Towards a World of Plenty

 

We are still the only party of the working class that holds that socialism means a complete change of society economically—yes, and in outlook too; for common ownership of wealth and its democratic control will produce a different person, who will need no bribe to work. The essence of the Socialist Party position is that social institutions cannot be transformed, nor social problems solved, without first of all altering the basis upon which these institutions rest and with which social problems are bound up. Poverty and insecurity could not be abolished whilst private ownership in the means and instruments of production remained. The State, as a social institution and organ of coercion, could not disappear whilst private property in the means of living, the interests of which it existed to defend and conserve, remained. Social problems had their roots in capitalism as a social system. They could not be solved separately and apart from the revolutionary transformation involved in the change from private ownership to social ownership. Any attempt to solve the effects of capitalism leads to reformism and failure so far as concerns the fundamental problems of capitalism and their solution.

The cut-throat competition of capitalism usually results in victory of the strong over the weak. In the battle for survival in capitalist society it is everybody for oneself. Socialism is just the reverse. It is all for one and one for all. Community of interest and shared ideals unite people for the common good. This spirit of mutual aid gives socialism its strength. Socialism is expression of  the cooperative, egalitarian visions found in the workers’ movement. Socialist ideas on human emancipation  are incompatible with any State or one- party rule, and true socialisation of the means of production requires the participation of all citizens in social decision-making. 

With its incredible productive capacity why has capitalism not provided plenty for all? Because the very foundation of capitalism is all wrong. Each new discovery and invention  made a world of plenty for all a greater possibility. But capitalism can exist only on the basis of a system of scarcity.  Technology in the hands of working people dedicated to planned production for the use of the people rather than for the profits of the owners of industry would truly usher in an age of peace, plenty, and happiness. This age of plenty for all is already possible on the basis of productive powers of the last several decades. There is plenty of pie available for everybody.  The Socialist Party has always stated that capitalism should be abolished because it mismanages the means of production so that  those who own the means of production reap great profits while the rest of us are deprived of a secure standard of living. We would prove this by pointing to the tremendous capacities which the modern technology has; how it could satisfy the needs of everyone if it were run for that purpose; and how capitalism, instead, run the industrial machine for profits. 

The Socialist Party clearly says, if only the people ran these industries themselves, we could produce enough to satisfy everyone’s needs. It remains the great and tragic paradox of our age that capitalism cannot satisfy the most elementary needs of the people, while it squanders trillions of dollars for war: That is the greatest indictment of world capitalism. Socialism could take the vast resources which are available and use them for constructive purposes.

The capitalist  has only one reason to run his factory – profit. The fact that the millions of people need food, clothing, housing, transportation, communications and amusement is of interest to the capitalist only as the “market” in which he can realise a profit. If there is profit he hires. If profit falls off, he lays his workers off. The liberal reformist progressives fail to understand that the main objective of capitalists is to make profits and warfare only means a greater opportunity for more profits

Poverty in the midst of plenty is the distinguishing mark of the capitalist system of production and it has intensified tenfold during a coronavirus crisis.

What is the future of mankind? Do we stand on the edge of the abyss where death and destruction is a prospect for the whole of mankind? Or do we stand upon the threshold of a new world of peace and plenty, the brotherhood of mankind? The struggle for socialism has become the fight for the very existence of  civilisation. 

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.