Not another referendum

Constitutional reform doesn’t interfere with profit-making. But does give rise to an illusion of change. The SNP’s return to proposals for a Scottish Parliament to be sovereign should be seen as completely irrelevant as far as ordinary people are concerned.  It leaves our lives and the problems the profit system causes completely unchanged. Exploitation through the wages system continues. Unemployment continues. A crumbling health service, a chaotic transport system, a polluted environment, failing schools, rising crime and drug addiction and the general breakdown of society all continue. As far as solving these problems is concerned, Scottish independence is just a useless irrelevancy. Naturally, the nationalists wraps its constitutional reforms up in radical rhetoric. A fully sovereign parliament  would be an extension of democracy, bringing power nearer to the people, so how can the Socialist Party not be in favour of this?

Yes, we are in favour of democracy, and socialism will be a fully democratic society, but full democracy is not possible under capitalism. Supporters of capitalism who talk about “democracy” always mean only political democracy since economic democracy–where people would democratically run the places where they work–is out of the question under capitalism, based as it is on these workplaces being owned and controlled by and for the benefit of a privileged minority.

You can have the most democratic constitution imaginable but this won’t make any difference to the fact that profits have to come before meeting needs under capitalism. The people’s will to have their needs met properly is frustrated all the time by the operation of the economic laws of the capitalist system which no political structure, however democratic, can control.

It is not imperfections in the political decision-making process that’s the problem but the profit system and its economic laws. And the answer is not democratic reform of capitalism’s political structure but the replacement of capitalism by socialism.

As a society based on common instead of class ownership of the means of production, socialism will fulfil the first condition for a genuine democracy. Because it will be a classless society without a privileged wealthy class everyone can have a genuinely equal say in the way things are run. Some will not be more equal than others, as they are under capitalism, because they own more wealth. Socialism will be a society where the laws of profit no longer operate since common ownership and democratic control will allow people to produce to meet their needs instead of for the profit of a few as today.

We are not nationalists – in fact we are implacably opposed to nationalism in whatever form it rears its ugly head – and we see the establishment of an independent Scotland as yet another irrelevant, constitutional reform. One of the last things the world needs at the moment is more states, with their own armed forces and divisive nationalist ideology.

Nationalism is based on the illusion that all people who live in a particular geographical area have a common interest, against people in other areas. Hence the supposed need for a separate state and a separate government to defend this separate interest.

This flies in the face of the facts. All over the world, in all geographical areas, the population is divided into two basic classes, those who own the productive resources and those who don’t and have to work for those who do, and whose interests are antagonistic.

The non-owning class have a common interest, not with the owning class who live in the same area, but with people like themselves wherever they live. The interests of workers who live in Scotland are not opposed to the interests of those who live in England – or France or Germany or Russia or Japan or anywhere else in the world. Nationalists like the SNP who preach the opposite are spreading a divisive poison amongst people who the Socialist Party say should unite to establish a frontier-free world community, based on the world’s resources becoming the common heritage of all humanity, as the only framework within which the social problems which workers wherever they live face today. This is why socialists and nationalists are implacably opposed to each other. We are working in opposite directions. Us to unite workers. Them to divide them.

 In the end the point at issue–a mere constitutional reform which will leave profit-making, exploitation, unemployment and all the other social problems quite untouched–is so irrelevant that it is not worth taking sides.  We don’t see any point in diverting our energies to changing the constitution but we certainly want things to change. We want people to change the economic and social basis of society and establish socialism in place of capitalism. So we’ve nothing in common with them.

The unionists too, are nationalists. Not, of course, Scottish nationalists, but British nationalists, since that is what the unionists are, spreading the poison that it is all the people in the British Isles who have a common interest against people everywhere else. But the Socialist Party is just as much opposed to British nationalism as we are to Scottish or any other nationalism. Just because we are not prepared to back the efforts of Scottish nationalists to break away from the United Kingdom – and vigorously oppose their efforts to split the trade union movement – does not mean that we are unionists. We don’t support the Union. We just put up with it while we get on with our work of convincing people to reject world capitalism in favour of world socialism.

If you want socialism, we urge you to support world socialism and reject both Scottish nationalism and the unionism of British nationalism.

There Is Only One Form Of Equality Worth Fighting For

The first Monday of August is a Civic holiday in Ontario, in honour of Lt.Gov John Graves Simcoe, who, in 1793, passed the British Empire's first anti-slavery bill, 40 years before it was abolished in the rest of the Empire. 

One may celebrate however much one sees fit, or unfit, but nevertheless there is a difference between emancipation and equality. 

Black people are more likely to be treated unjustly than members of other minority, more likely to be suspended or expelled from school, to be carded or questioned by police, to face unemployment rates higher than the national average, earn less money than their fellow workers who are white for the same job and 20 times more likely than whites to be shot dead by police. Yet blacks still demand equality with whites, as if whites have equality with each other. 

What they mean is equality under the law which is the law of the capitalist class which exists to protect their property ownership and which, by its very nature, pits worker against worker. 

There is only one form of equality worth fighting for - a society where all will stand equal in relation to the tools of production and distribution of goods.

S.P.C. Members.

GENOCIDE. Will Not End Till Capitalism Itself Does

Things don't change under capitalism; sure technology improves, but people remain the same.

 In 1945, millions were horrified at the Holocaust, yet it continues. The Chinese government have embarked on a program, or should I say pogram, of persecution of their Muslim population. Between one and two million Muslims have been reportedly imprisoned in hundreds of detention centres, which have been compared to concentration camps. Mass sterilizations, forced abortions, reports of rape and torture, lengthy prison terms and brutal efforts to eliminate their traditional language and religion, are some of the details which have leaked out. 

Since WW2 there have been sixty cases of genocide and it will not end till capitalism itself does.

S.P.C. Members.

House Prices - The New Clearances

In an open letter community figures have warned that rising property prices in the Hebrides, Western Isles and Skye are preventing locals from buying a home.

They described the situation as akin to an "economic clearance" that was threatening the sustainability of the islands. They said young islanders could not compete with offers made by buyers from elsewhere in the UK.

The letter's signatories - which includes crofters, development officers and Gaelic campaigners - said 40% of housing stock on both Tiree in the Inner Hebrides and West Harris in the Western Isles were holiday homes. They pointed to reports of people across the UK looking to relocate to the Highlands and Islands, and having the means to make higher offers than local buyers.

Their letter said: "Part-time residencies do not sustain our communities and we should therefore ensure that houses are bought with the intention of being a primary residency. Inaction will allow this economic clearance to be consolidated in history."

The letter comes after concerns were raised that Gaelic speakers among the islands' communities could vanish within 10 years.

Researchers said daily use of Gaelic was currently too low to sustain it as a community language in the future. The letter's signatories include Pàdruig Morrison, a Uist crofter, researcher and musician and architect and Gaelic campaigner Martin Baillie, from Skye. Uist businesswoman Emma Axelsson and crofter Fiona NicÌosaig have also signed it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-54028339

The ‘educator must first be educated’

The Socialist Party aims at replacing the present capitalist system by socialism, understood broadly as a system where there will be common ownership of the means of production and distribution. We envisage socialism as a society where material wealth will be in the hands of those who produce it, where the exploitation of man by man will be ended, where production will be used not for private profit, where individual men and women will find the possibilities to develop their abilities.

 The State had little to do with representative institutions; on the contrary, the State was something through which the will of the ruling class was imposed on the rest of the people. In primitive society there was no State; but when human society became divided into classes, the conflict of interests between the classes made it impossible for the privileged class to maintain its privileges without an armed force directly controlled by it and protecting its interests. Its function is maintaining the existing order, which means the existing class division and class privilege. It is always represented as something above society, something “impartial,” whose only purpose is to “maintain law and order,” but in maintaining law and order it is maintaining the existing system. It comes into operation against any attempt to change the system. It is an apparatus of force, acting in the interests of the ruling class.

 The extension of the vote did not in any way alter this situation. Real power rests with the class which is dominant in the system of production; it maintains its control of the State machine, no matter what happens in the representative institution.

The Socialist Party has always supported democracy. We see its defence as one of the fields of the class struggle. Parliaments of today can serve as instruments for winning concessions and at the same time rousing the workers for the decisive struggle for power to bring the new order of society. Therefore the struggle for parliamentary democracy is not purposeless. It is about as Marx explains, “winning the battle of democracy.” Socialism can and will be attained by only the fullest realisation of democracy. That is what the Socialist Party teach. The Socialist Party does not subscribe to any doctrine called Leninism, Trotskyism or Maoism. When the workers form a majority and are conscious of their importance to society, their voting for the Socialist Party signifies that they have recognised their strength and are determined to make use of it.

The class struggle and the State will continue through history as long as human society remains divided in classes. But when the working class takes power it does so in order to end the class divisions – to bring in a new form of production in which there is no longer any class living on the labour of another class; in other words, to bring about a class-free society, in which all serve society as a whole. There will be no class conflict because there are no classes with separate interests, and therefore there will be no need of a State – an apparatus of force – to protect one set of interests against another. The State will “wither away” – in one sphere after another it will not be required, and such ministries that remain will be for the organisation of production and distributed. As Engels put it: “Government over persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production.”

Marx himself had argued that what enabled socialism (ie workers’ control of production, full political democracy, full equality) was the development of the productive forces to a sufficient degree to provide plenty for all the first time in human history. Without this affluence any attempt to establish socialism must fail because to quote Marx, “without it only want is made general and with want, the struggle for necessities and all the old crap would necessarily be reproduced”.

Socialism has had quite a few self-appointed saviours and messiahs. Socialism from ‘above’ always has an appeal as long as we live under a system of domination, hierarchy and exploitation. When struggles are defeated or when workers are beaten back, the loss of confidence that ensues allows for ‘substitutionism - when organisations or individuals step in claiming to liberate the masses ‘from above’

A myriad of groups and individuals preached their schemes to transform the world. There were also well-meaning attempts at building perfect communities. Robert Owen was a Welsh socialist, who owned a factory in New Lanark.He realised that productivity would increase if his workers were given a share of the profits, leading him to suggest communism as a way by which people could live in cooperative communities. He built his workers schools and planted gardens. The problem was that he believed that all it took to change the world was for caring individuals, with a blueprint for change, to lead by good example. His motto was build the perfect community and the world will follow you. It didn’t quite work out as he had hoped and Owen ended up rejected by Victorian society and building utopias in the USA, which fell apart one by one. The utopian reformers both believed that the masses needed to be ‘educated’ and led by ‘good example’. The mass of people were seen as passive, not as active agents of social change. For all their weaknesses the ‘utopian’ socialists did develop serious critiques of capitalist society, elements of which were very important to the development of socialist ideas.

Marx stated in the third of his Theses on Feuerbach that the ‘educator must first be educated.’ He was then drawn to the understanding that the revolution must be a process of mass self-emancipation. The revolt of the working class is a combination of transformation of the world and the transformation of itself. Revolutionary struggle is necessary, not only to destroy the old order, but for ‘the alteration of men on a mass scale’. This process can be seen again and again in every workers uprising. What differentiates the Socialist Party from the the Left is its focus on self-activity and its criticism of elitism and of all substitutes for the self-activity of the working people.

The Party of the People

Every step of the Socialist Party will be in the direction of the co-operative commonwealth. The problems of society, as they relate to daily life and sustenance, will then no longer be affected in any way by money. The Socialist Party must avoid the snare, the machinations of the class foe all that which would mislead and uselessly exhaust our forces and to use parliament, as we use the media and the meetings, in order to educate and organise and to bring to a conclusion the social revolution. Help us to raise the red banner of the social revolution  and to free ourselves from capitalist domination. The socialist revolution would reduce despotism to dust. 

The Socialist Party object is not the enactment of palliative reforms under capitalism, nor the obtaining of higher wages, but the immediate establishment of a co-operative commonwealth. Our objective is the reorganisation of society upon the lines of co-operation, constituted by or in the interest of the producing class for the welfare of the community. That is, in fact, the emancipation of the whole wage-slave class.

The capitalist rulers of the United States have a great number of intellectuals to exalt them and bestow praises upon them. In the fields of culture and media countless books, movies, and TV series depict merits of the privileged class. The aim is to emasculate American workers of all revolutionary potential ensuring they will not develop any anti-capitalist consciousness or a desire to build a socialist society.

The road to prosperity, to peace for all is the road to socialism. There is no other. The capitalist system is irreparable, and any party that is based on such illusions will be bankrupt and will only lead to the demoralisation, disillusionment and open betrayal of those who count on it. A socialist society must be founded on true solidarity, on true cooperation. The society of human fraternity, freedom, peace, that is socialism, is the noblest aim that mankind has ever aspired to. Socialism means expanding democracy not only just in the political sense but also economically – freedom from want. We need to make a fundamental change in society. Our compass for where we are finally headed should have socialism as its destination. We need to keep our end in mind not to lose our way. Awaken before it is too late! The future is in our hands. We shall overthrow capitalism. There is no going backwards. There is only going forward to the socialist future.

We propose, in brief, that all resources, all land and buildings, all manufacturing establishments, mines, the means of transportation and communication, should be, not private property, but the common property of all.

A socialist world will have a planned economy. This planning will guarantee the well-being of all the people. The enormous waste of capitalism will be abolished. 

Capitalism has no solution. Madness continues to prevail in the world. Only socialism can bring the solution. Only socialism can end capitalist property rights and organise production to meet human needs. Once capitalism is overthrown, then and only then can production be organised in common for all, and every increase in production bring increasing abundance and leisure for all. This is the aim of the working-class revolution. Only the organised working-class can fight and destroy the power of the capitalist class, can drive the capitalists from possession, can organise social production. The working-class is the social force of the future throughout the world to the future free and equal society.

 Long live the real solidarity of the workers of all countries and the revolutionary, ruthless war against our masters.

Forward to the fight for socialism. Forward to the social revolution.

The Socialist Party - The Party of the New Enlightenment

We hear a great deal of “Democratic Socialism.” Because socialism has been misrepresented and maligned by the media and politicians so long that even many so-called socialists who have not study the subject possess rather vague and misleading conceptions about what socialism actually means. The definition of socialism, as used by ourselves, is the common ownership and democratic control of all the means of production and distribution In all countries, and under whatever form of government, the present system of social production by individual ownership has produced two classes: the propertyless class and the capitalist class. Socialism starts out with the truism that our present system divides society into two classes, the “have all” and the “have nothing” class, and that it is the great mass of the people that do all the useful work who belong to the “have nothing” class. Therefore socialism is class conscious. This does not mean that the socialist must hate every capitalist individually, that some such as the bankers should be singled out for special condemnation while the economic power and political encroachment of all the others should be silently submitted to. It means that while we understand that every individual capitalist is the result of the present system as much as the wage worker, we still must fight the capitalists as a class, because the producers cannot reasonably expect anything but exploitation from the exploiters as a class. We demand the rule of the people, i.e., democracy, a democracy which is founded on economic independence, upon the political and industrial equality of opportunity for all. The control of production by the people as a whole means the highest possible perfection of industry on a large scale and means the extension of its advantages to all the people. And we all deeply feel the disadvantages of the private ownership of the means of production and distribution on a large scale.

Socialism thus far has received the attention only of the oppressed and the lowly. The rich have no reason to wish for a change of the present system. They do not want to hear anything about it. Most people have only a very vague idea even of its basis. Yet Socialism is in the foreground of discussion today. Of course, with people who believe that whatever is will exist forever, and that we have reached the acme of civilisation, and the end of all things in economic progress, with such people it is entirely useless to argue. But surely no educated person believes that the present conditions are the end of all things. That we have not reached the end of our national development is clear. Every new invention and every new political question proves that to us.

Most of us comprehend that  our present system stands for “capital,” that decides how much we shall pay for our meat, for our bread, for our sugar, how much for coal and for gasoline, and how much we are to spend for our houses, clothing, shoes, etc. In other words, by deciding how well or how poorly we are to live, these owners of production virtually decide how long or how short a time we are permitted to stay on Earth. And wealth, usually expressed in money, is now the god. Mammon has become the idol of this day. It is through the distribution of a part of this Mammon that the rich man gets his dangerous powers. It is the monopoly of that which all want — some of which all must have — that makes his power so fearful.

Socialism is the child of the industrial revolution. Socialism was impossible in former centuries. The modern development of the means of production — manufacturing in the present large scale — has made socialism possible and necessary. Socialism requires the modern industrial development, i.e., capitalism as a forerunner, which centralizes industry and trade. Socialism recognises that the development of capitalist society substitutes tyrannical monopoly by a minority for individual property of the many. But it does not revolt against recognised facts; it bows to them. It does not propose to return to a romantic past and start communistic colonies — or to arrest the transformation of humanity which is going on before our very eyes. On the contrary, it bends to the laws of progress and evolution.

It is not accurate to talk about the “socialism” of Christ and the early Christians. The early Christians were communists in a similar sense as the monastic monks of the Middle Ages, but they were not socialists. The early Christians depended upon the contributions of the richer members of the community for a living, and upon the Lord for everything else.

Others propose the socialism of the cooperative. Yet they have to work exactly like a capitalist company. The only difference is that the cooperative company will always be at a disadvantage, when compared to the capitalist business enterprise, even when the former has as much capital as the latter. The cooperative undertaking, because it is cooperative, cannot press any surplus value out of its members, and therefore its capital will not grow. On the other hand, it has to spend its main strength fighting strong capitalist concerns, while it is just that fight of competition that fixes the prices of the products.

 Socialism is the next stage of civilisation, if civilisation is to survive. If civilization is to survive, we must see to it that civilization does survive. The present system was a step in the evolution of freedom, but only a step. But it has already resulting in making comparatively few the absolute masters of our daily bread. If we are to be a free people, the people must take possession collectively of the social means of production and distribution. And this is socialism.

The Socialist Party are revolutionists. We are revolutionary, not in the vulgar meaning of riots and dynamite, from murderous attacks and conspiracies. We know that one can kill tyrants and scare individuals with bombs and bullets, but one can not develop a new social system in that way, In a country where we have the ballot, we want to convince the majority of the people. As long as we are in the minority, we, of course, have no right to force our opinions upon an unwilling majority. Socialists do not expect success from a smaller or bigger riot, but from a real revolution, from the revolutionising of minds, the only true revolution there is. Therefore, the Socialist Party concentrates its energies on education, agitation, and organisation, the enlightenment of humanity.

Forward to Socialist Revolution

We live in a period of rapid development of scientific knowledge, of technology, of the means of production, which deepens the contradictions of capitalism, and demonstrates more and more clearly the need for a new socialist organisation of society. This scientific knowledge that could, under socialism, so rapidly end poverty and hunger for the total population of the world. The Socialist Party is the political expression of the interests of the workers in this country, and is part of the World Socialist Movement. The capitalist state, by controlling the old political parties, control the powers of the state and uses them to secure and entrench its position. Without such control of the state its position of economic power would be untenable. The workers must wrest the control of the government from the hands of the masters and use its powers in the building of the new social order, the cooperative commonwealth. The Socialist Party seeks to organise the working class for independent action on the political field, not for the betterment of their conditions but with the revolutionary aim of putting an end to exploitation and class rule. Such political action is absolutely necessary to the emancipation of the working class, and the establishment of genuine liberty for all. To accomplish this aim of the Socialist Party is to bring about the common ownership and democratic control of all the necessary means of production — to eliminate profit, rent, and interest, and make it impossible for any to share the product without sharing the burden of labour — to change our class society into a society of equals, in which the interest of one will be the interest of all. Political action means participation in elections to gain control of the powers of government in order to abolish the present capitalist system and substitute the cooperative commonwealth. 

The economic basis of present day society is the private ownership and control of socially necessary means of production, and the exploitation of the workers, who operate these means of production for the profit of those who own them. The interests of these two classes are diametrically opposed. It is the interest of the capitalist class to maintain the present system and to obtain for themselves the largest possible share of the product of labour. It is the interest of the working class to improve their conditions of life and get the largest possible share of their own product so long as the present system prevails, and to end this system as quickly as they can. In so far as the members of the opposing classes become conscious of these facts, each strives to advance its own interests as against the other. It is this active conflict of interest which we describe as the class struggle. The whole civilised world is in a state of social and political ferment.

The cardinal point upon which there is general agreement in the socialist movement is that no socialist revolution can be successfully accomplished  without the active support and participation of the majority of the workers acting as a class in conscious and organised opposition to the ruling classes. The Socialist Party acknowledges that the bulk of workers have not yet reached the point of political class-consciousness. The task of socialists is to educate them, to it. The Socialist Party recognises the class struggle between the capitalist class and the working class, and the necessity of the working class organising itself into a political party for the purpose of obtaining common ownership and democratic administration and operation of the collectively used and socially necessary means of production and distribution. It is opposed to all political organisations that support and perpetuate the present capitalist profit system and opposed to any form of horse-trading with any such organisations to prolong the present capitalist system.

For the Socialist Party are profoundly convinced that there is no escape nor substantial relief for the people from the economic and political domination of the greedy special interests of which they are now the victims, except through the working people, organised as a powerful, irresistible political force throughout the nation, boldly challenging the corrupt and oppressive misrule of the pirating oligarchy now in control, in the name of the people. Without such a socialist party all political achievement of the workers is inadequate and ineffective, and true social progress utterly impossible. The parties of the capitalists, whether openly reactionary or well-meaning liberal parties, are tied to with the existing order of social and economic injustice, and they cannot therefore successfully combat its evils under penalty of their own destruction. Far from being proponents of some all-engulfing statism, the Socialist Party see the state, as class antagonisms dissipated, beginning to wither away — being transformed as an instrument to preserve the status quo into an administrative tool.

In present day, the raison d’être, the underlying purpose, of production is the amassing of profits for capital; in the new, free society its sole purpose will be to meet the needs of humankind. In the place of the present anarchy, waste and inefficiency, production will be planned. This planning, contrary to the type now commonly envisaged by would-be-advisors of capital, requires common ownership.

 Marx and Engels never thought that a socialist society could be built on the foundations of a backward underdeveloped economy. They saw socialism as the next stage of social evolution, a higher stage than capitalism, at which level mankind has already conquered nature and has already developed means of production capable of supplying every human need.  The coming revolution will be the most profoundly democratic act in our entire history. Those forces that have built and sustained a mighty union movement, created and sustained a mass political party of their own, who will overcome all the chicanery and deception of the ruling class and their high-priced help, to storm and conquer the very citadels of their power, are not likely to succumb to the blandishments of some two-bit operators who might inveigle their way into its ranks for their own purposes. The profoundly democratic instruments necessary to mobilize the vast majority of the population to such a titanic task will separate out the opportunists and frauds. There is no doubt that the working people will prove able to build the democratic institutions necessary to their struggle. 

Not only will the revolution itself be profoundly democratic, but with its victory will come almost instantaneous benefits for all. Thanks to the tremendous productive capacity we have created across this land, we will be quickly able to satisfy all the basic needs of everyone. There will be no real shortages that would require some kind of policeman to supervise who gets what, and no bureaucrats with the possibility of providing special favors that would allow them to gather up connections that would frustrate the democratic process.

We would see our wealth as part of mankind’s common heritage. And we would immediately act to bring the future development of that section of the world which we inhabit into harmony with a world plan — a world economy. While many prejudices are deeply rooted in the past they have been sedulously fostered and even whipped up by the ruling class and their agents to divide the workers and pit them against one another and away from their common enemy. The new organs of power would drive out, terminate every element of racial discrimination.

Mankind is moving towards a showdown with all the forces of the old order.

Peace between the people! War against the exploiters!