The Socialist Party - The Voice of the People

 

Food shortages, we are told by the capitalists, their media and their politicians, are caused by famines resulting from wars. This is true – to a certain extent. But it is not the whole truth, and a part truth is the worst kind of lie. The truth is that the shortage of food available for workers is being deliberately made worse by certain capitalists in order to get extra profits.

Profits, not needs, determine the allocation of food. The food capitalists sell the food at the highest prices they can get. The wealthy can pay higher prices than the workers, thus get the food they need. Only what is left, if any, reaches the workers. It is another tale of the waste, inefficiency and anarchy of the existing system. All of the poverty and greed, bloodshed and suffering on this capitalist-dominated planet is why we’re going to change it! The Socialist Party is the only party that has the courage to voice this demand, this hope, this desire. It is the capitalist system of industrial and commercial rivalry, the system of exploitation, hatred, and intrigue, the capitalist system with its despots on the throne, in the factory and counting-house in all lands, that plunged the world into the unspeakable disaster. It is the World Socialist Movement based on the rule of the people, synonymous with true absolute democracy, industrial as well as political, that alone can save the world. The workers in the factory and the field must unite against the ruling class parasites. It must be class war on the capitalists.

Socialism is described in different phrases as, Labour Theory of Value or the Materialistic Conception of History. They may sound complicated, but the ideas themselves are simple enough, so simple that some folk may wonder why it had to be discovered, or why anyone should ever have doubted it. Ideas do not make facts, but facts make ideas, and the ideas born of these facts that we have just been examining are some of the ideas that go to make up socialism. The difference between reform and revolution is this: A reform is a change in the laws or the way of enforcing the laws, brought about by the same class that has all the time been in control. A revolution is a change in the laws or their enforcement brought about by a new ruling class, which overthrows the class that has thus far ruled. 

The SOCIALIST PARTY stands not for reform but for revolution, because it holds that the rule of the capitalist class, under which the workers now suffer, must be brought to an end. The Socialist Party understand that if all the “reforms that are being agitated were to be conceded by the capitalists, there would be no real gain of any great importance for the working class. Its constant aim therefore is to organise the workers into a party which shall finally dislodge the capitalists from power once for all, and establish the Cooperative Commonwealth.

 The Socialist Party intends to turn the means of production and distribution into common property to be owned by all and operated for all through various democratic administrative bodies. The  Socialist Party is firmly based on the working class, party of which the elected delegates will remain the servants not become the masters.  In every land beneath the sun it is the party of the dispossessed and the impoverished. It is the party of human emancipation. It stands for a world-wide democracy, for the freedom of every man, woman and child, and for the civilisation of all mankind. The Socialist Party stands for the absolute overthrow of the existing capitalist system and for the reorganisation of society into an industrial and social democracy. will mean an end to the private ownership of the means of life; it will mean an end to wage-slavery; it will mean an end to the army of the unemployed; it will mean an end to the poverty, the prostitution of women and the stifling of childhood. It will mean that this earth is for those who inhabit it and wealth for those who produce it. It will mean society organised upon a co-operative basis, collectively owning the sources of wealth and the means of production, and producing wealth to satisfy human wants and not to gorge a privileged few. It will mean that all shall be the comrades and equals, sharing the opportunities as well as the responsibilities, the benefits as well as the burdens of community life. No longer will the workers be pitted against each other. have brains as well as brawn, that we can think as well as work, and that we do not need politicians to run our lives, or masters to rob them of the fruits of our toil. We will establish the economic and political unity and solidarity of the workers of the world. The Socialist Party is the political expression of that unity and solidarity. Organised on both the economic and political fields, the working class can prevail against the capitalist class. The economic organisation and the political party of the working class must both be revolutionary and they must work together hand in hand, in solidarity.

The People's Voice

 

The golden rule of capitalism is the rule of profit. To continually increase their profits, the capitalists do everything in their power to speed-up production and decrease wages. It also means that each capitalist strives to concentrate production by buying increasingly efficient and powerful machines, which, by reducing the costs of production, allow him to get an edge over his capitalist competitors. In this race for maximum profits, the strongest capitalists win out, forming coalitions and financial groups controlling capital worth billions.

Capitalism, the system of exploitation for maximum profits extended over the entire globe. Not only did the capitalists exploit the working people of their own country, but in their drive for markets, raw materials and new areas for capital investment, a system of barbaric oppression and aggression developed to exploit the peoples of the entire world, particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

According to the food experts, there are millions of people who will face dangerous malnutrition or actual starvation. The food shortage will, as always, hit the poorest the hardest. And it’s all the fault of the capitalist system. It is the we pay for continuing the capitalist system, the price for allowing the ascendancy of the power of money over the needs of man. For a permanent solution of the vital issue of food, for its equitable distribution and for its most abundant production, a world socialist society must be constructed.

 

Our world is capable of producing and delivering abundant food supplies and all the informed experts agree that it is feasible to wipe out starvation through organised distribution of food. It is only the lack of political will to distribute food without profit that prevents starvation from being eradicated. Those who hold theories that the population is exceeding Earth’s capability to provide food can be considered crackpots. The Socialist Party admits that the cooperative production and distribution of wealth for the equal benefit of the entire community, can only be accomplished when all people have access, not only to the land, but to the tools and technology of modern society.

The housing shortage is becoming more and more acute with no real relief in sight. The mounting cost of living and the shrinkage in housing are the twin burdens that weigh most heavily upon the mass of the people. Productivity has reached undreamed-of heights; skills are available and so are the raw materials. Technology made new and great strides. And yet, not even the socially necessary minimum of shelter is available to the people who produce. Does not this indicate the bankruptcy of a system? The housing shortage is not a new phenomenon. Nowhere in the world can capitalism point to having provided adequate housing for the people. Conversely there can be no real or lasting solution to this problem without a radical solution of the social and economic conditions. The housing problem, as well as the problem of other necessities of life, is indissolubly linked with the inefficiency of the capitalist system. The full and complete solution of the housing question is most intimately and directly bound up with a socialist solution of all the burning problems of society.That housing is one of the basic needs of the people nobody denies; and yet every housing programme that has been projected has been stymied by the profit motive. The lesson is inescapable. Without the socialist solution even such noble ventures come to naught. Conversely, the capitalist profit system itself remains the greatest obstacle in the way of adequate housing for the people, just as it stands in the way of satisfying all the other peoples’ needs. Hence our determination to fight for the socialist society. Such a system would first of all put an end to speculative land owners, to real estate sharks and rent-gougers, not to mention the profit hungry mortgage brokers and financiers. Profit returns would no longer enter into calculations for home building. On the contrary, the needs of the people would be the highest concern.. The need for homes is never satisfied, precisely because the profit system bars the way. 

If people can accept the idea of a free national health service, why not a national food service, or free housing? And then why not worldwide rather than just national?

A World Free from Hunger

 

Too little is produced, that is the cause of the whole thing. But why is too little produced? Not because the limits of production – even today and with present day means – are exhausted. No, but because the limits of production are determined not by the number of hungry bellies but by the number of purges able to buy and to pay. Bourgeois society does not and cannot wish to produce any more. The moneyless bellies, the labour which cannot be utilized for profit and therefore cannot buy, is left to the death-rate. Let a sudden industrial boom, such as is constantly occurring, make it possible for this labour to be employed with profit, then it will get money to spend, and the means of subsistence have never hitherto been lacking. This is the vicious circle in which the whole economic system revolves. One presupposes bourgeois conditions as a whole, and then proves that every part of them is a necessary part – and therefore an “eternal law.” - Engels to F.A. Lange

 

A hunger-free world is possible but only if we re-set our global economic system which can allow people to change how we grow and eat our food. Hunger and malnutrition generally are symptoms of a larger underlying problem — poverty. This economic system, as Rachel Carson, the pioneer ecologist, put it, recognises no other gods but those of profit and production. Food is treated as just another commodity. No distinction is made in this respect between necessities and luxuries. The rich can afford to purchase anything they wish while the poor are not able to acquire even their most basic needs. Under capitalist relations people have no right to an adequate diet, shelter, and medical attention. People may have a “biological demand” for food—we all need food, just as we need water and air, to continue to live. But as with other commodities, people are excluded from access to necessities without what economists call “effective demand” cannot buy sufficient nutritious food. Of course, lack of “effective demand” in this case means that the poor don’t have enough money to buy the food they need. The market is not efficient at all. It is also absolutely unable to act as a mechanism to end poverty and hunger.

The capitalist food chain is under strain with hunger, malnutrition, obesity, and food waste loss on the rise. The causes of hunger and famine have little to do with a shortage of food. Our planet currently produces an abundance of food. This tragic story is indubitably the most striking indictment and condemnation of our barbaric capitalist society.

We live in a world in which, as with all other industries, a few multinational corporations dominate the world’s food market.  One central problem in the food system is one of exploitation of small producers and the landless labourers for the interests of those powerful Big Business groups. Their control over the supply chain allows them to capture the value created by the labour of peasants and small farmers, as well as capture the value created in the industrial processing of raw foodstuffs by the workers they employ in their factories.  World hunger is due to the corporations that control food production and its distribution. 

Only in a socialist world will the benefits of scientific agriculture be given to all of the peoples of the world, because only a socialist economy can permit the rational planning of food production. Ending world hunger is quite simple. Almost every country in the world has the soil, water, and climate resources to grow enough food so that all their people can eat a healthy diet. In addition, the knowledge and crop varieties already exist in most countries so that if farmers are given adequate assistance they will be able to grow reasonably high yields of crops. Instead of the emphasis  on production of export cash-crops which under capitalism helps a country’s balance of payments, it does not ensure sufficient food for everyone nor does it promote a healthy rural environment. It leads naturally to the production of high-value luxury crops demanded by export markets (luxuries such as cut-flowers grown in Kenya), rather than the low-value subsistence crops needed to meet the needs of the local population. Production of sufficient amounts of the right kinds of food by small farmers working in cooperatives or on their own and using sustainable techniques is the best way to achieve the goal of “food security.” This, of course, means not taking land out of food production to produce crops for the bio-fuel markets.

THE REAL GREEN PARTY

Socialism is Liberty and Freedom

 

True liberty does not exist where property is not common property, where working people are wage slaves, where the capitalist has control of our lives and our wealth. Liberty in our society is an empty word, a word without meaning. Where is this liberty of which they boast? When all the wealth of society is freed from the control of the property owners, all the inexhaustible riches of science and human art will be at his disposal. The only care of society will he how to increase the necessity and pleasures of life, to perfect the instruments of labour in order to create for the citizen a proper amount of ease and leisure; Freedom will then cease to be a slogan and will become a reality, an everyday fact the property of all.

 Socialism is possible now. It is possible because it represents the interests of all; because it expresses the common interest of the producing class which forms the immense majority in all countries. The opponents of socialism say that we are not practical, that we are dreamers, Utopians, visionaries. Our critics tell us human nature makes socialism impossible. This same human nature argument has always been used against those who wished to abolish slavery and serfdom, exploitation and despotism. It is a mistake to accept that human nature does not change. Everything changes in nature and in life. Everything is in a process of transformation. Everything evolves. Everything changes. Chattel slavery was replaced by the semi-slavery the serfdom and that give way to our wage-slavery. The wage system will have to give way to socialism which will bring to a final end to the exploitation of man by man and slavery in all its forms. It has also been said that if men and women do not have the spur of hunger and want and the desire to make profit they will become lazy. To argue thus is to forget the necessity for clothing, feeding and sheltering oneself. Who does not work will not eat. It is to forget too, that idleness is not the characteristic of a man in his sane senses. Laziness and idleness are social ills not personal weaknesses. When the producers know that the products of their work will belong to them and their communities they will jettison the  repugnance which forced toil engenders in them. Work well regulated and fairly apportioned will become attractive. It will become a joy and a pleasure, and this is because work is necessary for the physical and mental well-being of mankind. Humanity must choose between the continuation of the capitalist system which leads to destruction and the revolution of international labour founded on the basis of solidarity and reciprocity through the socialisation of the forces of production. Socialism win make of the earth one country single and indivisible and each will by free co-operation work for the common progress and happiness.

Socialism stands for the end of the war and poverty. Socialism existed as a practical system for many centuries among the majority of peoples. They believed that the land was the common property of the family or the tribe. Even up to the present day basic forms of socialism exists among some people in some parts of the world. But “primitive” socialism differs from modern socialism in this way; the former had as its foundations equality in poverty and want. Its means of production were undeveloped and primitive. It was more dependent on the forces of nature than on dominance over them.  Socialism today, on the other hand, presupposes a vast development of the forces of production, mechanical tools, large-scale production and organised class-conscious workers. Modern socialism takes from capitalism its technical basis, its  its administration and supply chains and places them at the service of the community. We cannot go here into the details of socialist organisation, which on its part will have to be adapted to the various and varied social and national conditions. Suffice it to say, large-scale capitalist production offers us data of all the best technical conditions for the new organisation of society. The machinery is all there set up. All that is needed is that we set it in motion for the benefit of all. Production is already structured socially. It is necessary that all benefit be collectively shared, based on need and not on profit. The future alone can tell what will be the precise forms and special methods of organisation. The future comes from the womb of the past and the present just like the child from the mother. Capitalism gives birth to socialism. It bases its practical work on recognition of the class struggle. The working-class is the centre of all action.