The Abolitionist Party of Emancipation

What differentiates the Socialist Party from other organisations advocating social change is its focus on self-emancipation and its criticism of leaders and all substitutes for the self-activity of the working class. Socialism is distinguished by its principle that the people can only be free when they free themselves from poverty exploitation and oppression.  This emancipation from misery cannot be accomplished by mending particular evils but only by a fundamental revolution of society.

We are the Do-It-Yourself movement. Socialism is our goal and with it the abolition of every kind of exploitation and oppression, directed against a class, sex, or race. Socialism as a means to the emancipation without democracy, is unthinkable. Socialism not just the economic re-structuring of production, but democratic organisation of the social and political life of society as well. Socialism starts with the basis principles of freedom and self-liberation.

Ideas that tell working people that they are not ready or are incapable of deciding for themselves keep them from trying to change things. The system that existed in the former Soviet Union and its satellite countries is held out as proof that socialism does not work. Defenders of capitalism are very happy to endorse these dictatorial exploitative regimes as models of socialism to destroy the very concept of socialism in the minds of millions of people. The state owned the means of production – but who owned the state? Certainly not the workers, who were exploited and without control of all levers of social and political power. In what sense was it “socialist”?

 Reformist parties have virtually eliminated any demand for socialism from their programmes, promising to maintain private property at all cost. These parties have practically re-defined socialism out of existence.  They typically dreamed of “socialising” capitalism from above by increased state intervention in society where socialism is  handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another by a ruling elite which is not subject to their control. Our objective is the social revolution – the abolition of capitalism and wage slavery – and the emancipation of the working class. 

 Direct participation of citizens in the administration of all social matters presupposes the abolition of the modern system of political representation and its replacement by direct popular democracy. The political self-education and the rule of the working class are a necessary preliminary condition of its economic emancipation. It is becoming increasingly clear on the necessity for the social and political revolution is organising into a special socialist party which is hostile to all parties of exploiters. We cannot achieve socialism by making peace with the bourgeoisie.

Future society will be socialist society. This means primarily, that there will be no classes in that society; there will be neither capitalists nor proletarians and, consequently, there will be no exploitation. In that society there will be only workers engaged in collective labour.

Future society will be socialist society. This means also that, with the abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed— there will be only free workers.

Future society will be socialist society. This means, lastly, that in that society the abolition of wage-labour will be accompanied by the complete abolition of the private ownership of the instruments and means of production; there will be neither poor artisans nor rich capitalists—there will be only workers who collectively own all the land and minerals, all the forests, all the factories and mills, all the transport and communications, etc. The main purpose of production in the future will be to satisfy the needs of society and not to produce goods for sale in order to increase the profits of the capitalists. Where there will be no room for commodity production, struggle for profits, etc. Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need either for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power.

Capitalism rests on the domination of the overwhelming majority by a small minority. And one of the worst things about this domination is that it is experienced as such, without being understood as such. Part of our job as socialists is to help people see through the illusions of capitalism, to understand that we are faced with this stark choice of socialism or barbarism, and to encourage a vision of self-emancipation as both the means and the end, the only means of creating socialism and the essence of what socialism would be. This vision is what the Socialist Party see it is a part of. 

Scottish Poverty Worsening

The Scottish government needs to display "bolder ambition" if it is to meet targets for tackling child poverty, a new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said.

In its Poverty In Scotland 2020 report, the JRF said that "poverty has been rising and we are not on course to meet interim child poverty targets within three years".

About a million people in Scotland were in poverty "living precarious and insecure lives" even before Covid hit. In many cases the pandemic will "have swept them deeper into poverty, as well as dragging others under", it added.

The report warned of the impact of ending the furlough scheme at the end of this month, coupled with the withdrawal of temporary higher benefits payments in April, saying it was "clear" this will make poverty higher.

The report went on: "This is because unemployment will be higher, working hours and earnings may be falling, benefits would be reduced back to pre-coronavirus levels while housing costs will be no lower. Such a situation would be deeply worrying, not just in the context of interim child poverty targets three years away, but in the daily lives of people who face being swept further and deeper into poverty."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-54411848

The happiness of humanity is not in the past, but in the future

The Socialist Party desires to base practice upon sound theory. Are we not seeking to establish a class-free society so our organisational structure must reflect our goal. Capitalism promises the people of our planet not prosperity nor amelioration of conditions but austerity, oppression, and possible environmental destruction of humanity. Only through an irreconcilable struggle against capitalism, towards its elimination and the establishment of socialism, will working people of the world find the full freedom, equality and democracy for which they aspire. Only when the working people in the world have the power in their own hands can we realise the cherished cooperative commonwealth. Technological progress is now reaping vast profits for the industrial and financial oligarchy and condemning millions to misery.

The Socialist Party opens up tremendous possibilities for our fellow-workers. But to realise the possibilities it must present itself as a real alternative to the capitalist parties. It must be rooted in the working class—in the social movements of the working class. The interests of big business and workers are fundamentally irreconcilable. Every penny of capitalist profit is robbed from the workers’ pockets. Only uncompromising struggle against the capitalists and their parties can advance the position of working people. Workers can have no truck or trade with the capitalist parties. No worker should vote for the capitalist parties at the ballot box. Power resides in the ownership of capital. The capitalists control the mass media, the educational system, all the means of indoctrination in capitalist ideology. This ruling class exercises power through the state machinery which they control — the army, the police, the courts, the upper echelons of the civil service, all tied to the corporate bosses by a thousand strings. The state is administered by the cabinet, hand-picked from the most reliable politicians capitalist politics has to offer. Parliament does not rule. It provides rulers with the facade of sharing their power with working people. It is only through independent labour political action that workers can win real power. The cause of the labour movement cannot be forwarded by crossing class lines. The party of the working people must speak and act like one. In this lies its future. The profit system cannot make use of new technology, artificial intelligence and automation for the benefit of society; socialism will! The future society that will be constructed under socialism will reduce work to a insignificant part of daily life and offer the individual the fullest possibilities to pursue his own abilities and interests.

We live in a society racked with crises. This society can neither guarantee them a secure future nor even promise there will be a future. The threat of the climate emergency casts a shadow over the lives of all of us. The vast majority of our people work out their lives for the enrichment of the small minority of profiteers who own the  wealth and control the entire society - all these are hallmarks of the "system" we live under. The system is capitalism. it’s their system, not ours! Under it a small minority rule in fact if not in name, and profit is the be-all and end-all of economic life; human needs come second—if at all.

The class struggle as it is reflected by the Socialist Party means opposing the reformist mis-leaders of the working class. It means striving to generalize and transform every impulse in the class struggle of the workers to go beyond reformism toward revolutionary action.

The next revolution will not only break down the state and substitute free federation. Working people will trust the free organisation of food supply and production to free groups of workers which will federate with like groups in other cities and villages to accomplish their aim. The workers will do the planning; they will organise production; they will manage production. Socialism will see that each person make a full contribution to the common thought and engage in the running of everyday life. We believe that men and women can and must participate actively in change to ensure that they bring fulfilment of their aspirations.

Reformists put off the cooperative commonwealth and prolong the suffering of the world’s disinherited. The Socialist Party points out the economic basis upon which democracy must stand in order to achieve liberty. It proclaims all liberty to rest back upon economic liberty, and all individuality to be rooted in economic unity. It affirms that there can be no liberty save through association; no true commonwealth save a cooperative commonwealth. It makes clear that democracy in the state is but a fiction, unless it be realised through economic democracy in production and distribution. 

The polarisation of wealth, the result of the accumulation of capital is the cause of the intensification of the class struggle. Socialism is the sole solution to the major problems which dominate over all others, meaning the question of poverty, the question of exploited labour. The Socialist Party hold that the exploitation of labour, with all of its consequences will not disappear until the day the means of production –– land, machinery, and in general all that serves production –– will be transformed from private property into common property. The socialist movement is as wide as the world, and its mission is to win the world — the whole world — for humanity. Then the world — the world the socialist movement shall win from capitalism — will be filled with wealth for all to have and to enjoy in its abundance. The world is one vast store of raw materials. In every passing breeze, in every wave, in gurgling stream, all the rays of the Sun, energy transforms natural resources into wealth, and provides fabulous abundance to banish for all time spectre of want, and make the world fit for human habitation. The worst in socialism will be better than the best in capitalism.

The Socialist Party supports economic and political solidarity. When enough have become socialists a new power will be in control! The People! For the first time in history the working people will be free and no class will be in subjection. Even the descendants of the present capitalists will thank the socialists of today for the freedom and harmonious civilisation they enjoy. The Socialist Party proclaims its mission to win the world from capitalist barbarians and dedicate it to the human family. No greater mistake was ever made than to suppose that socialism is a dream and that “human nature” excludes it from being realised. Socialism is neither a dream nor a scheme, but a theory of society based upon the principles of social evolution, Industrial democracy will wrest the earth from its exploiters and its vast and inexhaustible storehouse will yield abundance for all. The growth of socialism is the promise of freedom and fraternity — the heralding of a new dawn. Workers at last are waking.

Break Your Chains

 

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Under capitalism the workers are wage slaves, slaves of the bosses. The bosses run the factories in order to maximise profits. This means that they pay workers as little as possible. A capitalist has to exploit his workers in order to survive as a capitalist. We must stand together against them. The only struggle for us is the struggle of the workers against their exploiters. 

The Socialist Party aims to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a new social system from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede capitalism and competition, and in which genuine democratic self-management of production, based upon economic democracy will be possible. Capitalism is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the  people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests the majority are sacrificed. When profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic recessions, in which working people’s normal state of hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialised economy in which resources and the means of production and distribution are commonly owned, controlled and operated by the people.

The new society at which we aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed by a system of regimentation. We seek a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer cultural life for every citizen. The social and economic transformation, the ideal of a co-operative commonwealth, can be brought about by political action, supported by a majority of the people. We do not believe in change by violence. The Socialist Party aims at political power in order to put an end to this capitalist domination. It is a democratic movement. The Socialist Party will rest content until it has eradicated capitalism. We stand for changing the world through a process of self-emancipation, where there aren’t leaders who tell people what to do but rather people who collectively liberate themselves. 

As socialists, we surely take as our starting point that capitalism produces sufficient wealth to provide enough for all, but because of the ownership and organisation of production, that wealth is wasted or even destroyed. Certainly capitalism is incapable of providing decent homes, social services and living standards for all. Only by resisting all attempts at class collaboration, insisting on the independence of the working class, can a movement be built to challenge capitalism.

The Socialist Party goal is the establishment by democratic means of a cooperative commonwealth in which the supplying of human needs and enrichment of human life shall be the primary purpose of our society. Despite of great economic expansion, working people do not benefit adequately from the increased wealth produced. Wealth and economic power continue to be concentrated in the hands of a relatively few private corporations. The gap between those at the bottom and those at the top of the economic scale has widened. Billions around the world still live in want and insecurity. Lack of decent housing in the mega-city slums, shanty-towns and ghettoes  condemn many families to a cheerless life of daily misery. To sum up, our world is still characterised by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity because of the domination of one group over another. The growing concentration of corporate wealth has resulted in a virtual economic dictatorship by a privileged few. Political democracy will attain its full meaning only when working people have a voice in the management and running of their economic affairs and effective control over the means by which they live. This lack of social planning results in a waste of our natural resources and of our human resources.

Socialism maximises opportunities for individual development and the maximum of goods and services for the satisfaction of human needs. Unprecedented scientific advances have brought us to the threshold of a new technological revolution yet unless there is social planning, the changes will produce only greater concentrations of wealth and loss of power and will cause widespread distress through unemployment and the displacement of populations. The Socialist Party reaffirms its conviction that our society must build a new relationship among humanity--a relationship based on mutual respect and on equality, a levelling up and not a levelling down, in which everyone will have a sense of worth and belonging, and will be enabled to develop their capacities to the full, ensuring justice to producers and consumers is the cooperative form of common ownership. The hungry, oppressed and underprivileged of the world must know democracy not as a smug slogan but as a way of life which sees the world as one whole and which recognizes the right of everybody to the highest available standard of living. The Socialist Party has confidence in the people from many lands in search of freedom, security and opportunity. This is the world socialist cooperative commonwealth which the Socialist Party invites our fellow-workers to build with imagination.

The Church Says Sorry

The Church of Scotland has said sorry for its role in sending children to Australia in the 1950s and 60s.  It now admits the programme was "ill-conceived" and caused trauma and suffering to many families.

The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry heard that the first migration ship linked to the church set sail in December 1950, with 22 boys aged under 14 on board. The scheme continued until 1963.

Over this period, thousands of young British children were deported, with the help of charities and organisations across the UK. The children often came from deprived backgrounds and were already in some form of care. Many of the parents gave up their children because of poverty or social stigma of being a single mother.

Although the aim was to give the children a better future, the church now acknowledged that this was not what happened. In reality, children were sent into an unfamiliar and often harsh and abusive environment.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-54387212