong issues, at the wrong time. They will allow themselves to be misled by the incumbent government’s claim to have been a responsible administration and by the opposition parties that they are the men and women better suited to run capitalism. The election policies of the Tories, the Labour Party and the others always amount to a claim that they are able to control capitalism. As each of capitalism’s crises blows up, there is no lack of political leaders to make speeches which state their solution to it. The workers will not consider the futility of it all and acknowledge the obvious impotence of the political parties to deal a with them.  Nobody seems to notice that some of the schemes are not very different from those which are being blamed for producing the crisis in the first place and that some of the bright ideas contradict others which have been offered before as the solution to our problems. As a whole, they will not even toy with the idea that it might be a good thing to abolish capitalism and to have socialism instead. The working class forgot to ask themselves when capitalism had ever allowed them to live anywhere near as well as some of the people who manage capitalism.

The capitalist class continually train up their experts and economists, but yet still they are caught napping by the vagaries of a market. Capitalism's slumps, like its booms, happen because its wealth is made to be sold. This means that the market is the key to capitalism's fortunes. And the market is a capricious, unpredictable, anarchic thing. It sums up capitalism, that its fortunes should rest in such uncertainty.

The Stock Exchange has spent some time over the past years in trying to improve its public image, which was so badly mauled by the last recession. The Stock Exchange was developed to organise some of capitalism's investments, but even without it there would still have been a capitalist class who would have grown very rich from the work of the rest of us. So when the Stock Exchange pats itself on the back they are making a social virtue out of an anti-social necessity. Socialists want lo live in a free world, which is owned by its people. The Stock Exchange does not help us to live that life: in fact, it does just the opposite. By misleading workers into accepting capitalism as a dynamic, logical, beneficial system it prevents us all from living not just the lives we want but the lives we desperately need.

These are certain essential facts about capitalism upon which we have always based our case against it. However the system may change in small ways, these facts are as relevant today as they always have been.

For the people and for the planet

 We of the WORLD SOCIALIST MOVEMENT (WSM) organise towards electing MPs as socialist delegates to overwhelm parliaments and declare: Annulment of all property and territorial rights whereby all that is on and in the Earth will become the common heritage of the whole humanity.

And for that matter, the necessary objective condition that is productive abundance remains matured since about the beginning of the past century. What's lacking is the other subjective condition that is the class conscious majority. Our task is to mature this condition. In view of that, we hold on to achieve socialism right here and now. We are not reformists.

For over a century the Socialist Party has campaigned tirelessly for the establishment of system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means for producing and distributing wealth. In those 103 years we have not compromised our position once on any issue. We remain the sole true revolutionary organisation in Britain. The WSM remains the sole revolutionary organisation in the world.

How have we faired politically? Just what have we achieved? What can we brag about? Well, socialism certainly seems no nearer than it was in 1904, though it must be said that the technology needed to establish a world of abundance is by far in advance of that familiar to our founders. Moreover, the working class nowadays are far better educated than the men and women the autodidacts of the Socialist Party tried to win over to the socialist cause, yet still we admittedly find it difficult to recruit new members.

Our membership remains small, scattered and, let’s be honest, relatively inactive, and whilst we have had some decent election results in recent years we are yet to win a seat in any local or national election. And it is not uncommon for members to despair at the poor results of their efforts and to resign.

Of course we have faced many obstacles to our growth which we could not foresee back in 1904; not least of which was the 1917 Bolshevik coup and the myriad groupings that sprung from the inspiration of the “Russian Revolution” and which, in truth, have caused untold damaged to the true socialist cause. For many years now, we in the Socialist Party have spent a great deal of time not only trying to rescue the socialist name from the many Leninist and Trotskyist groups who have sullied the image of socialism, but also in exposing the fallacy that socialism was ever established in the former Soviet Union and distancing ourselves from the illusion held by many that socialists advocate violent revolution and that socialism can exist in one country. Though we were in existence a long time before any left wing group in Britain, we find that we have constantly had to compete, for the minds of the workers, with left-wing groups  and a hundred others, all of whom pedal the politics of confusion, offering the workers fast-track routes to the Promised Land, prepared to recruit anyone capable of signing their membership forms, regardless. Little wonder we have had such a difficult time recruiting.

Moreover, we have watched in dismay the ongoing workers’ support for the Labour Party in Britain - workers’ belief in Labour’s claim to be “socialist”, workers’ belief in the empty promises of New Labour and that party’s continued determination to betray those same workers at every opportunity and lead them down the blind alley of reformism.

It’s fair, also, to mention the impact of the thousands of single-issue groups on the political scene and indeed the collective consciousness of the workers. Groups like Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and CND, though well meaning, focus many a worker’s mind on a single issue or reform, as if this is the most pressing matter of the day. If their combined energy had have been spent on attacking capitalism as a system, instead of campaigning against problems the system throws up, distracting millions of workers, then our task would have been halved.

So in honesty a great amount of our work has been taken up in attempts to rectify the damage done by other political organisations to socialist ideas and in challenging the single-issue mentality of thousands of organisations. Make no mistake about it – we have tried.

Let’s not forget that back in 1904 there was no means of mass communication, bar newspapers. Advances in communication technology were undreamed of in 1904. Now many workers have several televisions in their homes, and access to hundreds of channels. They have computers and access to a world wide web of information and all manner of electronic gadgetry that helps lull them into political apathy. And controlling all of this is the big corporations and the advertising industry, turning those same means of communication largely into idiot boxes that numb the minds of the workers.

Since 1904 there have been vast improvements in health, housing and in the way people live generally and which gives workers the impression that capitalism works for them and that the politicians ‘running the show’ have their best interests at heart. Little do the workers realise that any reforms were really the price the master class had to pay for their continued survival, and were certainly not an act of altruism. And all improvements in living were in general relative. Moreover, it was the workers who produced this wealth the politicians have taken the credit for and which the workers have erringly thanked them for on election day.

Of course we have had our successes over the years. Our monthly journal, The Socialist Standard, has been printed without fail since September 1904, producing sound Marxist analysis of current and international events as they have happened. We now have companion parties and members right across the world and hundreds of thousands access our website. We have our own head office, owned by the party and we produce literature and leaflets on a wide variety of subjects. We hold day schools and summer schools and attend as many events as we can to put forward our arguments to the workers. We contest elections every year — with increased returns in some places — and we regularly have members appearing on TV and radio and in the press arguing our case. We have for 100-plus years held lectures and debated with scores of political organisations and notable personalities. Many of the latter now exists on audio cassette and cd and more recently we have begun producing a film documentary to highlight our case. In recent years we have been active at almost every political event in Britain handing out leaflets, putting up speakers and erecting literature stalls; in short, doing our level best with our limited resources to propagate the case for a non violent, democratic transition to socialism.

So let’s be fair – the lack of socialist consciousness and desire for real change is hardly down to us. It is the lack of success of the class of wage and salary workers in general. It's up to them, not us, to establish socialism. But such have been the distractions – some listed above – that we really have had our work cut out for us.

We can also consider ourselves successful in having developed some quite original and distinctive arguments in response to advances within capitalism. We were, for example, perhaps the first political party in the world to contend that the Russian dictatorship, in the wake of the 1917 coup, was “state capitalist” rather than socialist — an argument since adopted by many others. On other occasions, The Socialist Party has developed new distinctive arguments in that we have effectively blended extant strands of political and economic thought into a entirely new mix. This is most notably the case with our views on the “reform or revolution” question, where two seemingly incompatible theories were entwined into a unique new political position.

There are indeed a number of distinctive arguments The Socialist Party has developed since our formation in 1904  and while socialism has not yet been achieved, we have helped make some serious contributions to the development of socialist political and economic theory – weapons for battles now being fought and yet to come.

If anything, our numerous contributions to political and economic theory should reveal that The Socialist Party is no unsuccessful, sterile organisation full of utopian dogmatists. Socialists are not content to sit on the sidelines of history – we are original thinkers and are open to innovation and new ideas – providing, that is, that they are sound. We are willing and able to cooperate with men and women the world over to bring about a better society, and we are proud of the small contribution we have already made to the movement that will one day sweep away capitalism once and for all.

We remain small in size for numerous reasons outside of our control, not least because we refuse to compromise our position and pursue reforms and single issues that the myriad reform groups like the SWP do to the detriment of revolutionary struggle.

Our message to those who can see no future so long as the market economy remains is join us – and help us make history.

Capitalism creates a hundreds of problems and there must be literally a million organisations around the world trying to solve them. In Britain alone, for instance, there are over 180,000 registered charities and who knows how many campaign, protest and self-help groups there are. Many people find the issues they promote worthwhile. They join various groups and many do a lot of good work – Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the like attract workers in their thousands and make hefty donations.

Every organisation has to decide what it is working for, and whether that aim is important. This is not to say that the aforementioned organisation have not got legitimate aims and which are not worth pursuing.

But, when the first of the parties in the World Socialist Movement was founded in 1904, it decided it was going to work for socialism and socialism alone, that it would not be sidelined into pursuing single issues.

We were aware from our inception that an analysis of society reveals that capitalism itself is the underlying cause of most of the problems which the social activists want to solve; that the social activists can only ever attack the symptoms, whilst ignoring the cause; that while social activists work to reform capitalism, socialists work only to eliminate capitalism: the cause of the problems.

If people eliminate the cause of the problems, the problems won't keep cropping up. Instead of trying to fix the symptoms, year in and year out, forever, people can eliminate the cause, once and for all. Then we can all get on with living our lives in a world where solutions actually solve problems, instead of just covering up symptoms.

This approach can be emotionally difficult. It may even mean that someone dies today, who might have been saved by social activism. A simple analogy to explain the socialist perspective:

If a pipe bursts and the water is rising on the floor, one can start bailing the water out while it continues to flow in, or one can turn the water off, and then start bailing. It may take a while to find the tap, and some valuables might be destroyed while searching, but unless the water is turned off, the water will continue to rise and bailing is rather pointless.

Socialists are not immune to the human tragedies which occur daily, by the millions, and which generate thousands of social activist groups trying to stem the tide. Socialists suffer those tragedies as severely as anyone else, but work to encourage people to find the tap, so to speak, and turn it off.

If the reform actions of the social activists saved everyone who might have died today, it would be harder to question their approach. But the fact is they don't even come close. After the Holocaust in the 1940s, people said "Never Again". In the 1990s, genocide was on people's minds again, for a few hours, when the atrocities in Srebrenica, Bosnia hit the front pages and when Hutus and Tutsis massacred each other in Rwanda and Burundi. Genocide didn't stop for 50 years. It continued all along in places such as East Timor, but wasn't, apparently, important enough to make the front pages. The environment promoting genocide didn't go away, and so neither did genocide. In February 2003 almost 2 million people took to the streets of London to protest against the US-British build up for the invasion of Iraq. A month later and the bombing began regardless of world opinion and thousands of demonstrations from London to Sydney.

If the social activists had solved the myriad of problems, or were even to be able to say that things were steadily improving, that would argue in favour of their approach to social activism.

But that is not the case. The reality is that the reforms which the social activists promote do not work. The social activists are not gaining much, if any, ground, and the same problems continue to appear. It is often one step forward, several steps back.

That is the reality of capitalism. Social activism cannot change that. Or rather what most people call "social activism" can't change it. Socialists are social activists, and suggest that working to eliminate the cause of the problems is the most valuable type of social activism.

Socialists make a choice. We choose to use our time and limited funds to work to eliminate the cause of the problems. One can pick any problem and often one can find that real improvements have taken place, usually after a very long period of agitation. Rarely, if ever, has the problem disappeared, and usually other related problems have cropped up to fill the vacuum of destruction or suffering left by the "solution".

After hundreds of years of social activism, both the problems of war and poverty, which most people consider to be rather important, are still major problems and are nowhere near solution. War didn't stop in 1918 or 1945, it continues every day, somewhere in the world. Moreover, in spite of the huge advances made in technology, in science, in food production and transport in the 20th century, we entered the 21st century with 800 million chronically malnourished, 600 million homeless and 1.1 billion without access to clean water

The anti-poverty movement is now marginal. Eliminating war and poverty are no longer even in the realm of discussion for reformists. The reformists have failed.

Some environmentalists tell us that if the environment is destroyed all the rest won't matter. That is true enough, but there is little indication that the huge, well-funded environmental movement is making much real headway. For example, since the last Earth Summit, the forests of Brazil, sometimes called "the lungs of the planet", are being destroyed faster than before.

Socialists have been saying for over 100 years that reforming capitalism won't solve the problems and we have been proven correct so far. People who say that it is too early to accept that verdict seem willing to wait another 100 years to see what has, by then, transpired.

If socialists are correct, that would mean another 100 years of war, of poverty, of economic crises, of environmental destruction. It means that and more, as the destructive capability of society increases daily. There is not even moderately compelling evidence that socialists are wrong. There is compelling evidence that socialists are right.

The fact that millions are prepared to make an effort says a lot. Tens of millions are prepared to work many hours each week for charitable organisations and for the various lobby and campaign groups. They are well-intentioned people and we do not deny them that. The fact is that if the efforts they had put into their various single-issue causes had instead have been channelled into working for socialism then by now we most probably would have been living in a world of free access, devoid of a thousand social problems that social activists campaign against.

Socialism is what socialists want, so socialism is what they work for, not the reforms of the "social activists".

The Companion Parties of Socialism, in the World Socialist Movement, are socialist parties. They promote socialism because that is all a socialist party can promote.

If you find a "socialist" party promoting "social activism", you'll have found a non-socialist party ignoring socialism and working for reforms, not solutions.

A tiny group of socialists can't solve the world's problems; only a huge, socialist majority can do that. It is up to every individual to create that majority, and to use it to turn off the tap of capitalism, so that the problems can be solved.