Socialism is needed

 Politics is about power. In capitalism most of the power is in the hands of Big Business. To educate, agitate and organise for workers’ power for that’s what socialism intends. We acknowledge that the bosses are richer and more powerful than ever and we are no nearer a democratic, humane, class-free society. One reason is the prevalence of the lesser evil argument, that better half a loaf than no bread. Nothing fundamental can be disturbed.

 

Socialism is not some Utopia. Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism which will bring social ownership of social production. Under capitalism, the capitalists own the means of production. Workers are forced to sell their labour power and the capitalist exploits and oppresses them. With socialism, the means of production are owned in common by society as a whole.

 

The present system is a capitalist system. This means that the world is divided up into two opposing camps, the camp of a small handful of capitalists and the camp of the majority—the workers who work day and night, nevertheless they remain poor. The capitalists need not work to be rich. This takes place not because working people are unintelligent and the capitalists are geniuses, but because the capitalists appropriate the fruits of the labour of the working class, because the capitalists exploit them.

 

The capitalist system is based on commodity production: here everything assumes the form of a commodity, everywhere the principle of buying and selling prevails. Here you can buy not only articles of consumption, not only food products, but also the labour power of men, their blood and their consciences. The capitalists know all this and purchase the labour power of workers, they hire them. This means that the capitalists become the owners of the labour power they buy. Working people, however, lose their right to the labour power which they have sold. That is to say, what is produced by that labour power no longer belongs to the proletarians, it belongs only to the capitalists and goes into their pockets. The labour power which you have sold may produce in the course of a day goods to the value of 100 pounds, but that is not your business, those goods do not belong to you, it is the business only of the capitalists, and the goods belong to them—all that you are due to receive is your daily wage which, perhaps, may be sufficient to satisfy your essential needs if, of course, you live frugally. Briefly: the capitalists buy the labour power of the proletarians, they hire the proletarians, and this is precisely why the capitalists appropriate the fruits of the labour of the proletarians, this is precisely why the capitalists exploit the proletarians and not vice versa. The principal basis of the capitalist system is the private ownership of the instruments and means of production. Because the factories, mills, the land and minerals, the forests, the railways, machines and other means of production have become the private property of a small handful of capitalists. Because the workers lack all this. That is why the capitalists hire employees to keep the factories and mills going—if they did not do that their instruments and means of production would yield no profit. That is why the working class sell their labour power to the capitalists—if they did not, they would suffer poverty.

Socialists deny that government can be equally sensitive and receptive to the interests and needs of all classes.  The more the wealth of society as state property increases, the greater is the exploitation of the wage-workers, and the more powerless they are. With the wealth of society as state property, there increases also the impoverishment of the wage-workers; its necessary consequence is the class struggle between wage-workers and state bureaucracy. The richer the State, the greater the poverty of the workers and the sharper the class struggle. The workers are dispossessed, each day anew, when they perform labour; and, in fact, by way of the State, the general proprietor, which appropriates the products of labour. The state is the proprietor, the administrator of the social wealth. The State as the single entrepreneur is nothing other than such a conglomeration of all administrative organs of private ownership.

Future society will be built on an entirely different basis. 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 proletarians 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 railways, etc.

As you see, 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. It is also clear that future production will be socially organised, highly developed production, which will take into account the needs of society and will produce as much as society needs. Here there will be no room whether for scattered production, competition, crises, or unemployment.

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. Free and voluntary labour should result in an equally comradely, and complete, satisfaction of all needs in the future socialist society. This means that if future society demands from each of its members as much labour as he can perform, it, in its turn, must provide each member with all the products he needs. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!—such is the basis upon which the future collectivist system must be created. It goes without saying that in the first stage of socialism, when elements who have not yet grown accustomed to work are being drawn into the new way of life, when the productive forces also will not yet have been sufficiently developed and there will still be "dirty" and "clean" work to do, the application of the principle: "to each according to his needs," will undoubtedly be greatly hindered and, as a consequence, society will be obliged temporarily to take some other path, a middle path. But it is also clear that when future society runs into its groove, when the survivals of capitalism will have been eradicated, the only principle that will conform to socialist society will be the one pointed out above.  It is self-evident that for the purpose of administering public affairs there will have to be in socialist society, in addition to local offices which will collect all sorts of information, a central statistical bureau, which will collect information about the needs of the whole of society, and then distribute the various kinds of work among the working people accordingly. It will also be necessary to hold conferences, the decisions of which will certainly be binding upon the comrades in the minority until the next congress is held.

Socialist society presupposes an adequate development of productive forces and socialist consciousness. At the present time the development of productive forces is hindered by the existence of capitalist property, but if we bear in mind that this capitalist property will not exist in future society, it is self-evident that the productive forces will increase tenfold. Nor must it be forgotten that in future society the current-day parasites, and also the unemployed, will go to work and augment the work-force; and this will greatly stimulate the development of the productive forces. As regards mankind's supposed aggressive sentiments, these are not as eternal as some people imagine; there was a time when mankind did not recognise private property; there came a time, the time of individualistic production, when private property dominated the hearts and minds of men; a new time is coming, the time of socialist production—will it be surprising if the hearts and minds of men become imbued with socialist strivings?

“Capitalism” Divisive At All Levels.

 

A recent report issued by the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services revealed that the senior leadership at Ontario's York Region Children's Aid Society was to a large extent racist. 

In 2018-19, York CAS provided services to 5,000 families and more than 10,000 children and youth. During this period they carried out more than 4,000 child protection investigations. The Ministry found that Black female staff members were told their look, hair, dress and body shape was inappropriate for the workplace. Black male clients were called thugs and Asian clients were told that they need to speak English properly. In general Black and Asian families were treated with less respect than white ones. 

Jill Dunlap, associate minister for children and women's issues made a statement which, long story short, said, ''I want to hear that you guy's have smartened up.'' 

Governments may do what little they can, but in the final analysis capitalism is a divisive system at all levels.

S.P.C. Members.

What Matters

 

A party in this day can be either a capitalist party or it is a socialist party. It is the one or the other. It cannot be both.The capitalist class  and the working class are pitted against eachother throughout the world.These classes can never be  reconciled. It is this that is called the class struggle. Politics is simply the expression in political terms of the economic interests of certain groups or classes. The masters and exploiters understand this and is why they are in politics, not in non-partisan politics, but the politics of vested interests.The master class now in power cannot rule honestly. They must rule corruptly They are in the minority. They have not the votes of their own to put them in power, but they have the money with which to corrupt the electorate. They have the money with which to corrupt the courts and to buy the legislators, and to debauch all our institutions. They have the power to do this because they have the money, and they have the money because they own the means of production and distribution. The great mass of the workers depend upon them for employment. In this system no working person has a right to work except under conditions that the master who owns the work-place where he works with grants the permission to work, and who works by permission lives by permission, and is in no sense a free person.

 

Poverty amid plenty is common in this world of fabulous abundance. We live in perhaps the most favoured time of sophisticated mass technology and land of the richest and most fertile soil, with all of the raw materials and resources in abundance.Is it not strange that in this land of fabulous plenty there is still so much poverty, so many million of our people whose life consists of a long, hard, fierce struggle for survival, victims of hunger, disease and homelessness.  

 

The Socialist Party tells our fellow-workers about the class struggle, not because we are in favour of the existence of classes, quite the contrary, because we are opposed to classes and wants to put an end to the class divisions.The Socialist Party is committed to our Declaration of Principles. To compromise principle is to court death and disaster. It is better to be true to a principle, far better to be in a hopeless minority than to be in a great popular and powerful majority of the unthinking. All the progress in this whole world’s history has been made by minorities.

 

Workers of brain and brawn, it is you and you alone who support the government. Were it not for you, the social fabric would collapse in an instant. It is you who do the work, the useful work. It is you who produce the wealth, you who support the government and maintain civilisation. You have but to awaken and stand together then our day will come - the emancipation of the workers and the true civilisation of all mankind.The Socialist Party hold our red banner defiantly aloft and go forward with our work without apology and without fear, knowing as we do that capitalism is criminal, corrupt, and festering with every evil, and that socialism and socialism alone can avert the upheavals which threatens, and bring peace and sanity to the world.

 

This is a wonderful age in which we live — an age of scientific and technological miracles, yet also an age of widespread discontent and unrest.Altruism is enlightened self-interest. There will be no war. War is murder in uniform and the production of instruments of death is the prostitution of genius. War is caused by international competition and is carried on for monetary profits.

 

An economic system founded upon injustice must produce the effects that we see all around us every day — degradation, deprivation, and despair. and in the face of these facts it is blindness and foolishness to try to find the remedy in the reform of some effect. We must go to the root of the matter. Once all men and women stand in a just relation to each other economically, the other things will follow. The other problems must be worked out for themselves, it is true, but the economic problem must be solved first.

 

Emancipated Humanity

 

The Socialist Party came into existence in 1904. The principles upon which it was founded, and has consistently adhered to, have won it the reputation of being the only genuine socialist party in the UK. The Labour Party and the left-wing are parties of social reformism. Although they all claim to have for their object the ultimate establishment of socialism, their immediate aim is the reforming of the present social system.

The Socialist Party is not a reform party. Its purpose is the abolition of the present social order, ending the exploitation of labour by a parasitic ruling class. The reorganising of society upon a class-free basis is the goal of the Socialist Party. Our task is the organising of the necessary forces for that purpose to accomplish the revolution of the workers, to succeed in winning over the majority of our fellow-workers, freeing them from divisions and building a common understanding and a common will to action, moving along a definite course, not pulling in different directions.

 

The Socialist Party has pursued the policy of reaching as large numbers as possible with a sound elementary promotion of socialist principles. In capitalist society, that which the worker sells — labour power — his or her physical and mental skill, takes on the character of a commodity. Certain economic laws govern the capitalist system, which is a commodity producing one. A knowledge of those laws is imperative, if the workers are going to participate intelligently in the daily struggles against their exploiters. The logical course to pursue is to link up with those who seek the abolition of all exploitation, through the ushering in of a new class-free socialist world. We absolutely refuse to give up the name of socialists just because the reformists have dragged it in the mud and because the capitalist apologists attack it. 

The Ups And Downs Of Capitalism.

 First the good news; on Dec.4, Stats-Canada said 62,000 new jobs were added to the economy in November. 

Now for the bad news; the economy was still short of 574,000 jobs lost from the lockdowns since March.

 That sent the unemployment rate up to 13.7 percent in May. It presently stands at 8.9 per cent. The youth unemployment rate stands at 17.4 per cent. 

The hardest hit area is the food and accommodation sector which lost 24,000 jobs in November. Royce Mendes, the senior economist at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, predicted “A decline in employment and economic activity in December.'' 

On the one hand this seems surprising considering people spend money at Christmas, but on the other; we do live under capitalism, so expect anything!

S.P.C. Members

The future will be ours

 

Opponents of socialism frequently say as an objection that there are different kinds of socialists and different kinds of socialism. In using that statement however, let them take notice that socialism rests on one fundamental principle, the collective ownership and democratic administration of the social tools of production and distribution of wealth. State ownership for instance, is therefore not considered as collectively owned nor democratically administered. Socialists recognise that others are striving for the same goal, their methods, powers, opportunities may and do differ They sometimes wax eloquent in denouncing the evils of the capitalist system. But what do they propose? They propose to “improve” the capitalist State so as to make it an instrument for doing away with private ownership of wealth. In other words, they preach the nonsense of converting the exploiters, by the power of prayer. Since this “theory” appears in the garb of socialism and since there are a number of workers who lend it their ear, it is necessary to debunk. 

We in the Socialist Party are realists, and we do not wish to be carried away by fancy ideas, especially when these fanciful theories are beneficial to the capitalist system as they tend to keep workers from fighting the capitalist State. It is not a dispute of words. It is a clash in politics. Do not blame us when we say that the gradualist reformist leaders are betraying the working class. We merely call a spade a spade. We are realists. They have blood on their hands, blood of the workers. They spread illusions among the workers to the effect that by using the capitalist state, they can abolish the evils of capitalist oppression and by using the capitalist international institutions like the United Nations or the World Court, they can abolish wars. The capitalist system stands in the way of the workers’ progress towards a new, free life. Can it be abolished by gradual transformation? Those who say it can are the staunchest supporters of the capitalist robbers and the most active promoters of “humanitarian” wars. Their theory is not harmless, indeed. It is a poisonous theory. It is a smoke screen behind which cruel capitalist exploitation is hiding.

The socialist project is one for a new and better society lose validity. Capitalism has not proved to be capable to resolve the major problems of humanity. Capitalism and its essential features remains a system of exploitation, oppression and aggression, marked by injustice, inequalities and social scourges. Capitalism is a system in which exist exploiter and exploited classes, classes that dominate and classes that are dominated, classes that rule for themselves and others that are ruled, classes that are a population minority that concentrate wealth and profits excessively of it and classes that are the overwhelming majority of the population that live in poverty and misery. In capitalism the most developed, richer and stronger countries exploit, dominate, subdue and oppress in the most varied ways the less developed, poorer and weaker countries, creating, worldwide hunger affects and kills millions of human beings. Only someone who gains from such a system can consider capitalism as a system that corresponds to the needs, the interests and real desires of the people. Only the beneficiaries of its evils can justify its existence.

The Socialist Party is opposed to the capitalist system. The Socialist Party says there is a need for a revolution. We say democracy has prepared for the workers all the means necessary to achieve socialism. Let the workers use universal suffrage to send socialist delegates into the legislative assemblies. Let the socialists form a majority in these assemblies and when this is done, the road is open to abolishing the capitalist system. To make socialism possible the working people must take hold of the State machinery of capitalism and dismantle it. The socialist revolution will put an end to capitalist exploitation and all the forms of oppression that inevitably accompany it. It is, however, true that the task of building a new society – the socialist society – is being more difficult, complex and lengthy than we, in the Socialist Party, originally expected. Subjective factors such as the hold of religion, racism and nationalism were underestimated but to be a socialist is to trust the people and their  potential of understanding, determination and struggle. It is to be confident that the future for humanity will be better than the present. Socialist optimism is to know that someday the future will be ours.

Re-imagining the World

Within the World Socialist Movement there exists a widespread sincere belief in and commitment to equality and justice. There is absolutely no room for any discrimination, based on race,colour, ethnicity, caste, gender, or other such considerations. Top priority of a socialist society should be given to meeting the essential needs of all people, respecting the dignity of all people.

 

The most common objection to socialism is that it is against ‘human nature’.

 

I’m sure many know that in the UK the largest sea-rescue organisation is not a government-run Coastguard but the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), a voluntary charity that declines any government funding to preserve its independence.

 

There is usually a waiting list of volunteers seeking to risk their lives in the wildest of weathers and they wish to join, not for any monetary reward as it is unpaid but they do so for the ‘selfish’ and ‘egoistical’ reason of receiving the respect and esteem of their communities. They also following that age-old tradition, the ‘law of the sea’, where mariners come to the assistance of those in difficulty, and it is in practise even today when many in distress are refugee boat-people and are picked up at considerable cost by commercial shipping. It is a simple principle but in fancy parlance it is called enlightened self-interest.

 

Then there are the mountain rescue teams, willing to save those also at great risk to themselves. The believe in mutual aid, that they expect others to come to help them when they get into difficulties in the mountains. Related is also the upkeep of the network of bothies, emergency refuges in the mountains. It is also performed by volunteers

 

 Do we have to cite all the voluntary organisations and the work done by the charities and NGOs to show that people express altruism and empathy for others? This gives us a glimpse of what can happen if we establish a state-free society in the future. 

Capitalism is an economic system in which means of production are controlled and owned by a numerically small group of people - the capitalist class. They dominate the government. Like many anarchists and right-wing libertarians we don’t believe we need the State to keep society operating but we suggest a very different way of accomplishing that aspiration.

 

Socialism has been attacked many times. Socialists are reproached with every kind of wickedness. If only we open our eyes and look around us, we find many beneficent and useful institutions established by many or by the whole people in common. In one place associations are formed, for instance, to save and shelter shipwrecked persons; at another place the community erect a school, a medical clinic, builds a harbour or a canal. In ordinary life everybody cares for himself, but in such cases as those just mentioned people unite for advancing a common, social purpose. Experience teaches that our own welfare is greatly advanced by such institutions of common usefulness. What would people be without common roads. common schools, etc.; that is, such as are built and instituted at the cost of the community for common use?  Socialism is nothing but exercising the principle of the common interests of society. 

 

In capitalism everybody looks out for ones own interest, even at the cost to others. What does the capitalist care for the victims of his greed? What does the stock-exchange speculator care about the damage done by the buying and selling of bonds and shares. Socialism represent the victory of common interests over this hideous individualism. Whoever is the enemy of socialism is an enemy of society and humanity.

 

The Socialist Party are always reminded of all the previous attempts at socialism by the gradualists in the Labour Party or the more radical Bolshevik-influenced Left-wingers but we reply that if anybody wants to make a Madeira cake, they require the correct ingredients in the proper proportions, then they need to be mixed in the appropriate manner before being baked at a specific heat for a particular time. If you do none of these actions, don’t call the mess that emerges from the oven a Madeira cake and least of all, don’t blame the author of the cookery book for your failure to follow the recipe guide.

 

Imagine a world built for us to thrive in rather than scarcely survive in. Maybe if we were able to have more control over our individual and collective lives, our self esteems would be stronger, lives less broken, and we’d all get better at making good decisions.

Organise, agitate and educate for a better world

Fiblio Bacteria Can Kill You In 48 Hours.

 

Detour's program, ''Mysteries Of The Deep,'' recently focused on two matters that should be of concern for those interested in the future of capitalism and for those who want to abolish it. Since the oceans have gotten warmer an invasive bacteria is thriving in them and killing people who bath off the coast, in as quickly as 48 hours.

 It's called Fiblio Bacteria and is spreading rapidly because cargo ships take on water as ballast and release it when they reach port. 

The other delightful little goodie is the manufacture of Narco Submarines, in the isolated areas of Colombia. A U.S. Coast Guard vessel caught one off the coast of Ecuador, which contained $242 million worth of cocaine destined for the U.S.

One thing you can be damn sure of - capitalism will never stop throwing up stinky problems for us to grapple with until we stop it.

S.P.C. Members.             

Being Practical

Socialists have tended to refrain from extensive speculation about the precise organisation of a future socialist system but the above descriptions of what is possible demonstrates quite clearly that socialists are not planning an unachievable Utopia. Capitalism has made abundance a possibility, and made workable the "Communistic abolition of buying and selling”. We are taking the people of today and the world of today and simply changing the not very technically different methods of working and organising the resources of society for use and not for the profit of a minority. The nature of its administration will be in accord with the historical circumstances existing at the time of the revolution. The basis of industrial organization and administration will start from the arrangements existing under capitalism at the time of the transformation, and this will present no difficulties because the socialist movement will already be thoroughly international, both in outlook and practical organisation. As far as the machinery of organisation and administration is concerned, it will be local, regional, national and international, evolving out of forms that exist today. When we come to the question of how production solely for use will operate in socialism we begin with the fact that a world-wide structure of useful production already exists and therefore we already have a working model in front of us. The task is to identify the useful mechanisms which co-ordinate production and distribution now as distinct from the value factors of buying and selling in the markets, which under capitalism constrain useful production. In socialism, these useful mechanisms will operate on their own, freely and directly for need.

 Our proposals for practical socialism include the ways in which useful institutions and decision-making bodies could be adapted from “the existing state of things”. Socialism will be based on is production for use, with objects being made or services being provided because they are useful to people, rather than with a view to making a profit. In some ways, this is similar to what happens in many households at the moment. People cook, clean, wash their car, because these are useful activities, not because they hope to make money from them. Equally, people grow vegetables in their garden or allotment for their own consumption or that of their friends and neighbours. In socialism such principles will simply be extended to the whole of production. The corollary of production for use is free access to what has been produced. People will simply take what they need from the “shops” or storehouses, as and when they want it. There will be no point in hoarding things for a rainy day, or in taking masses of stuff. For one thing, there is only a certain amount of most things - e.g potatoes or toilet paper that people can consume. But would some people want lots? Maybe some will want lots of a particular item, but the extra resource used in producing lots of copies is very small, so this will not be such a great problem.

We are not so naive as to imagine that the changeover from world capitalism to world socialism will occur over a single weekend. The changeover can be envisaged as taking place over a relatively short period of time of, say, five years or so (we simply don't know.) Yet even before the full establishment of socialism people will have started to do what is needed to begin creating the new world. Local life will soon became largely self-administering and local plans will be devised to make the best alternative uses of buildings that no longer served their original purpose, such as banks and armament factories.

 Communities able to grow their own food can very quickly become self-sufficient: food surpluses distributed elsewhere to areas of need without any requirement to pass through the intermediary of the market although later it will not be a question of communities passing on their surpluses to one another (most, if left to themselves, wouldn't have any surplus); it is a question of them being interlinked in a single network of production which in the end embraces the whole world. Wider co-ordination will ensue. It is as well to be aware to what extent local communities are interconnected and interdependent and that this places severe limits on what needs could be met locally. The fact is that people in small communities aren't able to produce all they need, or anything like it. The final stage of the production of a range of goods for everyday use could be done locally - food, clothes, shoes, furniture--as well as repairs but neither (most of) the raw materials nor (in most cases) any of the metals to make the tools and machines used in this final stage could be produced locally. The community will ascertain what are the requirements of the people - anything and everything that the people desire. Food, clothing, housing, transport, sanitation — these come first; all effort will be to supply those first; everyone will feel it a duty to take some part in supplying these. Then will follow the adornments and amusements. There will be a real sense of working together for a common goal - a true community. If you read people’s reminiscences of the Second World War or the Depression of the Thirties, you will find time and again the refrain, “Times were hard, but everybody pulled together.” It matters not how accurate these memories are; what is crucial is the way that cooperation and solidarity are seen as positive values, to be cherished and kept in the memory.

For real democracy: imagine a society where all the people would be of equal status, with equal, free access to resources owned by the community, as a whole (e.g. food, shelter, health-care, education, transportation, etc.).

 

Imagine a world with no leaders and no elite to lord it over us. A society where everyone can have an equal say in the issues that concern them. Above all, a world, in which all the people own and share the wealth that we need in order to live. The precise, day-to-day details of the running of this future society will be up to the people at the time, but what we can be sure of is that there will be open access to the administration of society for those interested in particular issues, such as food production, health, education, building of houses, the environment and local matters. Immense satisfaction will be experienced by huge numbers of individuals as, on the one hand they will be able to contribute their mental and physical energies into increasing the commonly held wealth of society, whilst on the other hand, they will satisfy their own self-defined needs from the common store.

A Vision for Socialists in Scotland

 

 

 

The appeal of Scottish nationalism to working people in Scotland is, of course, a result of the failure of the Westminster Parliament to deliver the goods it repeatedly promises. The Scots are not the only victims in this; it is equally true to English and Welsh workers. But the Scots (and indeed the Welsh) have a ready-made ‘national’ conduit to which discontent can be channelled. The nationalists claim to be capable of solving Scotland’s social and economic problems. Our attitude in the Socialist Party, and, in particular, its Scottish branches, to independence is that no fundamental problem facing working people can be cured, or even seriously alleviated, by tinkering with the constitution.

 

Nationalism does not oppose capitalism. Furthermore it is used to divide the workers among themselves so they can ignore their real enemy. In order to overthrow capitalism workers need to unite – their main interests lie in unity. There are no short-cuts to the socialist revolution, and those who enter the nationalist path block the coming of a popular revolutionary movement by chasing fake enemies.

 

Socialist internationalism arises from the practical experience of the workers who feel that they have to cooperate with each other across frontiers and boundaries in order to defend their interests, their wages and their working conditions. The day-to-day experience of a worker standing at the factory bench next to a foreigner who, often through necessity, under-priced his or her labour, brought an understanding of common interests, an instinctive kind of internationalism.

 

Socialists are well aware of this very real and unedifying element in the existence of the working classes in a society where competition permeated every aspect of social life. This strife would end only with the abolition of private property in the means of production – that is, with the abolition of capitalism.

 

The aim of the workers’ movement is to curb the competitiveness of the workers, to bring under control that individualism which made them an easy prey for capitalist exploitation. The aim of the labour movement is to instil in the workers solidarity which would benefit them all as a class. That was the origin of the trade unions, the origin of socialism.

 

‘Workers of the world, unite!’ is nothing else but a call to eliminate harmful competition between workers within each country and to eliminate it also on an international scale. From this point of view nationalism is, in the first instance, the workers’ self-destructive competitiveness; internationalism was their solidarity transcending national boundaries.

 

Socialist internationalism may have developed from the cosmopolitanism of commerce; but it also surpassed that cosmopolitanism, overcame its limitations, and, finally, has come to stand in opposition to the capitalist cosmopolitanism.

 

A socialist understands that “socialist” and “nation” are mutually antagonistic words. Socialism is world-wide where nations remove national divisions and unite their economies for socialist production, so the benefits of global production flow to all the people. We live in a world of plenty, rich in resources rich, but, despite this abundance an estimated 700 million people go hungry every day. Millions more are food insecure, meaning they may have food today, but have no idea if they will have any tomorrow or next week. Additional millions can only afford nutritionally poor quality junk food filled with salt and sugar, increasing the risk of illness and obesity. Even in developed wealthy nations most people live from paycheque-to-paycheque with little or no savings as a reserve. Statistics around poverty and hunger are disturbing. There is no shortage of depressing statistics.  Covid-19 and climate change has intensified this crisis. Humanity, it appears, faces a choice upon the ways of organising society. Nothing has stopped the tendency of the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer. No major problems have been solved by capitalism. An economy based on the aim of maximising profit as fast as possible for a tiny ruling elite is an economy that belongs in the past. It is a failed economy. It cannot open the path of progress to society. A new aim and direction are needed. The capitalists must be deprived of their ability to carve up and use a productive socialised economy for their narrow privileged interests. Instead we must build a sustainable diverse economy that is human-centred and recognises that humans are born to society and depend on society for their livelihood and well-being.

 

The Socialist Party holds a vision of an emerging new world society that would break down the constricting barriers and frontiers of the nation-state. World socialism remains the vital principle for a new world.