Socialists Shall Prevail

 In truth a knowledge of socialism is not hard to acquire at the present time with so many distortions and misconceptions that are prevalent on both the Right and Left. At one time there were differences of opinion between socialists chiefly in the means to be used to achieve it yet in the aims of socialism there was really little difference. This is no longer the case. There are proponents of various “socialisms” that are clearly no resemblance of the original goal. Some of these “socialists” are purposefully acting disingenuously, while others merely try to placate a hostile audience.

A very general broad description of socialism is an aspiration towards a society founded on mutual goodwill and fair dealing, in other words towards a real society. Socialism is an economic change pure and simple to attain such a society. The aim of the Socialist Party is the realisation of a society based on equality for all persons without distinction and that the necessary step to achieve this society is the abolition of monopoly in ownership of the means of production, which should be owned by no individual, but by the whole community, in order that the use of them may be free to all, the recognition of the maxim ‘from each according to ability, to each according to needs’. 

 The Socialist Party speaks of world socialism where the workers do not recognise the national distinctions made by their masters, and that in the society of the future, nations as political entities will cease to exist, and give place to the federation of communities bound together by locality or convenience.

The Socialist Party has declared over and over again its sense of the futility of socialists wasting their time in getting  palliative measures passed by parliament, which, even if desirable are only temporarily useful. The Socialist Party believes there can be no useful purpose served by their running campaigns for the votes of those who do not understand the principles of socialism and who attracted solely by election promises made by the candidates. Our present political education is good for one thing - the creation of discontent.

The bonds in socialist society will be voluntary in the sense that all people will agree in its broad principles when it is fairly established, and will trust to it as affording mankind the best kind of life possible. However, any community will at times determine a course of action which, without being in itself oppressive, will give rise to dissent from some of its members. If that happens should the issue be left alone? Should the  minority give way or should the majority prevail? Life shows us that wherever a dozen thoughtful individuals shall meet together there will be twelve separate opinions. And we must not forget that mankind is a very complex species. We are made up with many different moods and impulses; no-one is always wise, or knowledgeable in all respects and if those twelve people want to act together, there must be give and take among them, and they must agree on some sort of common rule of conduct to act as a bond between them and that is, the conscience of the association voluntarily accepted by all in the first instance. There are some anarchists who describe the tyranny of the majority imposing its will upon the minority yet if it is not be carried by a majority then it must be carried by a minority. Where all are equal under a voluntary association, ‘give and take’ would influence people’s minds.

The Socialist Party makes it clear to our fellow-workers that private property permits the privileged few to compel the many to live in misery. Let it be clearly understood that only two systems of society are possible, wage-slavery and world-socialism. Common ownership and the abolition of the individual ownership of property is our aim, the aim of all real socialists.

Will Parliament help us towards the accomplishment of this aim? Take another question as an answer to that first question. What is the aim of Parliament? The upholding of privilege; the society of rich and poor; the society of inequality. For our part in the Socialist Party, we say that in the social revolution taking place the workers may be obliged to use parliament in order to thwart the resistance of the reactionaries. When the Socialists are strong enough to capture the parliament in order to put an end to it, the revolution will have all but come.

The bosses with most sincere conviction.
say there’s nothing wrong with the system,
It just needs a little fixin’.
But socialists around the world, 
we have the solution:
We want Revolution!

 

 

Our need is to make socialists

 

It is a new society that the Socialist Party is working to-wards, not cleaning up the present capitalist mess into a smoothly-working order. We aim for nothing less than the taking over by the workers of all the means of producing wealth, to be used for the benefit of the community, that is to say, for the benefit of each and all of those who compose it; in other words, the realisation of a new society with equality of condition for its basis. Anything less may change the  masters but it will still leave them under masters still, and leave them slaves. Before we can attain to this it is necessary that the mass of the workers should understand this much at least, that nothing short of this will deliver them from the ills they now suffer.

The real business of the Socialist Party is to make socialists, to cover the country with a network of associations composed of men and women who have no temptation to waste their time in the thousand follies of partisan party politics. When the working class understand that they are not appendages of capital a revolutionary change will embrace the whole of society. The educational process must form a rallying point for definite aims and be no mere debating club, or philosophical society. Our function is to educate the people by criticising all attempts at so-called reforms, whose aim is not the realization of equality of condition, but the hindering of it; and by encouraging the union of the working classes towards Revolution. We will produce no more for profit but for use, for everyone to enjoy a happy life. Is that but an empty dream. If so then there is nothing to be looked for at all on this earth; and the business of each one must be to stave off pain and grasp at whatever passing pleasures we can without regard to others.

Although the Socialist Party trusts in the certainty of the social change coming about, it would be foolish for it to attempt to prophesy as to the date of its realisation, since hope is apt to give birth to despair if it meets with disappointment. Although the oppression and robbery of the past and the present is preparing the future, history has shown us over and over again that revolutions have to wait till the force which is to destroy the old order and create the new is overwhelming. When our fellow-workers do become conscious of the need for the abolition of private property in the means of production, the inequality between the two combatants in the class war will be no longer against them, but against the masters, and the war will soon be over. Unless we in the Socialist Party are all wrong, there are seeds of social feeling, capable of great development; and surely when the time comes they will be made manifest. The revolution itself will raise those for whom the revolution must be made.

The Socialist Party believes that there are amongst men and women all varieties of disposition, and desires, and degrees of capacity. We concede that people are not made naturally equal. Yet there are certain things which we all need; in that respect we are equal: we all need food, clothes, and shelter, and clearly if we need these things we need sufficient of them and of good quality, or else we have not really got them. Since then these needs are common to all, it follows that if anyone is not able to satisfy his or her needs in these respects there is something wrong. As men and women we also have other needs as in leisure and amusement and education. Again if a person has not enough access to leisure, pleasure, and education there is once more something wrong somewhere.

 This is the equality which the Socialist Party claims, that everybody should have enough food, good healthcare, and comfortable housing, with ample free-time for pleasure and education; and that everybody should have these. If not, we are not all equal. If we are not equal then there is something wrong with the society we live under. This is one of the richest countries in the world where there are a great number of clever and capable hard-working people in it, nevertheless  there are persons who go without, who have not enough food  or good enough housing and who have no hope of obtaining these things. If therefore there are rich and poor in a rich country rich in resources there must be something wrong with the system under which such things happen.

There are some who say it is the fault of human nature it is also the fault of the poor people who are naturally incapable of earning their own livelihood, and looking after themselves. How mistaken is that view. Socialists think that it is the fault of the system of society, and who try in various ways to alter that system.

 Socialism is the condition of all factories throughout the country cease to be owned by private persons and are owned by the people in general. The means of production and the land should be owned by no private person but by the people at large.  The society which the Socialist Party seeks to see is where no person will have to find a master for employment, a master who will not hire unless he can take a portion of what is produced as his profit. There will be no political parties squabbling incessantly as to who shall govern the country and doing nothing else; for the country will govern itself, and the parish, village, municipal, and county councils will send delegates to meetings for dealing with matters common to all. The trades also will have workers councils which will organise  labour. People will meet when necessary in general assemblies either physically or virtually through the internet to discuss matters common to all. Every citizen will be brought up to learn and to understand this organisation. We shall learn to live bound together by ties of community and mutual aid. We will cease to fight with each other for livelihoods and to rob one another of all the ordinary necessities as these would be so abundant that they would be free for everybody to take as  needed. For an illustration: when a family that is comfortably-off sit down to a leg of mutton how do they act? do they bring in a pair of scales and weigh out to each a share  for his or her plate? No, in a family everybody has what he needs and no one begrudges it: Mary has one slice, Jack has two, and Bill has four: but Mary and Jack don't feel wronged, since they have had as much as they wanted: and the reason for this is that enough has been provided, and that the members of the family trust one another. 

It is for you to choose whether you wish humanity to be a family or not. The life of a free person is better than that of a wage-slave.

The World Socialist Movement in the words of George Julian Harney seek "an order of things in which all shall labour and all enjoy, and the happiness of each guarantee the welfare of the entire community."

 

Socialism and the Future

2020 has been a black year for humanity. It is true that the first symptoms of economic recession had begun to appear but then the pandemic happened and all countries economies went into decline. Social progress and cultural advances slowed or went into reverse. The weaknesses and failures of all governments was evident to everyone. The mission of upholding human culture and rebuilding society on a basis of social justice to-day rests with the socialist movement. The Socialist Party, will, by using the vote, wrest from the present possessing classes the instruments which are now used to govern the people in the interest of the possessing classes, and will use them for effecting the change in the basis of society, which would get rid of the last of the great oppressions of the world.

In a sustainable sciety the abilities of all men and women can be used for their mutual well-being. The Socialist Party can see no reason why “to each according to needs, from each according to ability” cannot be society’s guiding motto. We need not fear when we come face to face with the citadel of Capitalism, the privilege of rent, interest, and profit. Capitalists are not interested in production to benefit the peoples of the world or even their own people. They are interested only in profits.

 It is a matter of course that since everybody will share in full the good life won by the whole community, so everybody will share in the responsibility of operating and running the community. This administration must be take of necessity democratic and federative; that is to say there will be certain units of administration, ward, parish, commune, whatever they may be called, all these will be federated within an always enlarging, widening structure. Differences of opinion can be settled by the will of the majority. In every assembly there would be no clash of interests, but only divergent opinions as to the best way of doing what all agreed to do. A minority would give way without any feeling of injury or hurt feelings. 

Socialists contend that the workers can only be emancipated by the workers themselves. It is quite impossible to have a genuine co-operative commonwealth without informed socialists. All attempts to organise socialism in any one nation spreads naturally to other nations that are working in the same direction. Socialism, becomes more and more international every day. Nationalist rivalries, which has been the weapon of the capitalist, will be abandoned in favour of international co-operation. Nationalism does not mean a step forward towards socialism. It would a step backwards. Nationalism works on behalf of the capitalists. Independence and sovereignty means a new sharing of powers but just between groups of capitalists, keep it all in the family. Those who dress up as socialists in order to push nationalism in the working class are the allies of the capitalists. Working class unity is a must right now if effective resistance is to be mounted. The “left” nationalists would have us believe that the task is to transform bourgeois independence into a socialist independence. In reality, they find themselves in the camp of those promoting division of the working class. Supporting nationalism in the name of the light for socialism is a monumental hoax. It is up to the world socialist movement to show that our fellow-workers will not be duped by their nationalist nonsense and deceiving rhetoric. Only the unity of the workers, leading to a socialist world can produce that “One World” which can abolish poverty and oppression, hunger and war.

The Socialist Party asserts that our planetary resources should not be owned by individuals, but by the whole community for the benefit of the whole. The means of production, the wealth used for the production of further wealth should be communised.

What the waste inequality is:

 

Firstly: The production of shoddy make-shifts for the supply of poor folk who cannot afford the quality article.

Secondly: the production of luxuries for rich folk, the greater part they neither need nor desire but for the sake of conspicuous consumption and to raise their status and self-esteem want.

Thirdly: the wealth wasted by the whole exchange and sales processes of competitive commerce, to which the production of useful goods is but a secondary object, its first object being to make a profit for the manufacturer.

If the productive forces in the world were to be utilised for constructive purposes, the entire planet could be transformed and the standards of living and level of culture raised to undreamed of heights. This is not possible under capitalism. Plenty and abundance under this system can only produce crises such as over-production and unemployment, because of the basic necessity of the capitalist class to make profits. Despite the hunger and famine in dozens of countries it is not profitable to feed the starving people. This springs from the economic laws of the system, not the desires, good or bad, on the part of the capitalists.

The hope of the re-birth of society is certainly growing.

“Intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel. If our ideas of a new Society are anything more than a dream, these three qualities must animate the due effective majority of the working people; and then, I say, the thing will be done.” William Morris

The Glasgow Agreement

 

"The Glasgow Agreement is a commitment by organizations of the climate justice movement to create an alternative tool for action and a space for strategy and coordination inside the climate justice movement, taking a step away from negotiations with governments and international institutions. It will create territorial inventories of disaggregated emissions and create social plans to stop climate chaos and usher climate justice in the next decade."

...Achieving a just and egalitarian world, which respects planetary limits, and therefore guarantees a safe climate system, implies addressing intrinsic elements such as colonialism, labour, imbalance of power, participation, or the search for benefits for a few at the cost of the majority, just to mention a few aspects. Patches and empty speeches will still not work; there will always be an economic or financial justification to legitimize the polluters who have caused the problem.

...To say that institutions have not delivered on the struggle against climate change may be the biggest understatement in human history...emissions from fossil fuels have only dropped in the years of 2008 and in 2020. Neither happened because of climate action or institutional agreements, but due to capitalist and health crises.

...This Glasgow Agreement action plan will provide the basis for a 'Climate Agenda' from below that articulates struggles already in the field, providing a plan to achieve climate justice in its many dimensions. Rather than plans dictated from the top, which have proven not only to be unfair and destructive, but not even reach the necessary emissions cuts, we will build a plan of our own, from the grassroots and social movements, organized in the territories and in the different regions all around the world, applying the logic of just transition for workers and societies.

 We will never stop fighting for a future of justice and solidarity... Let us turn social power from below into the positive wheel of history!"

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/11/16/glasgow-agreement-plan-our-own

The Socialist Party can sympathise with the sentiments of the Glasgow Agreement statement but we cannot be deluded into thinking that mere words is suffice. The only action that is possible to halt and then reverse global warming is putting an end to the real cause of this environmental emergency - and that is by abolishing the capitalist system in its full entirety.