The only socialist party in Britain

The Socialist Party constantly counsels our fellow-workers that “One thing we must warn you about, which is do not trust in leaders, trust in yourselves alone. Unless you understand the cause and the solution of your condition no leader can help you, no matter how honest and sincere he or she may appear to be; if you do understand, then you do not require leaders; you will know what you want and how to instruct your delegates to get what you want.”

Socialism has never even been put before the electorate by any party with the resources to ensure that it would get a fair hearing. To adapt a famous saying, socialism has not been tried and found wanting; it has never been tried. 

Who can doubt the accuracy of the socialist case, with regard to reforms, in view of the length of time and enormous efforts which went into the establishment of even these minor reforms? Stated simply it is that whilst we accept all and every reform, grudgingly granted or strenuously wrenched from the capitalist class we do not advocate organising nor working for them. Our work is to organise for socialism, knowing that when large numbers of socialists exist the capitalists will be most lavish in the distribution of reforms in an attempt to retain their privileged position. Until something is done to abolish capitalism we shall have to endure capitalism's poverty, wars and environment damage. We hold that the idea of keeping capitalism but reforming it to prune it of its exploitation and wars is a pathetic and dangerous illusion; and also that until the mass of the working class have been won over to socialism it is idle futility to speculate on ways in which a non-socialist working class that doesn’t understand or warn socialism could establish it. The class straggle is continuous and cannot be suspended. The working class always react in some degree to the continuous pressure of the exploiters, It follows that we do not hold and never have held that the class struggle is confined to small groups of socialists. The slow growth of socialist ideas among the workers is in its way a silent tribute to the efficiency of the media’s propaganda and is not due to the workers’ inability to grasp the cause of their slave position in society. Preoccupied with their very real day to day problems the vast majority accept these ready made ideas unquestioningly and uncritically. Those workers who do interest themselves are more often than not side-tracked into political dead-ends. Politicians take a leaf out of the book of the commercial advertiser and sells the leader or the candidate to the voter by the same methods used to sell patent medicines or washing powder. The appeal is no longer to the reason of the citizen but to his or her gullibility. The workers' minds have been so conditioned for so long that the capitalists “head-fixers” have thought of a good angle to explain away criticisms of their system. Confusion is worst confounded by those parties calling themselves “socialist.” The juggernaut of capitalism lumbers on unheeding to the inevitable clashes, pitting worker against worker in ineffectual and ghastly conflict. The reformers loudly calls attention to its evils (of, which we are already painfully aware) but stops short of unearthing the cause, i.e., capitalist competition.

Capitalist propaganda often takes place without any conscious effort on the part of the propagator. The child upon its mother's knee does not realise that the language it is being taught is suitably coloured to help the continuation of capitalism. Even the mother, unless she be a socialist, does not realise that she is teaching her children the capitalist attitude to good and bad, the doctrine of God and the Devil.

At the age of five the child is thrust into an organised scheme to enable it to know enough to earn a living but not enough to know anything of great importance. It is taught obedience to authority which results in apathy, patriotism which results in racial prejudice, religion which results in blind acceptance, and the history of “great men” which means meekness before prestige. The child turns to entertainments and it finds children's magazines, a brighter presentation of the same dope. The child goes to the cinema and sees the brave king defending his property against a weak, cringing, brutal coward, the glorious British army defeating the enemy with smiles and a stiff upper-lip.

Should the child be unfortunate to have to go to church,  he or she will be exhorted to sing aloud, “All things bright and beautiful” amidst slums and factory smoke.

Having left school into the hurried and worried life of capitalist wage-slavery, reduced to misfortune and hardship he or she will get to know all the capitalist incantations summed up in the philosophy. “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

So many people today think that they will know better next time. Unless they are socialists they will not know better. The dope, whether from the church, the media or the schools will claim them. Rose coloured spectacles stand in the workers' way in their struggle to survive. When they get rid of them, as they will, they will be ready to see things in perspective. They will be socialists.

Reforms do not basically alter capitalism and it is agreed by the members of the Socialist Party that socialist delegates must contest elections solely on the programme of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism, thereby seeking the votes only of socialists and not of reformists. The sole issue was whether socialist delegates elected on socialist votes would vote for measures which, whatever their origin and motive, would incidentally be of benefit to the working class and the socialist movement. Mention is often of measures to improve educational and healthcare facilities, safety facilities in mines and factories, the removal of restrictions on trade unions, etc. The Socialist Party takes the line that socialists outside Parliament would require their delegates in Parliament to vote for such measures on their merits. The vote would be given not in order to meet the views of reformists but under instruction of socialists. An “all or nothing" position while attractive in its simplicity is less logical than he imagined. It would logically lead socialists to take no action at all except in support of the establishment of socialism. It would for example require them not to support trade union efforts on the ground that a wage increase or resistance to a wage reduction is not socialism.

The solution is a world wide movement by the workers for the establishment of socialist society. However, in time, worsening conditions together with the efforts of socialists will speed the ultimate awakening of the workers. We are working for the overthrow of capitalist society which has already drawn too large a draft on the bank of time. We ask for your understanding, help and co-operation that the necessary knowledge may be spread to the workers and a world wide brotherhood of mankind be established in our time.

Amid the political and economic misleaders of the Left, the Party’s voice has rung out clear, calm and confident, nor has one false note been struck. Events so far have justified its every warning and advice, and while collapsing capitalism is reflected in the hesitating uncertainty and vacillation of so-called socialist parties, the Socialist Party stands solid and unshakeable, on behalf of our fellow wage slaves, building up and perfecting the mechanism by which we may emancipate ourselves. We may be a small party but we are a socialist one, and, the only socialist party in Great Britain.

The Scottish Commons

Today it’s estimated around half of its private rural land is owned by just under 500 individuals, while the Panama Papers revealed that as much as 750,000 acres of this may be owned anonymously by those in offshore tax havens.

The problem with Scotland’s land ownership is not new.  The word “feudalism” likely conjures up images of the stratified Middle Ages, but it was not until this century that feudal ownership formally came to an end in Scotland. Before the Abolition of Feudal Tenure Act of 2000 was enforced in late 2004, there still existed vassals and feudal superiors in the country. Although an earlier act in 1974 gave vassals the power to “buy off” their feu duties, in 1999 around 10 per cent of landowners were still making regular payments to their superiors—one such notable superior being the Church of Scotland, which at the time collected as much as £30,000 a year from feudal lands. To get a sense of just how astonishing this is, the analogous piece of legislation that brought feudal ownership to an end in England, the Tenures Abolition Act, was enacted in 1660.

Scotland’s Land Reform Act 2003—a piece of legislation described by the Scottish Conservative Party as a “land-grab of which Robert Mugabe would have been proud”—set in motion the basic mechanisms to help communities buy the land they lived on. 

It stipulates that such buyouts must take place through a body that represents local residents, typically a heritage trust. On the Isle of Eigg—home to one of the first modern community buyouts, in 1997—a board of directors is appointed to run the trust, the majority of whom are members of the Eigg Residents Association, who are in turn elected by members of the community. Aside from any suggestion of new “countryside bureaucracy,” the need to introduce democratic norms as a prerequisite for community buyouts highlights, if nothing else, just how fundamental and agenda-setting a right is property ownership: property, in other words, is power. For the Isle of Eigg and other communities like it, this power has been transformative. It’s estimated around 560,000 acres of land is now in community ownership across Scotland. With the recent success of the Isle of Eigg buyout in the back of everyone’s minds, the allure of the commons appeared inescapable; the idea was seen anew.

Community ownership is not new. It was the Romans who talked about the existence of res communis, that which belonged to all as opposed to res publica, that which was owned by the government. Even within Scotland itself, the idea of the commons has existed for centuries in the form of the commonty and the old royal burghs of King David I, which for so long were chipped away by feudal charters. To talk of the commons today then is to talk in terms of resurgence rather than revolution.  A “return” to the commons may yet hold the kernel of something far more radical than its centuries-old history belies.  With a pandemic that has left many of us feeling acutely powerless, it’s not hard to see how the commons—through community right to buy and greater decision making at the local level more generally—might empower ordinary people in ways we haven’t done for a very long time.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/who-really-owns-scotland-land-ownership-reform-act-registry

Social Evolution

The ruling class of this country and all the others never stopped preaching that their form of government is “the most democratic on earth.” Like other things these parasites put out, this is reality upside down. The fact is that the people who run this country are a small handful of bankers and businessmen, millionaires and billionaires. In this system which they call “the most democratic on earth,” they own the vast productive forces–the factories, the mines, the mills, the transportation systems, communications, etc – and exploit the working class, the majority of the population, for their own private profit. The State – the police, army, courts, bureaucracy and similar institutions – is set up and controlled by this capitalist class who  are never mobilised against the class of bankers and corporation executives. In short, this state is a class dictatorship of employers and investors. This does not mean there is a dictatorship in this country of one person or a clique. It does mean there is a class dictatorship, where a tiny handful of profit-makers rules society and uses the State as their machine to repress the working people. Most people do not think of their country as a dictatorship because the domination by the capitalist class is usually concealed under the camouflage of democracy for it is extremely difficult for a minority of exploiters to rule by force alone and require to be controlled by consent. The capitalists do not openly admit their rule. Instead they claim that this is a democracy where “everyone shares power and takes part in running the government.” However, the capitalists are no more willing to “share” power with the majority of people than it is to share the ownership of the means of production and the wealth that comes from this. For them to function as a capitalist class, they must exploit the working class; and to exploit the workers, who constantly resist this exploitation and oppression, they must use the state to suppress the workers.

 Nevertheless the ruling class had been forced to grant the workers some democratic rights such as the right to vote, free speech, free media, etc. But these freedoms, like everything else in capitalist society, have their class content: they mean one thing to the ruling class and quite another for the workers. For the capitalists, freedom of free speech, as examples, mean the right to fill the air-waves and press with their propaganda and lies and to use them freely to debate with each other. For the capitalists, elections are a way to settle differences among themselves, while making it look like everybody has equal say. The ruling class decides by compromise within its own ranks, and among its paid politicians, how it will maintain its system of exploitation over the people.

For the working class, democratic rights are the fruits of previous struggles, and we fight to preserve them for they make it easier to organise and mobilise for the day when the capitalists will be overthrown. Often democratic rights are a sham to mask the real dictatorship of the capitalists. This becomes especially clear when democratic rights come into conflict with the most basic “freedom” of bourgeois society–the right of the capitalists to their “private property” and to exploit the labour of the workers.

When the capitalist class talks about freedom, it does not mean that the people have, or should have, rights. It means that the capitalists are free to exploit the people to make profits.  There is one sense in which the capitalists want the workers to be “free.” We must be “free” of ownership of the means of production, we must have no other way to make our living except to go to work to enrich the capitalists. It becomes clearer and clearer that capitalist society means democracy and freedom for the capitalist minority and oppression and exploitation for the great majority of the people. This can only be reversed by socialist revolution to overthrow capitalist rule and all the political structures, the courts and bureaucracies, all its rules and regulations aimed at enslaving the people are abolished.

In the process of socialist revolution the working class take control of the state machine and once in power the working class moves to socialise the ownership of the means of production-making them the common property of society–to resolve the basic contradiction of capitalism, to break down the obstacles capitalism puts in the way of progress, and makes possible the rapid development of society. Socialism is a higher form of society than capitalism, and is bound to replace it all over the world, just as capitalism replaced the feudal system of landlords and serfs. No longer do a handful of parasites run society for their own private profit and the working class sets out to transform all of society, stripping from the master class their ownership of the means of production which becomes the common property of the working people. 

 Socialism replaces capitalism, a form of society, where there will no longer be any classes, and, therefore, there will no longer be any need for the State, when everyone in society can share equally in producing goods and services and managing the affairs of society; putting the common good above narrow, individual interests, when goods and services can be produced so abundantly that money is no longer needed to exchange them and they can be distributed to people solely according to their needs. Classes will have been completely eliminated, and the state as such will be replaced by the common administration of society by all its members. As this happens, throughout the world, mankind will look upon a whole new horizon.

The Power of the Workers

The parasitic ruling class have always spread the idea that they are indispensable. The more useless they have become, the more adamant they try to impress this illusion upon workers’ minds. “How lucky you are to have us on your backs to direct you. You couldn’t get along without us.” The capitalists, contend, in order to justify their existence, that they alone are competent to rule the state and control industry. The capitalists, of course, try to present their rule and their system of exploitation as eternal. Their lackeys maintain that workers possess a slave-mentality by nature and therefore cannot be permitted commanding positions in political and economic life or in military matters, without overturning the foundations of civilisation. The capitalist rulers try in every way to keep the workers down and to lessen their self-confidence. They want to prevent the workers from understanding their own organised power and from developing their capacities as a class to reorganise the world. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true.

Many years ago workers were told they couldn’t build their own trade unions and administer them. Nevertheless the workers went ahead and created powerful unions.

In reality, the employers and investors live on the toil and produce of the working class and couldn’t exist without them. But to keep the wage-slaves in submission and uphold their system of exploitation, the master class are forced to twist the real state of affairs into its opposite. The capitalists possess their present power, property rights, and privileges as a result of long outgrown historical conditions. This class no longer performs any essential functions in modern society, any more than the appendix performs any useful function in the human body. Today the capitalist class, like a diseased appendix, imperils the very existence of humanity. Society does not depend today upon the capitalist exploiters but upon the working people they oppress. If every share-owner and stock-holder in General Motors were to disappear tomorrow, the workers on the assembly lines could still continue to build cars.

 A worker who now operates a lathe can direct a machine-shop tomorrow and an entire industry the day after. This has been done under capitalism by a few individual workers who climb higher in the career ladder become bosses themselves. What is done by isolated individuals under capitalism can and will be done collectively by the mass of organised workers in socialism, who will collectively own, organise and run industry by means of democratic committees. They will then produce not for the enrichment of a few but for the enjoyment of all. Let our fellow-workers take power and they will learn the art and technique of administration. And they will make social advances that capitalism never dreams of.

In the face of growing hardships and increasing attacks on workers in the factories, mines and fields, and in every sphere of society, growing numbers are taking action and taking matters into their own hands to fight back against the owning class of capitalists that rules. Despite the attempts of the parasites to divide and derail the workers’ movement, it continues to move forward and through many battles to grow ever more potent.

Capitalist society is based on the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class and that all the evils of this society arise from that. But more than that, it shows that throughout history society has been propelled forward through various historical stages by the struggle of the oppressed classes, and that in this era it is the carrying through of the working class struggle, to overthrow and eliminate capitalism, that alone can move society forward. And further it explains how the working class in abolishing capitalism will put an end to the division of society into classes and bring about a completely new era in human history – socialism – where mankind as a whole, through it cooperative efforts and conscious planning, can harness society’s productive forces to advance to heights undreamed of in the past. The movement of the working class is growing and gaining in strength and solidarity.

Throughout society the capitalists are mounting their attacks, cutting funds for education, health, housing and other vital needs of the people, which are sacrificed more and more for the capitalists’ need for profit. And along with all this they practice and promote discrimination and try to divert the anger and militancy of the masses of people against each other–and away from the capitalists themselves. Not content by just by robbing the workers in one country, the capitalists are locked in fierce battle with their foreign rivals around the world in their efforts to exploit all working people around the world, bringing suffering to hundreds of millions of people–all to feed the never satisfied profit-hunger of the capitalists. 

There is only one way that all the suffering caused by capitalism can be finally ended–by wiping out its source, capitalism. And there is only one force in society that can bring this about–the working class. This is the aim of the Socialist Party, not to win whatever concessions which can be achieved, but to build the strength and unity of the working class for the day when it will overthrow the capitalists altogether. There is only one political party in this country that is determined to fight together with the working class for the end of capitalism and the complete emancipation of the working class. This is the Socialist Party, which openly declares that it represents only the working class and seeks, as the highest interest of the working class, the overthrow and elimination of capitalism by the working class itself.

Towards A Better World

The truth of the matter is that this is a rich man’s State and a rich man’s government. The State is there to act on behalf of capital and to protect its interests against the people. The government is the executive committee of the big corporations. The State is an instrument of power in the hands of the industrialists, bankers and landlords, who are the ruling class. The state passes laws and maintains the police and armed forces to keep the working class in line. The idea that everyone can get rich under this system is a lie invented by the rich themselves. The mass media are powerful means of spreading the ideas and outlook of the capitalist class and its ideology. Capitalist society in its totality is structured so as to preserve the exploitative relationship between the capitalist class and the working class which lies at its heart.

The whole of society is organised around the capitalist economy. It is important to realise that capitalists are not always looking for ways to increase the degree of exploitation of workers because they, the capitalists, are inherently greedy but that they do this because of the way in which the capitalist economy operates leaves them with no choice if they are to stay in business. Similarly, if workers are not to be worked to death and totally impoverished then they have no choice except to take a common stand together against capitalist employers so as to resist employers’ attempts to exploit them even more.

 Facts are stubborn, irrefutable. It is the task of the Socialist Party to hasten the process of the liberation of our fellow-workers from the reformist illusions, to win them over to the side of the class struggle and the struggle against capitalism and reformism. The word “Revolution”, taken in its largest and truest sense, means turning, transformation, change. In fact, all in nature changes, but nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, passing from one turn of life to another, lives ever-changing, transforming, revolutionising. If revolution is the law of nature, which is all, it must necessarily also be the law of humanity, which is a part of nature. But you have a few who close their eyes so as not to see and their ears so as not to hear.

1. That the first source of every human oppression and exploitation is private property;

2. That the emancipation of workers (human emancipation) will not be founded upon a new class rule, but upon the end of all class privileges and monopolies and upon the equality of rights and duties;

3. That the cause of labour, the cause of humanity, does not have borders;

4. That the emancipation of workers must be done by the will and the hands of the workers themselves.

The Socialist Party advocates the unity of the workers of the whole world in common struggle for the realisation of the common goal - emancipation. It affirm the irreconcilability of their struggle against capital. Crisis is an inherent feature of capitalism and cannot be eliminated without eliminating the root, the capitalist system. The anarchy of production will not be eliminated without putting an end to the capitalist system, thereby removing the contradiction which is at its root, the contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist appropriation. The motive of the capitalist is the securing of maximum profits. Capitalists organise production for the purposes of increasing profits. The manufacture of products is in fact an incidental aim of capitalism. When conditions are such that profits can only be increased by cutting back production then that is what the capitalists do. The fundamental flaws of the capitalist system cannot be eliminated without removing the capitalist system itself.

All the capitalist parties, all the parties dedicated to the continuation of the capitalist system of wage slavery, are against the most basic rights and interests of the working class. The workers can only wage their struggle in opposition to these forces. In particular the struggle cannot be one simply to remove the Tory government and replace it by a Labour government. The working class must struggle to end the capitalist system. The reason for the treachery and betrayal of the Labour Party class-collaborationist politicians is not simply the cowardice and spinelessness of various individuals. Workers cannot restrict themselves to addressing only the symptoms; they must remove the source of the disease, the capitalist system of wage slavery. It is the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression, the system of wage slavery, that is the source of all the problems facing the working people, and that shows the urgent necessity to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. Revolution is not only a possibility, it is a necessity in order to avert the grave threats facing the  people, to prevent the impoverishment and destitution of the people, and avert the dangers of climate change and war to which the capitalist system is leading society.