Real Change Needed

 

Revolution is neither possible nor desirable, we are told, except maybe to remove governments by  regime change if they interfere with the running of market capitalism. There is only a minority of people worldwide who accept the need for total social change, despite the growth of anti-capitalist ideas. Neither the Labour Party in the UK or the Democratic Party in the US are the “lesser evil” party. All capitalist parties are under the control of capital,  lock, stock and barrel. They can’t be transformed into parties representing those of us who the capitalists oppress—the working class—nor can they allow their candidates, no matter what they call themselves, to represent anything but the needs of the capitalist class. They represent the class enemy of the working class. Our power is in our unity and complete independence from the capitalist class and their political parties.

 

The workers’ job is essentially a simple one. It consists in recognising that all previously-existing ruling groups have hindered the development of a truly social production and distribution; in recognising the necessity for doing away with production and distribution as determined by the profit and power needs of special groups in society who control the means of production and the other social power sources. Production has to be shifted so that it can serve the real needs of the people; it has to become a production for consumption. When these things are recognised, the workers have to act upon them to realise their needs and desires. Little philosophy, sociology, economics and political science are needed to recognise those simple things and to act upon the recognition. 

 

Our task as socialists is even simpler. Our answer is: stimulate, encourage and strengthen every oppositional tendency within the working class movement against capitalism and against any idea of the co-operation of the classes. Only the working class fighting for the aims of all the exploited can secure  economic and political freedom. Only the working class can bring about the downfall of the capitalists.

 

Capitalism has always functioned by grabbing the cheapest raw materials and pouring out waste products, poisoning  the land air and water, destroying the environment we depend on for existence.  The devastation is global. Our rulers will attempt to compensate themselves for environmental losses at the expense of rivals in neighbouring states. What is certain is as resources dry up, rival capitalists and states will fight for access to them, increasing the burden on the rest of us and when ordinary people try to prevent themselves suffering, all the political and social tensions that characterise the world today will be intensified.  The signs of discontent with the present system are visible everywhere. The key question is whether unrest grow into a consciousness of the need for change among people and the anti-capitalist minority become a majority. Experience suggests such a transformation is possible. The Socialist Party has a practical proposal right now, an election campaign to bring about the biggest possible anti-capitalist and pro-socialist protest vote at the polls. Such political activity is not only desirable, it is possible. Any party which participates in elections and doesn’t tell these truths about the Democratic Party and the Labour Party doesn’t deserve the label socialist. There is only one party that reflects the sentiments and expresses the aspirations of class-conscious workers. It is the Socialist Party. We have and always will be an uncompromising opponent of capitalism. We do not believe that this society can be patched up to meet people’s needs, but that it must be entirely replaced by a socialist society. Women and men should by no means simply wait for .this revolution to solve their problems. Class struggle right now are very important. They can win important gains. Through such struggles, we will learn how to struggle, will gain confidence in our own strength, and learn who our real enemies are. We point out that the struggle against oppression is part of the struggle to overthrow the capitalist class and the institutions through which it maintains its power. But reforms are measures to improve the conditions of the masses without eliminating the source of oppression, the capitalist system. Socialist realise the limitations of reforms, that they do not end capitalism. In our view, the enemy of all humanity is capitalism (not only the one aspect of it which is called “neo-liberalism” or “imperialism”)

Choose, fellow-workers, world socialism now or a few years hence more war.

What we want is life

 

“There is this justification for political action, and that is, to control the forces of the capitalists that they use against us; to be in a position to control the power of government so as to make the work of the army ineffective, so as to abolish totally the secret service and the force of detectives. That is the reason that you want the power of government…” Big Bill Haywood

The Socialist Party said to be dogmatic and sectarian. We readily confess our guilt,  in so far as we hold ideas that make us strive to end capitalism. We are dogmatic because we talk about surplus value, another expression for rent, interest, dividend, etc. We are sectarian because we teach the class war, another way of asking the workers to cut adrift from the capitalist parties and form one for themselves in opposition to them. We are said to be too extreme. We fight for nothing short socialism, because we believe that nothing short of that will save the workers. 

The robber barons of Wall Street and the City of London are always hungry for profits. The antidotes to the economic crieses threaten to be more lethal than the original poison. Capitalism is responsible for all the violence in the world—only workers have the power to bring prosperity and peace. The power of the capitalist class depends upon how effective they are in convincing the working class that we have no power. They own the mass media that bombards us with lies and subterfuge.  The capitalist class knows full well that without the cooperation and collaboration of workers, the capitalist parties would be utterly powerless. They convince us that we are powerless against them—not only to end their power over us—but to even dream that a another world beyond capitalist war and exploitation could exist. Socialism is the way to end poverty and injustice, and it is attainable. All we need to do is realise that the power is in our hands, and our hands alone. Together.  Working people can end capitalism and build a world that can fulfill the needs and wants of all, instead of providing profits for the wealthy. Workers together with our own revolutionary party, completely independent of the capitalist class, have the power to end the barbarity of capitalist enslavement and war once and for all.

Capitalism can’t be reformed. It must continue on its profit-driven warpath. It cannot fulfill the needs of the majority of humanity—it never has. The vast majority of the Earth’s human population under capitalism has been impoverished for centuries. It is an economic system based upon the exploitation and oppression of the working class—the overwhelming majority. Capitalism has no other source of power other than the enslavement of the working class and the exploitation of our labor, which is how they maintain their power. Capitalists are not Gods; they are human. Without us, the working class, they are a tiny, untalented, helpless minority of despots posing as super-human deities. It is the working class that has the power to change the world for the better because it is the working class that knows how to do all the work. We can change the war industry into a human industry— building things we all need to live a fruitful and happy life with equality and justice for all—a world free of poverty, want and war. Only workers can build a new and better world. The capitalist class  is a hindrance to all the necessary work needed to build a healthy and prosperous future for all of us. Instead of building homes, they invest in building bombs. Instead of  clean and renewable energy, they spew pollution onto the land and into the oceans, rivers and streams. Their sole concern is to increase their profits We must embrace socialism as the only way to rid the world of this vicious system. We must be hostile to the capitalist parties—including those parties that seek to reform capitalism into a “kinder and gentler” capitalism—because there is no such thing. We oppose capitalism because we want to build a world of peace, democracy, economic and social equality—a world without violence, oppression, slavery and starvation.  

 

Capitalism promotes and festers violence among the working class over superficial differences in order to divide us—to convince us that we are each other’s enemy—and to hide the fact that it is they who are the enemy of all human kind. We workers have much more in common with one another than our differences. We all want to live a happy and comfortable life. We want to see a bright future for our children. We want to enjoy the comfort of our homes. We want good food, housing, education, clean water, air, and a pristine environment that flourishes with life. We want to heal the sick and care for our elders and safeguard the planet for the future of all the life that shares it with us. We must put aside our differences, and embrace our commonality, our love of life and of a better future.

Holyrood Hysteria

 No to Holyrood, 

No to Westminster, 

Yes to World Socialism

The media are screaming at us about the importance of this Scottish Parliamentary election.

It’s all nonsense, of course. The day after the election we will find that it is business as usual.

Men and women of the working class will return to the office, the factory or the hospital where we work for a wage or a salary. That is those of us “lucky” enough to have a job. The same round of work, insecurity and poverty will continue irrespective of the make-up of the parliament in Edinburgh.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY is taking this opportunity to reach out to as many workers as possible. We are not after your unthinking support. We want you to consider an alternative society to the present production for profit rat-race that is capitalism. We want you to look at present-day society and ask yourself: does it operate in your and your family’s interest?

Let’s look at this society and see how it operates against the majority and only favours a tiny handful of wealthy owners.

The Present Rat-Race

The whole purpose of producing anything today is to sell it and make a profit. No profit, then no production. That is why so many live in sub-standard housing while building workers are unemployed. That is why people throughout the world are undernourished while farmers are paid not to grow food.

Production for profit means that the world is armed to the teeth. Billions are spent on armies, the whole purpose of which is to protect markets, trade routes and sources of raw material.

Wars are inevitable under capitalism. Capitalism is based on competition, and the logical outcome of global competition is military violence.

Our Opponents 

At this election you have a wide choices of parties. Conservative, LibDems, Labour, Nationalist, Green.

There are many differences in their policies, but what have they all got in common? They want your vote on the basis that they could run the system better or more fairly. Despite their differences they all want to run the buying and selling system of capitalism, and this applies as much to the “left” as the out and out supporters of capitalism.

This system is based on the production of all wealth by the working class for a wage or salary. The owning class live off the unpaid labour of the working class.

To talk of “fairer” capitalism is like talking of “fairer” robbery.

What Is To Be Done?

As capitalism cannot work in the interest of the majority, it must go. It must be replaced by a new society based on common ownership and democratic control. There must be production to meet people’s needs instead of production for profit. We must all be free to take what we require to satisfy our needs, without being rationed as today by the size of our wage packet or benefit.

This new society can only come about when a majority want it and are determined to get it. Nobody can bring it about for you.

So it’s up to you, not the politicians. The future is in your hands, not theirs.

If you agree with the aims of THE SOCIALIST PARTY and if you are interested in the ideas of socialism, contact us.

About Ourselves 

THE SOCIALIST PARTY was formed in 1904 with only one object: the abolition of the wages system and the establishment of a society based on common ownership and democratic control.

As part of the world socialism movement, we want a democratic world without frontiers or separate “nation-states”.

We campaign to get workers to say no to a society based on profit, privilege and competition and yes to a society based on equality, cooperation and meeting people’s needs.

The solution to capitalist crises.

 

The Socialist Party has demonstrated that with the socialisation of the means of production there can be an increasing standard of life for all. Socialists use the term planning for use to mean planning production in such profusion that all the needs of the masses would be satisfied. 

Global warming and the environmental crisis is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. The gross waste of resources in an insatiable accumulation of capital is the source of this disaster.  Short-sighted drive for profit, neglects and abuse of science under capitalism destroy the world’s environment at an accelerating speed. Science, technology and industry can be positive and beneficial to society, but private property and the priorities  the ruling class create great problems. Socialism is the power of the working people who reclaims the people’s property from the capitalists. There will be an end to the right for some to exploit other people’s labour and to claim possession of what society has produced. The producers themselves, the workers, will decide what to produce and how – not “the market”. Only in a socialist society, when the classes and the state have ceased to exist, can people attain full and unlimited freedom. Only then the principle “From each according to ability, to each according to needs” can be realised. 

Profit is derived from unpaid labour time. Workers’ labour power is purchased on the market by the owners of capital. Put to work, on average in half the working week, it produces values sufficient to cover wages to maintain a worker and family. The value produced in the remainder of the working week constitutes surplus value, the source of profit. The commodities produced by workers’ socialised labour are privately appropriated by monopoly capitalists. They will continue to be produced so long as they can be sold for profit on the market. This factor is the cause of the alternating cycle of boom or crisis of capitalism. It is inevitable that sooner or later these social conditions will impel people to organise to end the conflict between the socialised labour process and private ownership of the decisive means of production, the big factories, mines and corporate farms by the establishment of socialism. With socialism, production takes place for people’s use.

The world to-day is in the hands of multi-billionaires, the owners of the biggest, corporations the biggest banks. Nearly everything we use or need are in their grasp, as well as mining, chemicals, transport, etc. These capitalists, not only own or control the chief means whereby we work and live, but, in fact, control the whole governing machine. They pull the strings. And they use their power to make themselves richer and richer—at our expense. They hire workers to make profit out of their labour; their capitalist production is for profit, not for use: and to get more profit they slash wages, carry through speed-ups and worsen conditions. This mad race for profit ends in a crisis; and then they try to get out of the crisis—at our expense. Poverty, insecurity and malnutrition making their inroads in the homes of millions.

It is not only poverty and insecurity and unemployment which threatens the majority of the world’s people. For the great capitalist employers, the great financiers and bankers have one last use for us all, and that is to recruit us for war. The cause of capitalist war is the attempt of each national capitalist group—British, French, German, American, Russian, Chinese, etc.—to beat its competitors on the world market and to win bigger and bigger profits for its own capitalist class. Science and genius are prostituted to discover and perfect the means of death and destruction of millions, in order to win new markets, territory, and spheres of profitable capitalist investment, to bring rent, interest and profit for a handful of employers, bankers and landlords. The huge armed forces, and the colossal armament apparatus of the capitalists is only made possible by the oppression and robbery of working people. It is this plunder that enables the ruling class to wage the class war. It is a common fight against a common enemy.

We socialists offer the solution to capitalism crises. It consists in eliminating capitalism itself. Socialism and the abolition of capitalism and is the only solution that human beings can give to the current crises. It will mean that the capitalists will be deprived of their ownership and control of the factories and workshops, mills and mines, communications and transport. All these means of production which they have used and misused only to pile up profits for themselves and poverty for the workers will be taken from them. Socialism will put an end of production for profit and will carry on production for use. The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the working class will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation. It will mean that the billionaires who now own the media will be deprived of their “liberty” to put forward their purses as “public opinion” and to spread lies and dupe  the people. We have to-day ample resources for producing all the things we need. Socialism is a society, organised as a whole.

Act now. Tomorrow will be too late

 

The less the wage for the worker, the bigger the profit for the capitalist.

The bigger the wage for the worker, the less the profit for the capitalist.

The capitalist is interested in longer hours, speed-up, and low wages.

The worker is interested in shorter hours, easier work, and high wages.

The bosses are always the beneficiaries.

The workers always the victims.

Capitalism created a class of owners pitted against a class of workers – at war with each other – engaged in a CLASS STRUGGLE with each other.

That the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is always true under capitalism. 

 Under capitalism it is inevitable to have economic crises and mass unemployment. When the capitalists realise there is no profit in selling their goods, there are lay-offs and slashing of wage’s. Food is left to rot in the granaries and storage houses, and people go hungry.

There’s nothing like a war expenditures for trotting out figures in the  billions, or even the trillions.  Instead of billions being spent on production for destruction and killing, with the waste of human lives, why could we not have a society operating  on the basis of the good things of life for all  the peoples of the entire world? Because our economy is capitalist, meaning based on competition, producing not for public need but for private profit. Socialism has as its goal economic security for all, so that with this minimum requirement, “human” beings will have the potentialities for the full growth of their “humanity.”

It is no myth that there is plenty for all. Here are the facts: More food can be raised today than we could, possibly eat. Yet people starve in the midst of plenty and food is dumped into landfill. We have the natural resources, the technology, the knowledge. Modern science has made comfort and culture and leisure possible for all. Who can deny the great potential?  But why have these possibilities  to end poverty, maintain security and a high standard of living and keep the peace never been put into practice? Instead the resources of the planet  have been flagrantly and wilfully mismanaged.

The workers need a political party of their own, free and independent of the capitalist parties and politicians, a socialist party, advocating a planned economy where for the first time it will be possible to put an end to wars between nations. The aim of the working class would be to end capitalism and all forms of exploitation everywhere; and everywhere create a cooperative commonwealth in which the principle regulating production and distribution will be the supplying of human needs and not the making of profits.

WE AIM TO REPLACE the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social order from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine democratic self-government, based upon economic equality will be possible. The present order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed. When private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic depression, in which the common man's normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialised economy in which our natural resources and principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated by the people.

The new social order at which we aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed out by a system of regimentation. Nor shall we interfere with cultural rights of racial or religious minorities. What we seek is a proper collective organisation of our economic resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every citizen.

This social and economic transformation can be brought about by political action, through the election of a socialist party inspired by the ideal of a co-operative commonwealth and supported by a majority of the people. We do not believe in change by violence. We consider that the old parties are the instruments of capitalist interests and cannot serve as agents of social reconstruction, and that whatever the superficial differences between them, they are bound to carry on government in accordance with the dictates of the big business interests who finance them. The Socialist Party aims at political power in order to put an end to this capitalist domination of our political life. It is a democratic movement, financed by its own members and seeking to achieve its ends solely by constitutional methods. It appeals for support to all who believe that the time has come for a far-reaching reconstruction of our economic and political institutions.

The present pandemic is a symptom of the mortal sickness of the whole capitalist system, and this sickness cannot be cured by the application of palliatives and salves. These leave untouched the cancer which is eating at the heart of our society, namely, the economic system in which our natural resources and our principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated for the private profit of a small proportion of our population.

The Socialist Party will not rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth.

This is our chance. We must act now. Tomorrow may be too late and the opportunity will have passed