War - The Cost of Class Collaboration

Before being able to combat an evil, one must know its cause. Thus, seeking the primary cause of war is the first step in preventing it. It is impossible to understand modern wars without understanding the class basis of society. Socialists predict the inevitability of war if capitalism was not overthrown. the real roots of the war can be seen in the class system of society. A study of the nature and causes of modern war proves that war is an essential part of capitalism. The contradictions and conflicts of capitalism lead and must lead to war. A common misconception is the wide-spread belief that the anti-war is independent of the class struggle in general, that a broad alliances of all sorts of persons from every political group can be formed around the issue of fighting war, since – so the reasoning goes – these persons may be all equally opposed to war whatever their differences on other points. War is thus lifted from its social base, considered apart, from its causes and conditions. War is not the cause of the troubles of society. The opposite is true. War is a symptom and result, of the irreconcilable troubles and conflicts of the present form of society, that is to say, of capitalism. The only way to fight; against war is to fight against the causes of war. Since the causes of war are part of the inner nature of capitalism, it follows that the only way to fight, against war is to fight against: capitalism. The Socialist Party is absolutely clear on this point. There is no “separate” or “special” struggle against war. It is of little use to cry out against war while we tolerate a social system that breeds war. No one can uphold capitalism – whether directly, as an open adherent of the capitalists, or indirectly, from any shade of liberal or reformist position – and fight against war, because capitalism means war. Only a socialist can fight against war, because only a socialist takes the road to the overthrow of capitalism. To suppose, therefore, that socialists can work out a common program “against war” with non-socialists is an illusion. There is only one anti-war policy: the program for revolution.

Capitalism makes war inevitable. Capitalist nations not only exploit their workers but ruthlessly invade, plunder, and ravage one another. The profit system is responsible for it all. Abolish that, establish industrial democracy, produce for use, and the incentive to war vanishes. All Biblical talk about “Peace on earth and goodwill toward men” or“ Thou shalt not kill” are fairy tales.

The socialist revolution can and will eliminate war because, by overthrowing capitalist economy and supplanting capitalism with a socialist economy, it will remove the causes of war. With socialism there will no longer exist the basic contradictions that lead to war. The expansion of the means of production, under the ownership and control of society as a whole, will proceed in accordance with a rational plan adjusted to the needs of the members of society. Socialism will remove the limits on consumption, and hence permit the scientific and controlled development of production. Thus, with socialism, war will disappear because the causes of war will have been removed.

My enemy is in my own country, and this enemy is the same for all the workers of the world. The enemy is capitalism. The Socialist Party calls for the replacement of capitalist society by a just and better word based on the socialist cooperative commonwealth of the workers of every country. The Socialist Party is against any and every war. It’s task is to work to turn that war into a class war. Socialism groups working people, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the frontiers traced by history. The differences which exist between the present countries are all superficial differences. The capitalist regime is the same in all countries. Workers have no country. Our fellow-workers who offer their lives for “their” nations have been duped. There is only one war which is worthy, that is class war, social revolution. Workers are awakening and the dawn and sunrise is approaching. Let us show the people the real cause of war. Let us arouse anger against war. Let us teach our children to abhor war.

A change for the better

 

Capitalism has created the objective conditions for Socialism. But it can go no further. It has now become an obstacle in the evolutionary path of humanity and means condemning hundreds of millions of people to poverty, privation and hunger with millions starving to death. Capitalism is now an obsolete system and the next great social task is abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism. Socialist society will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the anarchy in production, it will abolish all forces of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will represent a united commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable the wealth of nature, mankind will devote all its energies to the development and strengthening of our own collective social bonds. Future socialist society will be state-free. With private property in industry and land abolished (but, of course, not possessions of personal use), with exploitation of the toilers ended, and with the capitalist class finally defeated and all classes liquidated, there will then be no further need for the State, which in its essence, is an organ of class repression.

 

The guiding principle will be: “From each according to ability, to each according to needs.” That is, the distribution of life necessities—food, clothing, shelter, education, etc.—will be free, without let or hindrance. Socialist production, carried out upon the most efficient basis and freed from the drains of capitalist exploiters, will provide such an abundance of necessary commodities that there will be plenty for all with a minimum of effort.

 

The implications of all this are clear: to escape the capitalist misery and to emancipate ourselves, the workers of the world must take the revolutionary route. Although the world capitalist system constantly plunges into crisis after crisis we cannot conclude that it will collapse of its own contradictions. Capitalism, by its very nature, is a prolific breeder of crime. It is a system of legalized robbery of the working class. The whole process of capitalist business is a swindle.  The record of every large fortune and big corporation in this country is smeared not only with brutal robbery of the workers but also statutory crime of every description, from the bribery of legislatures to plain manslaughter. It is a society where each grabs what one can at the expense of the rest. It is not surprising that in a system of society where the aim is to get rich by any means, crime of every kind should flourish. Faced by low wages and other impossible economic conditions on the one hand and by the corrupt example of capitalism generally on the other, many naturally take to lives of open crime and try to emulate the capitalist “big shots” who steal through exploiting the workers, by cheating on the stock exchange, or by corrupting the government. Capitalism blames crime upon the individual, instead of upon the bad social conditions which produce it. Hence its treatment of crime is essentially one of punishment.  Capitalist prisons are actually schools of crime.

 

 Socialism will put a stop to the whole series of capitalist corruption, waste and theft. Ending the gigantic robbery which is the very base of the capitalist system will at once release vast resources for useful social ends. A socialist system will greatly increase the productive forces and production itself.  It does away with economic crises. There is no capitalist class to demand its profit before production and distribution take place.  Unemployment, with its terrible misery and suffering, will become a thing of the past. The many millions who now walk the streets unemployed will have fruitful work to do, to the benefit of all society. It will liquidate the hundreds of useless and parasitic occupations. A main task will be to make the cities liveable. This will involve not only the wholesale destruction of the slum housing that millions of workers now call homes, but the building over of the congested capitalist cities into spacious neighbourhoods and communities. These will develop towards the decentralisation of industry and population, the breaking down of the differences between city and country.

 

 With the deadly limitations of the capitalist market removed, the road will be opened to virtually unlimited expansion of industry and increased consumption. Socialism will result in an enormous increase in industrial and agricultural efficiency. The socialist system of planned production, based upon common ownership of industry and the land, is incomparably more efficient than the anarchic capitalist system founded upon private property, competition and the exploitation of the workers. Socialism will wipe out these great wastes, inherent in the unplanned, competitive capitalist system. Socialism will also conserve the natural resources of our planet which are now being ruthlessly wasted in the mad capitalist race for profits. War, with all its agonies and social costs will end. All these revolutionary measures will provide the material foundation for the well-being of the planet’s population, quite unknown previously. The aim of the whole industrial machine will be to raise to the highest possible standards the welfare of working people, and not for the benefit of the few capitalists. The needs of the people and the possibilities of the industries will be carefully studied and met through a thoroughly organised production system.

 

The whole basis and organisation of capitalist science will be revolutionized. Science will become materialistic, hence truly scientific; God will be banished from the laboratories as well as from the schools. Science will be fully integrated and coordinated and will work according to plan; instead of the present individualistic hit-or-miss scientific dabbling, there will be a great organisation of science.

 

Socialism the machine will be used on the broadest scale possible to produce the necessities of life in the great industries, transport systems and communication services. It would be the sheerest nonsense and quite impossible not to take advantage of every labour and time-saving device. Where creativity is not checked by poverty and wage-slavery, where the arts and sciences are not hamstrung by the profit-making motive, where the people are not poisoned by anti-social codes of behaviour and ethics, and where every assistance of the free community is given to cultivate of the intellectual and artistic powers of the masses—there we need have no fear that society will be robotised by the machine. The world will become a better place well worth living in. The overthrow of capitalism and the development of socialism will bring about the immediate or eventual solution of many great social problems. Some of these originate in capitalism, and others have plagued the human race for scores of centuries. The objective conditions, in the shape of scientific knowledge and the means of creating material wealth, are already at hand in sufficient measure to do away with these menaces to humanity.

 

Socialism, by abolishing the capitalist system, releases thereby productive forces strong enough to provide plenty for all and it destroys the whole accompanying capitalist baggage of cultivated ignorance, strife and misery. Socialism will free humanity from the stultifying effects of the present essentially animal struggle for existence and opens up before it new horizons of joys.

 

The day is not so far distant when our children, immersed in this new life, will look back with horror upon capitalism and marvel how we tolerated it so long.

Forward to the new world

 

The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism. The Socialist Party dedicates itself to the struggle for socialism. It will do away with the anarchy of capitalism. Democratically-elected committees and councils in every district and industry will manage the affairs and services of society. Using the vast technological and natural resources of the world and freed from the fetters of production for profit factories will pour out their products in abundance to levels of undreamed-of plenty.

The Socialist Party refuse to join the reformists in the camp of capitalism. We differ from reformists in a fundamental way. They seek to modify the system while we try to abolish it. Socialists also differ from reformers in another fundamental respect. The believe a “fair” re- distribution of the national income in the country would solve the problems of racism, homelessness and poverty and end the widening chasm between the rich and the poor. The problem is that taxation question and the use of tax powers has been around for more years and the problems of impoverishment  does not lie merely in the method of various tax codes. The source of the inequality lies in which class owns the means of production. A small group of millionaires and billionaires owns more than 90% of the wealth — the stocks, bonds, factories, real estate, natural resources, oil and gas, etc.

The process of pauperisation at one pole and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few at the other pole is a tendency inherent in all capitalist societies. It does not give way in times of recession or prosperity. Some capitalists may fall by the wayside but the capitalist class remains collectively the owners.

The working class that must overthrow capitalism and that task does not lie through support of capitalist governments. Today it is the ballot that we use against capitalism. Vote, then, for socialism.” Vote for the Socialist Party, the only party that keeps the revolutionary banner unfurled in an unremitting struggle for world socialism. With socialism, for the first time we can run our society and own lives, rather than submit to the  forces of capitalism, which benefit a few at the expense of the majority. That’s why socialism opens a whole new era for humanity—a great qualitative leap since the beginning of civilisation.

The Socialist Party believes that most of the ills that afflict mankind stem from the bad social organisation fo capitalism; and that we could end it if we wished and knew how and in its place build a new society based upon cooperation and solidarity.

All the misery in which most workers live today, poverty, ignorance, crime, diseases, malnutrition, mental depression, and premature death stem from and arise from this present system of capitalism.  People are disinherited, exploited and oppressed by a small possessing class. The government provides the necessary means of repression, and it exists to legalise and protect the owning class from the demands of the workers. The clergy with a series of fables about the will of God, and about an after-life etc., seeks to persuade the oppressed to accept oppression meekly, and just as the government does, to submit to the interest of the ruling class. Add to all this  patriotism and nationalism, race hatred, wars, and armed peace creating rivalry and suspicion among all, spreading fear and insecurity.

The Socialist Party wants to change radically such a state of affairs. And since all these ills have their origin in the economic system where the struggle between individuals is urged, we seek seek after well-being through one’s own efforts in cooperation with everybody else, fraternal solidarity not competition.

The Socialist Party advocates the abolition of private property in land, in raw materials, and the instruments of labour, so that no one shall have the means of living by the exploitation of the labour of others, and that everybody, being assured of the means to produce and to live, shall be truly independent and in a position to unite freely among themselves for a common objective and according to their personal sympathies. 

We wish to build organisation of social life by means of free association and federations of producers and consumers, created and modified according to the wishes of their members, guided by science and experience, and free from any kind of imposition which does not spring from natural needs, to which everyone, convinced by a feeling of overriding necessity, voluntarily submits. We stand for the end of government and of every coercive power which makes the law and imposes it on others. We propose the removal of all frontiers and in its stead the construction of a commonwealth of all peoples.

The question is of changing the way of life of society as a whole; of establishing relationships based on cooperation and solidarity; of achieving the full material development not for individuals, or members of one class or of a particular political party, but for all humanity is not something that can be imposed by force, but must emerge through the heightened consciousness of each one of us and be achieved with the free consent of all. The first task therefore of the Socialist Party must be to persuade people. We must make people aware of the misfortunes they suffer and of their opportunity to remove them. We must awaken sympathy in everybody for the suffering of others and a desire for the good of all people. We will arouse the sentiment of rebellion in the minds of men and women against the avoidable and unjust evils from which inflict us in society today, by helping to understand how they are caused and how it depends on human will to rid ourselves of them.  it would be ridiculous and contrary to our principles to seek to impose freedom, by means of force on our goal of a voluntarist society. One must therefore rely on the free will of others, and all we can do is to provoke the development and the expression of the will of the people. But it would be equally absurd and contrary to our aims to admit that those who do not share our views should prevent us from expressing our will, so long as it does not deny them the same freedom.

We have to work to awaken in the exploited the conscious desire for a radical social transformation, and to persuade them that by uniting they have the strength to win; we must propagate our ideal and prepare to overcome those of the enemy, and to organise the new society, and when we will have the strength needed we must, by taking advantage of favourable circumstances as they arise, or which we can ourselves create, to make the social revolution to expropriate the owners of wealth, and by putting in common the means of life and production, and by preventing the setting up of new governments which would impose their will and to hamper the reorganisation of society by the people themselves.

Between humanity and environment there is a reciprocal action. Men and women make society what it is and society makes men and women what they are, and the result is therefore a kind of vicious circle. To transform society people must be changed, and to transform people, society must be changed. How does one escape from this vicious circle? Poverty brutalises mankind, and to abolish poverty we must have a social conscience and determination.  We must take advantage of all the means, all the possibilities and the opportunities that the present circumstances allows us to act on our fellow workers and to develop their consciousness and their demands; we must use all advance in human consciences to induce them to claim and to impose those major social transformations which are possible and which effectively serve to open the way to further advances later. We must not limit ourselves to simple propaganda. We must seek to get all the people to want always more and to increase its pressures, until it has achieved complete emancipation.

Words spoken and written alone cannot win over to our ideas. We must incite and encourage them to struggle, and join them in their struggle. The greatest value lies in the struggle itself. For thereby workers learn that the bosses interests are opposed to theirs and that they cannot improve their conditions, and much less emancipate themselves, except by uniting and becoming stronger than the bosses. If they succeed in getting what they demand, they will be better off. If they do not succeed they will be led to study the causes of their failure and recognise the need for closer unity and greater activity and they will in the end understand that to make their victory secure and definitive, it is necessary to abolish capitalism. 

There exists no law of wages which determines what part of a worker’s labour should go to him or her and what proportion goes to the employers. Wages cannot normally be less than what is needed to maintain life, nor can they normally rise such that no profit margin is left to the boss. It is clear that in the first case workers would die, and therefore would stop drawing any wages, and in the second the bosses would stop employing labour and so would pay no more wages. But between these two impossible extremes there is an infinite scale of degrees ranging from the miserable conditions of many land workers to the almost respectable conditions of skilled workers.

Wages, hours, and other conditions of employment are the result of the struggle between bosses and workers. The former try to give the workers as little as possible and get them to work themselves to the bone; the latter try, or should try to work as little, and earn as much, as possible. Where workers accept any conditions, or even being discontented, do not know how to put up effective resistance to the bosses demands, they are soon reduced to bestial conditions of life. Where, instead, they have ideas as to how human beings should live and know how to join forces, and through refusal to work or the latent and open threat of rebellion, to win the bosses respect, in such cases, they are treated in a relatively decent way. One can therefore say that within certain limits, the wages he gets are what the worker (not as an individual, of course, but as a class) demands.

Through struggle, by resistance against the bosses, therefore, workers can up to a certain point, prevent a worsening of their conditions as well as obtaining real improvement. And the history of the workers’ movement has already demonstrated this truth. One must not however exaggerate the importance of this struggle between workers and bosses conducted exclusively in the economic field. Bosses can give in, and often they do in face of forcefully expressed demands so long as the demands are not too great; but if workers were to make demands (and it is imperative that they should) which would absorb all the bosses profits and be in effect an indirect form of expropriation, it is certain that the bosses would appeal to the government and would seek to use force to oblige the workers to remain in their state of wage slavery.

And even before, long before workers can expect to receive the full product of their labour, the economic struggle becomes impotent as a means of producing the improvements in living standards.

Workers produce everything and without them life would be impossible; therefore it would seem that by refusing to work they could demand whatever they wanted. But the union of all workers, even in one particular trade, and in one country is difficult to achieve, and opposing the union of workers are the bosses organisations. Workers live from day to day, and if they do not work they soon find themselves without food; whereas the bosses, because they have money, have access to all the goods in stock and can therefore sit back and wait until hunger reduces their employees to a more amenable frame of mind. The invention or the introduction of new machinery makes workers redundant and adds to the large army of unemployed, who are driven by hunger to sell their labour at any price. Immigration immediately creates problems in the countries where better working conditions exist, for the hordes of hungry workers, willy-nilly, offer the bosses an opportunity to depress wages all round. And all these facts, which necessarily derive from the capitalist system, conspire in counteracting and often destroying advances made in working class consciousness and solidarity. And in every case the overriding fact remains that production under capitalism is organised by each capitalist for his personal profit and not, as would be natural, to satisfy the needs of the workers in the best possible way. Hence the chaos, the waste of human effort, the organised scarcity of goods, useless and harmful occupations, unemployment, abandoned land, under-use of plant, and so on, all evils which cannot be avoided except by depriving the capitalists of the means of production and, it follows, the organisation of production.

Soon then, those workers who want to free themselves, or even only to effectively improve their conditions, will be faced with the need to defend themselves from the government, with the need to attack the government, which by legalising the right to property and protecting it with brute force, constitutes a barrier to human progress, which must be beaten down with force if one does not wish to remain indefinitely under present conditions or even worse.

From the economic struggle one must pass to the political struggle. Everything depends on what the people are capable of wanting. The Socialist Party shall push the people to expropriate the bosses and put all goods in common and organise their daily lives themselves, through freely constituted associations. If the mass of the population will not respond to our appeal they will remain slaves. Regardless, continue the struggle against the possessing class and the rulers without respite, having always in mind the complete economic and political emancipation of all mankind. We want men and women united as brothers and sisters; e want all cooperating voluntarily for the well-being of all; we want society to be for the purpose of supplying everybody with the means for achieving the maximum well-being; we want freedom and solidarity for everybody. In order to achieve these all-important ends, it is necessary in our opinion that the means of production should be at the disposal of everybody and that no person or group, should be in a position to oblige others to submit to their will or to exercise their influence other than through the power of reason and by example.  The expropriation of the capitalists is for the benefit of all

Pot Calls The Kettle Black.

On Oct16, Beverly Romeo-Beehler, the City of Toronto's auditor-general wasn't no female romeo as she went-to-town, no pun intended, on city workers who've been conning the city something rotten or something good, however you wanna look at it. 

Three city workers and two spouses had charged the city a total of $38,000 for health claims not covered by the city's health plan and had gotten away with it. 

These included going to a spa, pain killers fentanyl and oxycondone and massive amount of drugs to overcome erectile dysfunction, which Big Bad Bev did not find amusing. She frothed on about how bad it was and what crooks these people are and how the matter has been handed over to the police, like, ''Naughty Naughty.'' 

So the capitalist class rob from the working class the wealth they produce, but when slaves take some of it back – ''Wow! ain't you a bad dude!'' 

This is typical capitalist bullshit, but then by bullshitting the working class they maintain sucker-rule-over-you bewildered wage slave.

S.P.C. Members.

A Certain Financial Future! Is There Such A Thing?

 

The Toronto Star of Oct. 15 wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs. 

The headline on the front page was: ''Rocky road to recovery - Toronto faces a projected shortfall of $1.5 billion in 2021 because of the pandemic.'' 

The article focuses on a report that outlines an uncertain financial future - is there such a thing as a certain financial future under the wages system? 

From then on the Star starts getting gloomy, with captions like, ''WestJet axes 100 staff'''; ''The switch from CERB to Employment Insurance not smooth for everyone,'' and ''Tim Hortons sales down 12.5% from year ago.'' 

Wow!, it made me think capitalism ain’t all that peachy-dandy in Canada right now. 

Nor is that great elsewhere, especially when I read in another section that some hospitals in the U.S. are nearly bankrupt. Nor can it be argued that capitalism isn't all that bad and the above problems have been exacerbated by the pandemic. 

Things were pretty bad before it struck and it’s something capitalism, by its very nature can't cope with. Trudeau is doing his best, but can only work within capitalism's perimeters where everything boils down to profit.

S.P.C. Members.