Reforms and Crime

 

The fundamental error of the reformists is that of dreaming of  a sincere collaboration, between masters and servants, between proprietors and the property-less which even if it might have existed here and there in a few unique periods of history, is utterly impossible. Those who envisage a society of “social peace” based on abundance for all will remain a dream, so long as society is divided into antagonistic classes, that is employers and employees. And there will be neither peace nor abundance.  There will never be a sincere understanding between bosses and workers for the better exploitation of the forces of nature in the interests of mankind, because the bosses above all want to remain bosses and secure always more power at the expense of the workers, as well as by competition with other bosses, whereas the workers have had their fill of bosses and don’t want more.

Reformers are wasting their time when they tell us that a little freedom is better than a brutal and unbridled tyranny; that a reasonable working day, a wage that allows people to live better than animals, and protection of women and children, are preferable to the exploitation of human labour to the point of human exhaustion. In most cases it is an illusion.  No matter; even if some minor advances were the direct result of an electoral victory, the Socialist Party will not flock to the polling booths or cease to preach their methods of class struggle. Governments and the privileged classes are naturally always guided by instincts of self preservation, of consolidation and the development of their powers and privileges; and when they consent to reforms it is either because they consider that they will serve their ends or because they do not feel strong enough to resist, and give in, fearing what might otherwise be a worse alternative.

It is not true to say therefore, that the Socialist Party are opposed to all  improvements, to reforms. They oppose the reformists on the one hand because their methods are less effective for securing reforms from governments and employers, who only give in through fear, and on the other hand because very often the reforms they prefer are those which not only bring doubtful immediate benefits, but also serve to consolidate the existing regime and to give the workers a vested interest in its continued existence. All working people must be convinced of their right to the means of production, and be prepared to exercise this basic right by expropriating the landowners, the industrialists and financiers, and putting all social wealth at the disposal of the people. If one really wants to change the system in fact and not just superficially, it will be necessary to destroy capitalism de facto, expropriating those who now control all social wealth.

Capitalists have robbed the people, with violence and dishonesty, of the land and all the means of production, and in consequence of this initial theft can each day take away from the workers the product of their labor. But they have been lucky thieves, they have become strong, have made laws to legitimate their situation, and have organized a whole system of repression to defend themselves both from the demands of the workers as well as from those who would want to replace them by the same means. And now the theft of the former is called property, commerce, industry, etc.; whereas the term robbers in common parlance, is reserved for those who would wish to follow the example of capitalists but who, having arrived too late, and in unfavourable circumstances, cannot do so without rebelling against the law. The capitalist is a thief who has succeeded through his efforts or those of his ancestors; the common thief is a would-be capitalist, who is simply waiting to become one in fact, to live, without working, on the proceeds of his hauls, that is on the work of others. 

As enemies of the capitalists, we cannot have sympathy for the thief who aspires to become a capitalist. As advocates of expropriation by the people for the benefit of everybody, we cannot, as anarchists, have anything in common with actions, the purpose of which, is simply to transfer wealth from the hands of one boss into the hands of another. Of course, we are speaking of the professional criminal, the person who does not want to work and seeks the means to live parasitically on the work of others. It is quite another matter when a man denied the means of working robs in order that he or his family shall not die of hunger. In such a case, theft (if it can thus be called) is a revolt against social injustice. It is true that the professional thief is also a victim of the social environment. The example set by his superiors, his educational background, and the disgusting conditions in which many people are obliged to work, easily explain why some men, who are not morally better than their contemporaries, finding themselves with the choice of being exploiters or exploited choose to be the former and seek to become exploiters with the means they are capable of. But these extenuating circumstances could equally be applied to the capitalists, but in so doing one only demonstrates more clearly the basic identity between the two professions.

Since socialist ideas cannot be used to push people into becoming capitalists, neither can they be used to make people into thieves. On the contrary, by giving discontented people ideas about a better life and the hope of general emancipation, socialists if anything advocate withdrawal from all legal or illegal actions which encourage adaptation to the capitalist system and tend to perpetuate it.

Every Socialist Party member is familiar with the objection: who will keep criminals in check in a socialist society? We consider it rather an exaggerated supposition since a vast amount of malicious anti-social behaviour will disappear with the appearance of material well-being. The fact remains that delinquency and the fear of crime today  will certainly not magically vanish in the early days following the socialist  revolution, no matter how radical and individually uplifting it may turn out to be. One must eliminate all the social causes of crime, one must develop feelings of  mutual respect. If a crime tends to consciously increase human suffering; it is the violation of the right of all to the greatest possible enjoyment of equal freedom. It will infringe upon a community’s sense of reciprocity.

 But if, and so long as, there are criminals, people will find the means to defend themselves against them. With the growth of civilisation, and of social relations; with the growing awareness of human solidarity which unites mankind there is certainly a corresponding growth of social duties, and many actions which were considered as strictly individual rights and independent of any collective control will be considered, indeed they already are, matters affecting everybody, and must therefore be carried out in conformity with the general interest. But who will judge? Who will provide the necessary defence? Who will establish what measures of restraint are to be used? We do not see any other way than that of leaving it to the interested parties, to the people, that is the mass of citizens, who will act in different ways according to the circumstances and according to their different degrees of social development. We must seek the means to achieve our goal, without falling into the dangers of authoritarianism.

Fortunately only a very few are born, or become, bloodthirsty and sadistic monsters.

 

Scotland and Drug Laws

 More than 1,200 Scots lost their lives in drug-related cases last year, new figures reveal, the highest number since records began, and over three-and-a-half times that of the UK as a whole.

 Scotland's substance mortality rate is now 15 times that of the European average.

Drug consumption rooms (DCRs) are facilities where users can legally shoot up under medical supervision, DCRs play a key role in keeping rates of overdose and blood-borne disease down.

 Professor Heino Stöver, a drug expert in Frankfurt, has been at the forefront of the safe-consumption movement since its inception.  

Germany now has 25 DCRs, all to be found in the country's north. This geographic divide reveals the effectiveness of safe-consumption schemes, Stöver says, with cities in the DCR-equipped north suffering a far lower death rate.

"Frankfurt has four drug consumption rooms, and there are approximately 10,000 opiate users in the city, but only 22 drug-related deaths every year. Munich has some 6,000 opiate users and more than 160 drug-related deaths every year, and they have no DCR. That shows you a little bit the survival power of drug consumption rooms in Frankfurt and other cities."

The Scottish government would tend to agree. For years, ministers in Edinburgh have been pushing for a safe-consumption approach to tackle overdose deaths and fight the rising tide of HIV transmission. But this demand — as well as calls to declare a public health emergency — have been roundly rejected by government officials in London, who have oversight of Scotland's substance abuse laws.

In October last year, this legislative conflict came to a boil. Peter Krykant — a Glaswegian drugs activist who's garnered global headlines — was charged under Westminster's 50-year-old Misuse of Drugs Act. His crime: operating a mobile consumption room.

 Scotland has just 22 rehab spaces available to its most vulnerable addicts, Annemarie Ward, chief executive of the Faces & Voices of Recovery group says, indicative of a system that has given up on recovery, focusing instead on the bare minimum: "keeping people alive."

Drug deaths: Can Scotland learn from Germany? | Europe| News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 18.04.2021

The Socialist Party and Strikes

 The propertied capitalists have control over all means of subsistence. The workers, always threatened by hunger the moment they lack work and always in danger of being replaced by other unemployed workers and compelled by poverty to any act of vileness, must of necessity endure the conditions it pleases the masters to impose. If, by some extraordinary effort, workers managed to obtain some improvement, it would only be temporary and would soon turn into a vanished illusion. If it is a reduction in work hours, the master hits back by introducing new technology and making work more intense and wearisome; moreover, after the introduction of the new machines, he might still seize upon the first favourable circumstance to reintroduce the old hours and fire part of his workforce, thereby making any future resistance harder because of the swelling numbers of the unemployed. In short, in a society where a few have it all and the rest have nothing, those who have nothing are allowed to live only because it suits the former, and in return for their labour, they receive the minimum required to allow them to render the services demanded of them.

While it is true that the capitalists control all means of subsistence and can call upon the entire machinery of the state to guarantee their possession and unimpeded use of those means—without which the workers can neither work nor survive—it is also true that the workers have greater numbers and that they alone have the effective capacity to produce. Ultimately, therefore, there is no doubt that, if the workers wanted, they could demand the radical transformation the existing social order.  the facts are these: the masters are out to exploit the workers as much as possible, and the workers strive to secure as much as they can of their products for their own consumption; the masters are out to reduce the workers to slave status, and the workers to achieve the dignity of free men and women. And at a given point the real life conditions of the workers, all else being equal, hinges upon the degree of resistance they are capable of putting up against the pretensions of the masters.

These days such resistance mainly takes the form of the strike or the threat of strike.  We need to bear in mind what the workers’ conditions would be if strikes never took place. In reality the strike is forced on the worker, on pain of seeing his bread gradually whittled away, until he lives in desperate straits. Likewise, the fact that the masters know that they cannot exploit the worker beyond a given limit without triggering a backlash damaging to their own interests is what sets a limit upon exploitation. The strike is a good way for the worker to cling to a given measure (however small) of well-being if he or she does not want to sink into an ever lower and more beastly standard of living.

The strike and, even more, the strike’s preparations unite workers as brothers and sisters, get them used to reflecting upon their conditions, open their eyes to the causes of social wretchedness, and, while uniting them in the pursuit of immediate gains, prepare them for the future emancipation.

However, we in the Socialist Party not believe that strikes suffice to solve the social question, or even improve the conditions of all workers in a serious and enduring way. No matter how determined the workers might be to rebel against living conditions that fall below a certain standard, with production organised as it presently is, there are even stronger circumstances at work crushing all possible resistance. The swelling numbers of the unemployed, crises, and relocation of industries will persist as long as private property and production for profit endure, and poverty will merely swing between a highest and a lowest point without ever going away, forcing workers to travel the same painful road over and over again. So, while they wage the daily struggle of labour resistance, they must also aim at a  the transformation of the system of ownership and production. They must prepare the workers for that greater fight. Labour organising, strikes, resistance of all kinds can at a certain point in capitalist evolution improve the conditions of workers or prevent them from worsening; they can serve very well to train workers for the struggle; they are always, in capable hands, a means of propaganda — but they are hopelessly powerless to resolve the social question. And thus they must be used in such a way as to help prepare minds and muscle for the revolution— expropriation.

Liberation of the people, liberation of their passion

 “War on the palaces

And peace to the cottages"

Chartist slogan

It is the elementary principles and self-evident of Marxism that the class struggle will transform capitalist society into socialist society is a struggle primarily between the waged working class and the capitalist class. A revolutionary socialist party is a party which represents the historic interests of the working class and stresses the importance of the independent action of the working class. The Socialist Party is opposed to the system of society in which we live today. The Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes are not your flags. It is the Red Flag of socialism that we march behind singing the workers anthem, The Internationale. We Socialists scorn Old Glory and instead extol the Red Flag as the symbol of kinship and revere it as an augury of worldwide peace, harmony, and brotherhood, we cling to it as the inspiring standard in the great international fight against corruption, exploitation, and oppression. We are proud of the Red Flag. Our allegiance to it is open and honest.

Our aim is to see established a democratic world community without frontiers—in which the natural and industrial resources of the world have become the common heritage of all humanity, and are used in co-operation to produce wealth directly for needs, with free access for all to the available goods and services, according to their own self-defined needs. The future society must not only rid us of the exploitation of man by man, but also allow mankind more independence by reducing "necessary working time" and maximising socialised productive forces and the productivity of socialised labour. That is why our ideal is large-scale centralised, organised and planned production, tending towards the organisation of the entire world economy.

Socialism is radical and revolutionary. Radical, because it goes to the very root of the social trouble; it does not believe in reforms and makeshifts, it wants to change things from the very bottom. Revolutionary, not because it wants bloodshed, but because it clearly foresees that revolution is inevitable; it knows that capitalism cannot be changed to socialism without a class struggle between the possessing classes and the dispossessed masses.

No state will exist in a socialist society since all differences between classes will disappear. Socialists consider the state as the organisation of the ruling classes, an instrument of oppression and violence. It is only natural that it cannot then speak of a future state. In this future, there will be no classes, no class oppression, therefore no instrument of this oppression and no state power.  A "class-free state" is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Socialism is a Commune without police, without an army, without a bureaucracy’s officialdom

A money-free, state-free world commonwealth is the only framework within which current social problems can be permanently solved, since it is only on this basis that production can be oriented towards satisfying human needs. This social revolution can only be carried out when once a majority of working people throughout the world want it, fully understand its implications, and organise democratically and politically to achieve it.  The written and spoken word is still necessary along with actual political and economic action.

The ruling class writes history from their own perspective, therefore its often dishonest, blaming many of our social ills on human nature to absolve the economic system of any cause. The purpose of nearly everyone in capitalist society is to support the 10% percent of the population in luxury and to fulfil whatever their desires maybe. Working people have always been indoctrinated to fulfil the wants of a dominant few. To survive on a world scale we need to realize that we must cooperate instead of competing. Our prime concern must be the welfare of this and its next generation. If society’s fundamental interest remains to satisfy the few in power and don’t accept we need to maintain civilisation, we will be doomed. The capitalist lives by exploiting others. The more his workers sweat and suffer under him, the more his capital accrues and prospers, the richer the capitalist becomes and the more he enjoys life. Mors tua vita mea, the capitalist says - your death is my life. In spite of all this, capitalists must preserve their workers — under Spartan subsistence levels, it is true — but it must nonetheless preserve it, on pain of committing suicide, hence the reluctant passing of various social reforms. There is no one more detestable than a parasite pretending to be a slave and disguised as a revolutionary serving the interests of the employing class.

No more masters and no more wage-slaves: every person free and equal. No more  one against all and all against one, but one for all and all for one. It is the simplest expression of our revolutionary ideal.

 

Why Socialism

 

Charity and compassion, a recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of inequality we find in religions. Socialism is not sentimental philanthropy. Socialism is based upon capitalist society and its class antagonisms.  A movement that leaves out an understanding of the class struggle is not socialist. The Socialist Party pleads guilty to the charge that we seek  to increase  hostility to the existing capitalist system with its greedy clique of industrialists, financiers, politicians and prostituted media. Our party is class-conscious, revolutionary and uncompromising with no time and no use for what is commonly called reform. You cannot reform rottenness. The only reform of the capitalist system which is possible is its overthrow and destruction. Capitalist politics are essentially corrupt.The Socialist Party does not intend to mend this system; we propose to put end it.

 

The point we wish to make is that the capitalist system is a class system and that we live today under class rule, whatever the government, they are simply the functionaries of the ruling class and could not, even if they were so inclined, change conditions resulting from the class ownership of the means of production, that is to say, the means of life. The World Socialist Movement, the only political organisation in the world today whose declared purpose it is to abolish class rule and establish a cooperative commonwealth whose fundamental principle is the equal rights and freedom of all. Abolish capitalism, the private ownership by the few of the means whereby the great mass live, gives economic freedom. Among the capitalist parties there is no economic difference so far as the great mass of the people is concerned. They are all committed to capitalist ownership, class rule, and wage slavery. The Socialist Party is not seeking to get the votes  except upon the one condition that those who give it their support do so not only of their own will, but have intelligence enough to know what they are voting for and what a vote for socialism means to them. The Socialist Party does not by the trickery and fraud obtain votes and would scorn to stoop to that level.The Socialist Party refuses to traffic in ignorance, to build upon and exploit ignorance, so that a few may be in luxury and hold fat office as the fruit of their part in robbing and degrading their unfortunate fellow beings.

 

Our message to our fellow-workers is that the first thing necessary for you is to understand is that you are bound irrevocably to every other worker. As individual working-person you are ground into dust, you are reduced to slavery, and you are at the mercy of the masters. When you unite, however, you outnumber capitalist.If we are to emancipate ourselves from wage-slavery, we must unite upon the economic field and upon the political field, but above all things we must unite. The solidarity of the working class is the supreme demand of the hour. You are fighting them with your stomachs. We socialists want you to fight them with your brains. James Connolly once said that it is empty bellies against fat wallets.The Socialist Party holds  a vision of better and fairer days to dawn upon the earth, when mankind  shall no longer in their madness destroy the  beauty of centuries. We work towards a spirit of fraternity and an end to brotherly hatred.  The problem of poverty can only be solved by the social and economic revolution.

 

There is absolutely no reason for anyone in a planet as rich in resources as this one to go  hungry, to be homeless or to suffer lack of health-care. The desperate and hideous ills of the capitalist economic system are unnecessary. When all of society has been transformed, the problems left over from capitalism have been eliminated, and the community of producers has been established, then a completely class-free society, will have been achieved, and humanity will enter a  new stage of evolution. There will no longer be the need for the state, since there will no longer be any class to suppress, and the state will be replaced with common administration by all of society. Socialism will be able to make full use of the labour of everyone in society, while at the same time developing and introducing new technology and scientific methods to expand output. As machines can replace workers, workers will not be thrown into the streets, but will transfer to other jobs and the work day for all workers will be reduced. The nature of work itself will change completely, because the labour of the workers will no longer go to enrich capital to further enslave the working class, but to improve life.

Why we are different

 

Many parties of opportunism and social reform all themselves socialists. We have no monopoly of the word so if they  should describe themselves as socialist, we cannot prevent it. But in the end, we are confident that the cause will know its own. 

The Socialist Party desires above all things to advance the case for socialism, and by socialism we mean, the common ownership of all the agencies of wealth production on a co-operative basis, and this involves the complete end of the capitalist system. We claim a kinship, and express our  sympathy and solidarity with all helping on the overthrow of capitalism and who seek the building of the socialist co-operative commonwealth. Knowledge and experience have demonstrated that no reform under capitalism can be of any benefit to the working class as a whole, and that person, or be it party, that pretends to stand for socialism, which means the abolition of wage slavery, and yet advocates reform, cannot be our comrade.

Reformists say that ultimately they stands for  socialism, but in the meantime they play politics and makes every effort, like the capitalist reformers, to win the votes on superficial popular issues.

The Socialist  Party, quite differently, states boldly that the only issue for the working class is the abolition of the wage system and to rescue themselves from their commodity status in modern society. And this is to be done only by a revolutionary organisation of the workers on the political field, not for reform (let us leave that to the capitalist reformers), but for revolution. Reformists are pledged to a policy of class-collaboration – which means only a renunciation of the fight for socialism. The  Socialist Party calls on the workers to rely upon their own independent class power. Let us leave any “immediate demands” out of our platform and leave reformers to wrangle over reforms. Let us make our chief task to spread the propaganda of revolution.

The capitalist system of production, under the rule of which we live, is the production of commodities for profit instead of for use for the private gain of those who own and control the tools and means of production and distribution. Out of this system of production and sale for profit spring all monopolies (arising from and following competition) and out of it, naturally, grow an overwhelming percentage of social evils, and the entire problem of misery, want, and poverty that, as a deadly menace, now confronts civilisation.

Socialism is human association which teaches that the only way to attain the just distribution of wealth to those who produce it is through the common, collective or social ownership, control, and operation of the means of production and distribution, such as land, mines, factories and transport It asserts that this production should be for use and not for sale or profit, thus doing away with all private ownership of the means of subsistence. The cooperative commonwealth is its goal. Those who want to see socialism grow can work for socialism. Let all others get out of the way. Every worker, whether reformist or revolutionary, socialist, religious or atheist, can find a place in the same trade union, because all these political or ideological differences will not prevent them from fighting in common against the bosses.

Workers can be together in one and the same trade union, because the task of the trade union is only a struggle for wages and hours of work. But political party has entirely different aims. It has a platform not only against the individual bosses but for the transformation of the whole economic system. A political party is sound only when it has members who accept its entire political, economic, and social principles; furthermore, not only members who are unified on the objective, but also in the methods of carrying it out, in tactics.

The road to world socialism

 

Only world socialism can give us peace and security. The capitalist world constantly totters on the brink of self-destruction. The capitalist parties are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold. They can maintain the system today only by piling additional burdens upon the people. The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism. The only road is the road to world socialism and freedom: the overturn of the putrid capitalist system in all lands. Capitalism is founded upon production for profit. Socialism is postulated upon production for use. We, socialists, oppose the reformists leading the workers into the camp of capitalism. The working class that must overthrow capitalism. Vote for the Socialist Party, the only party that keeps the revolutionary red banner unfurled.

Our opponents accuse us of sectarianism and with “dividing” the working class. To divide the workers implies preceding unity, and this never existed. Instead of dividing them, we are arousing them from their servile submission to capitalist subjugation. Better a thousand times that labour is divided fighting for freedom than united in the bonds of slavery. Our aim has always been to unite all workers within one socialist party for the achievement of their emancipation. The prevailing economic system can only be abolished in two ways; namely, by securing control of government or by violent insurrection. No sane person prefers violent to peaceful measures, and hence the Socialist Party relies upon a united class-conscious ballot to accomplish their end. Economic freedom can result only from common ownership, and upon this vital principle the Socialist Party differs diametrically from every other party. Between private ownership and collective ownership there can be no compromise, no concessions. One produces for profit, the other for use. The Socialist Party make no pretence of attempting to serve both capitalists and workers. That is a political sophistry which socialism leaves a monopoly in the hands of the political spokesmen of capitalism. The present structure of society — capitalism — with its pretensions to democracy on the one hand, and its commercial rivalries on the other, is all based on the exploitation of the working class and the division of the loot.

Ours is a world of unlimited natural wealth. We have allowed our rich resources, the common heritage of all the people, to be monopolised by a privileged few, who claim the right of exclusive ownership of our vial industries and pretend to manage them as trustee for the benefit of all. They have betrayed their trust. They have operated the industries solely with a view to their personal enrichment and in total disregard of the needs of the people. They have operated them without plan, system, or responsibility in wild competition and speculation, in disorder and chaos, and they have run them into ruin and destruction. They have paralysed production, spread misery, and deprived millions of workers of their means of life. Those much vaunted captains of industry have proved themselves as incompetent as they are unscrupulous. If capitalism spells anarchy and chaos, it also means class hatred and war. We socialists demand that they surrender the means of production and distribution to the people. We propose that the people reclaim their common heritage from the usurping owning classes and reorganise the economic life of the country for the common good. What the world needs is not a few threadbare patches on the outwork and tattered outer garment of the capitalist system, but a remodelled, new, sane and equitable social order. Liberals and progressive” will not fulfil the crying needs of the time — it is a confused agglomeration of superficial political views, radical in phrases and token gestures, without sound economic foundation, without definite programme, without organisation, and without power or will to act.

Socialism alone offers a reasonable and effective way out. Socialist campaigns are not made to catch votes. Our purpose should be to state principles of the party clearly to the people. Reformists view that the class struggle can be won step by step concessions wrested from the state by means of “constructive” reform and social legislation; each concession would act as a rung in the ladder of Social Revolution, upon which the workers could climb step by step, until finally, some bright, sunny morning, the peoples would awake to find the cooperative commonwealth functioning. Workers organisations actively competed for votes, on the basis of social reforms, with the bourgeois-liberal political parties. And so they catered to the ignorance and prejudices of the workers, trading promises of immediate reforms for votes. Claiming that they are victories for socialism when, as a matter of fact, the object of these master class measures is to prevent the growing class consciousness of the workers, and to divert them from their revolutionary aim.