Socialists want to build, not destroy.

 

A look at history will reveal the story of misery, exploitation and oppression, barbarism, cruelty, rebellion and repression. A tiny minority have lived in luxury and splendour while the majority have struggled merely to subsist and survive.

The World Socialist Movement’s fundamental principles are the same in all lands, irrespective of nationality, colour, sex or age. The WSM recognises no national boundary lines. The place in which one lives embraces the working class of the world. Every worker everywhere is brother and sister. Across the borders of all lands, socialists clasp hands as comrades. The Socialist Party is the only party that honestly stands for economic justice. Socialism means that all those things upon which the people in common depend shall by the people in common be owned and administered; that all production shall be for use; that the making of goods for profit shall come to an end; that we shall all be workers together.

The campaign of the Socialist Party is and will be wholly educational. To arouse the consciousness of the workers to their economic interests as a class, to develop their capacity for clear thinking, to achieve their solidarity industrially and politically is to invest the working class with the inherent power it possesses to abolish the wage system and free itself from every form of servitude, and this is the mighty mission of the socialist movement. We shall not compromise, nor shall we be deflected in the least by any consideration from the straight road to the cooperative commonwealth. 

The Socialist Party is the only party that does not want a vote that is not intelligently cast. No vote is wanted on account of the popularity or personality of a candidate.It is the value of the socialist principle that is taught and emphasised, and if this is not understood and approved the vote is not wanted. Mere dislike and disgust with other parties is not sufficient reason for voting for the Socialist Party. Principles are paramount and the personal qualities and qualifications of the candidates are the last and least consideration. Socialists are not seeking some mythical Moses to lead them to a fabled promised land, nor do they expect any so-called “great man” to sacrifice himself upon the altar of the country for their salvation. Socialists have determined to be their own leaders and to save themselves. They put their trust in principles, knowing that these will not betray them.

The Socialist Party addresses itself to the working class, seeking to develop the consciousness of that class, while it appeals to the ballot for the realisation of its cooperative commonwealth. It is the only party that is unequivocally committed to their economic interests, to the abolition of the wage system and the freedom of the worker from exploitation and every other species of servitude. One class is small and rich and the other large and poor. One consists of capitalists and the other of workers. These two classes are at war. Every day of truce is at the expense of labour. There can be no peace between these two essentially antagonistic economic classes. Nor can this class conflict be covered up or smoothed over.

 

The Socialist Party is the party of the workers, who are on the right side of this worldwide struggle, and, although a minority today, it contains all the elements of self-development and will expand to majority proportions to inaugurate the impending change as certain as the forces of industrial evolution is undermining the present system and making that change inevitable. The Socialist Party is the party of the present and of the immediate future. It believes that the competitive system has outlived its usefulness, that it has become an obstruction in the path of progress, that, like feudalism, from which it sprang, it must pass away to make room for its cooperative successor.

 The Socialist Party stands for the abolition of the wage system, for the economic freedom as well as the political equality of the working class, knowing that without the former the latter is impossible. The Socialist Party stands for the common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution and the operation of industry in the interest of all. The Socialist Party stands for the industry of the people, by the people and for the people, that wealth may be produced for the use of all instead of for the profit of a few. The Socialist Party stands for the full enjoyment of economic freedom, shall have the full opportunity, in the best possible environment, to develop the best there is in people for their own good as well as the good of society at large.

Social Democracy not Social Despotism

 

For as long as anyone can remember, the ruling class have paraded one political representative after another promising peace with prosperity, while subjected hundreds of millions around the world to pillage and plunder. There is no other way to put it but that it has been a whole system of legalised robbery and murder, slavery and suffering. There is another path–the road forward to resistance and the revolutionary overthrow of the oppressors. The sooner the people of the world understand that it is impossible for any government to lay the foundation for peace and prosperity, the sooner will they find the way to do it for themselves. There is but one way to get peace and prosperity. Socialism is the path. This century will see the burial of capitalism and the birth of the world socialist community.

A study of human society shows distinctly different methods of producing and distributing the wealth that maintains such a society. Production is carried on today for the world’s markets, and profit is derived from the unpaid labour of workers who sell their energy in the labour market as a commodity. Socialism stands for the abolition of exploitation, it stands for the abolition of capital. We want the world for the workers.

The working class is the heir of all the defrauded and dispossessed generations of the past. Socialism indicts capitalism as an obstacle to progress and civilisation. The Socialist Party challenges the right of capitalism to exist, and boldly proclaims socialism as the legitimate successor of the present order. Socialism includes among the world’s workers all those who work with hand or brain in the production of life’s necessities and luxuries. The world’s workers have always been and still are the world’s slaves.; they have produced all the world’s wealth. Economic slavery is the world’s greatest curse today. Poverty misery and crime are their inevitable results. The Socialist Party is the one party that stands squarely and uncompromisingly for the abolition of industrial slavery; the one party pledged in every fibre of its being to the economic freedom of all the people. There are no boundaries to separate nationality from nationality, colour from colour, gender from gender in the Socialist Party. Every human being is entitled to what labour produces, and to an equal chance with every other human being to develop mind and soul. So long as the resources and productive and distributive machinery are the private property of a privileged class the people will be at their mercy, poverty will be their lot. The Socialist Party is the only party that declares that the tools of labour belong to labour and that the wealth produced by the working class belongs to the working class.

The Socialist Party make no pretence of attempting to serve both capitalists and workers. With the interests of the owners of the production and distribution, the Socialist Party have no concern, except to abolish that ownership. The Socialist Party calls upon fellow workers to join in the overthrow of capitalism through capturing the powers of government and legally transferring the ownership of the world from capitalism to socialism and end the indescribable corruption of capitalist cant and chicanery. The capitalist class is organized economically and politically to keep the working class in subjection and perpetuate its power as a ruling class. The capitalists can enslave and rob the workers only by the consent of the workers when they cast their ballots on election day. Every vote cast for a capitalist party, whatever its name, is a vote for wage slavery, for poverty and degradation. Every vote cast for the Socialist Party is a vote for emancipation.

“Each for all and all for each” is no utopian dream not the product of imagination, nor a mirage of the desert to allure and vanish. Socialism deals with the possible, with the practical of everyday life.  There is a way out. It takes realism, it takes clear thinking, and it takes courage. It requires the road to a real, socialist, solution. It is written that “hope springs eternal in the human breast,” and it is also written that “hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” The millions of wage-workers do not own themselves, they are wage-slaves, and their masters control their lives and subject them to conditions as degrading as those which existed in times of chattel slavery. True it is that the united forces of labour could make themselves masters of the situation and change conditions to their liking, but divided they have done the bidding of the capitalist class, and have been misled and betrayed by ignorant and dishonest leaders until hope has all but perished.

Socialism offers a remedy for social ills. It strikes at the very root of capitalism by proposing to transfer the means of production and distribution, i.e., the land, mines, factories, transport and communication networks, from capitalists to the whole people to be operated by them in their collective capacity for the good of all, and this it proposes to do by the ballot of a triumphant majority of awakened, class-conscious supporters. The revolution is to be complete, but it is to be achieved by the ballot. 

Socialism’s emancipation programme includes no bloody ordeals. Its banners are those inscribed with solidarity with fellow workers and class war on the masters. Its first great proposition is to educate workers to free themselves from domination by doing their own thinking and being conscious of their common interests in the economic struggle.

Social reorganisation is the demand for the Socialist Party. Its mission is not only to end capitalist despotism but to establish industrial and social democracy. The Socialist Party is the party of progress, the party of the future, and its triumph will signal the birth of a new civilisation and the dawn of a happier day for all humanity.

Learn about Socialism with the SPGB

There is great confusion in the world today over the question of what is socialism. Our aim in the World Socialist Movement is to try to clarify this.

The capitalist class introduced various reforms which ameliorated the effects of some of the worst features of their economic system in the spheres of health, housing, education and family support to become known as the ‘Welfare State’ – but it wasn’t socialism. The essential feature of capitalism, that very thing which makes the system one of exploitation and robbery of the mass of wage workers by the ruling class of capitalists, namely the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, this remained untouched. Socialism comes not as a remedy for the evils of existing society, but as a programme of principles for a new society.

Socialism starts with the brotherhood and unity of humanity as a fact. We all in common depend upon the same common resources of nature. Until all of us together see to it that every person is equal with every other person in resource, opportunity, and liberty, we shall none of us see the fullness and freedom upon the earth. In this sense, self-interest and mutual interest are one and the same. There can be no individual liberty until resources belong to the people in common. There can be no social peace, no liberty, so long as a few own that upon which the rest depend. What was said against chattel slavery and serfdom can also be said against the private ownership of the means of production; for it is nothing less than ownership of human beings? No one is free so long as he or she is dependent upon another for the chance to earn a livelihood to survive. Who sells his or her labour-power for wages sells oneself. The wages system is merely a form of the slave system, no fit system for free men and women. The economic system rests upon this power of private capital to legally appropriate the fruits of the labour of society.

 It is beyond the power of kings or parliaments or politicians, to bring forth good effects from bad causes. It is not in the power of governments to make practicable what is elementally wrong. A house built upon foundations of sands cannot be made safe by political declarations. A civilisation builds upon fraud and force, lying, stealing and political deceit, capitalism and wage-slavery cannot stand forever. The World Socialist Movement builds on a sure foundation when we build a system that has for its end the commonwealth, the common freedom, the common abundance of all men and women. Nature offers resources enough for an abundance of life for countless billions of human beings, and we cannot ever consent that these resources should be appropriated by the few to exploit the many.

Some say that the World Socialist Movement is building a society fit only for saints and that we can never have working people of such virtue. It is a strange proposition that makes people regard what they know to be essentially good as dangerous in practice, and what they know to be wrong as good. Socialism strikes at the root of the chief cause of our anti-social conduct and will abolish that competition which turns all into brutes and liars. The whole of capitalism is to war against compassion and liberty. Socialism comes to remove the causes that prevent men and women from being in harmony with one another and to bring that equality and opportunity. Our appeal to you is not for strife or hostility, but for constructive purposes. The aim of socialism is the abolition of all classes and parties and the coming of but one class, the people and the cooperative commonwealth as a working model to achieve it for them.

Socialism depends on working people moving towards revolution. The working class must accept the responsibility which falls upon them.  It carries on its shoulders the responsibility for the very survival of humanity.  The Socialist Party is for the unity of the working class in the struggle against capitalists and their governments. Unity depends on understanding. The Socialist Party is very clear – there are but two classes. The class battles over the past decades have been a vindication of our recognition of this simple truth. Socialism presupposes the existence of an organised working class. Nobody can dictate socialism’s future. When the time comes it will sweep into power. It needs no leader. No leader can make socialism, and no would-be leader can unmake it. There may be men and women to influence the movement, but no leader can dictate its course. It is a party of the people, and not of a person. Socialism holds out a vision of a new society — a society of truly civilised men and women living in mutual aid and goodwill; a free, equal, and happy society of peace, abundance, and progress.

Our time is now

 

The goal of the Socialist Party is socialism, not reformed capitalism. Its tactics must be those that will bring about socialism.

Socialism is opposed to the reign of the capitalist system and its representatives, the present ruling class. Capitalism has no solution for the miseries of working people. Capitalism has no policy to solve crises. Capitalism can only prolong its life by throwing the burdens of the crisis onto the workers, by ever-renewed attacks upon the workers upon the workers’ standards. Wages are attacked on every side. Conditions of labour are intensified. 

Many workers have placed their hopes in the Labour Party to bring the solution. They have seen the need for basic social change; the Labour Party has spoken of basic social change, of socialism, and promised to realise it by easy peaceful means through Parliament. Since Labour governments have been installed, and swift disillusionment has followed. The condition of the workers has grown worse; there is no sign of the advance to socialism; the Labour Party Government has acted as a representative of capitalism against the workers. The Labour Party could not act and cannot act otherwise than it has acted, does act and will continue to act, as the representative of capitalism — because its basis is capitalism. The capitalists have not solved a single problem. They have opened the weeping sores.

At present the capitalist class rules, whatever the form of government. What is needed is that the working-class shall drive out the capitalists from possession. Marx raised a mighty banner of international Labour unity with his rousing slogan: “Workers of the world unite, would have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a world to win.” This is the message that we call upon you to support. We must become class conscious if we are to succeed in destroying capitalism and bringing about the socialist future of mankind.

The Socialist Party, unlike the other parties which seek simply to “reform” the present economic system, is unequivocally committed to the abolition of capitalist production and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth. Industrial democracy will wrest the Earth from its exploiters and its vast and inexhaustible storehouse will yield abundance for all. The growth of socialism is the promise of freedom and fraternity. Private ownership is the foundation upon which the entire edifice of exploitation, oppression,  corruption,  criminality and warfare making up much-vaunted modern civilisation rests. Above all else, we must end private ownership.

It is working people who keep capitalism going, for the benefit of the capitalists. It is time the workers determined, by international socialist action, to refashion human society on a socialist foundation. No government can save the world. It is the task for the world working class and unless it is achieved the whole world faces chaos, misery and destruction. The productive power and the administrative ability are present for the making of a new world. Do not delay the decision to use them. The Socialist Party show you the way to working-class emancipation and the happiness and well-being of humanity.

To all subjugated workers we extend our sympathy in the sufferings which are their lot. We ask them, however, to recognise that their poverty is the result not of foreign rule — which is merely one of the many evil by-products of capitalism—but of the capitalist system itself.  

Independence will not solve any working-class problem.  The only sound policy for workers, the only policy in line with their class interests, is to keep clear of the nationalist movements and carry on steadily with the task of organising themselves on the economic field for the defence of their interests against their employers and organising on the political field for the ultimate achievement of socialism in co-operation with the rest of the world's workers. 

In all countries, the workers are exploited by the owners of the means of production and distribution. There are no differences between the conditions under which exploitation is carried on in the different countries sufficient to make it worth the workers' while supporting one against the other in order to defend their subjection to one national group of capitalists rather than to another. 

The leftists who parade the banner of “independence then socialism” around, to catch the attention of workers, are demagogues working to perpetuating falsehoods. National sovereignty is the bait to hook recruits.  Nationalists work on behalf of the capitalists for the good of all capitalists. What the World Socialist Movement want is real independence. What we want is freedom from capitalist exploitation and wage slavery. Supporting national independence in the name of socialism is a monumental hoax.

Only socialism can bring the solution. Only socialism can put an end to capitalist property rights and organise production to meet human needs. Once capitalism is overthrown, then and only then can production be organised in common for all, and every increase in production bring increasing abundance and leisure for all. This is the aim of the social revolution. We will not be a party of deception. We tell the workers the truth and organise with the aim of the destruction of this horrible system and the introduction of a socialist system of society. Socialism is the only cure to the evils and ills of capitalism. The Socialist Party moves with determination along the revolutionary path.

 

The Aim is Socialism

SYLVIA PANKHURST

The principles of socialism are fixed and immutable; the means to be adopted to give practical effect to those principles may change with time, and place, and circumstances but the object aimed at, the end to be attained, remains ever the same. Socialists have agreed our object is the social and economic freedom and equality for all, and the realisation of the highest individual development and liberty conceivable for all, through the common ownership and democratic control of all the means of production and distribution.

Political action is not to be disparaged nor is any other that will help to break down the domination of the master class and hasten the emancipation of the working people. There will be time enough to forswear political action when the capitalist class can no longer strive to retain their mastery of the political machine. Our primary function, however, is to organise a socialist political party, independent, class-conscious, and democratic. The role of industrial organisation lies with the trade unions. The object of a Socialist Party is the realisation of socialism. The purpose of a trade union is to make the best of existing conditions and amelioration of the workers’ conditions in the existing society. The road to prosperity, to peace for all, is the road to socialism. The society of human brotherhood, freedom, that is socialism, is our aim. Capitalist pettiness, narrowness and conflict sap mankind’s potential.

What is wrong with the way today’s society is organised? It is divided into rich and poor. It is a system of exploitation in which the means for producing the wealth (the land, the mines, factories, the machines, etc.) are privately owned. A tiny handful of people possess the means of production. The immense majority of the people own nothing (in the sense that they can live on what they own) but their power to work. By exploitation, we mean living off the labour of other people. The essence of exploitation under capitalism consists in this — that the workers, when set to work with raw materials and machinery, produce far more in values than what is paid out by the capitalists in wages. In short, they produce a surplus that is taken by the capitalists and for which they are not paid. Thus they are robbed of the values they produce. This is the source of capitalist profit. It is on this surplus, produced by the workers, that the capitalist lives in riches and luxury. Capitalism is a system in which the means for producing wealth are owned by a few who live by exploiting the workers, i.e. by robbing them of the values they produce over and above the value of their wages. This society places a premium on wealth. The vast majority of working people toil for the enrichment of the small minority of profiteers who own the bulk of the economy and through their wealth control the entire society.  Profit is the be-all and end-all of economic life; human needs come second — if at all.

The social revolution is no longer an aspiration of the future; it is a fact of reality and must determine our immediate policy and tactics. No dependence upon “leaders” and dealings with the representatives of the employers. The workers must act independently, free from any taint of compromise or opportunism with the capitalists. State capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism. Capitalism is a system of waste and inefficiency. Socialists seek to change the economic laws governing society and human relations, by bringing order and plan into production.

The Socialist Party has reason and truth on its side. Freed from the clutches of the profit-gougers and their hangers-on, the major industries must be brought into common ownership and the economy must be planned by the people themselves in their own areas of work. The profit system cannot make use of automation for the benefit of society; socialism will. The future society that will be constructed under socialism will reduce work to an insignificant part of daily life and offer the individual the fullest possibilities to pursue his own abilities and interests.

The capitalist system is irreparable, and any programme that is based on any illusions on this score or has this in mind is bankrupt and will only lead to the demoralisation, disillusionment and betrayal of those who count on it. This society can neither guarantee them a secure future nor even promise there will be a future. Either the threat of nuclear war or environmental destruction casts a shadow over the lives of all of us.

The Socialist Party convinced internationalists as we are; recognise that there is no cause of quarrel between the workers of the world; that the worker has no country to fight for, and therefore no occasion to fight. Humanity is at present divided into different nationalities with conflicting interests. To us, with our deep conviction that the only thing that matters is the class war and our eagerness to fight that war to a finish, these divisions and conflicting interests. We say that the interests of the capitalist class and those of the working class are diametrically opposed to each other.

Socialist Standard No. 1403 July 2021

 

 JULY 2021 PDF

• Editorial: Neither London nor Dublin but World Socialism

• Pathfinders: Space Race 2.0

• Letter

• Cooking the Books 1

• We can feed the world

• Material World

• How do you like your News?

• A hundred years of Northern Ireland

• A Gender Item

• Carrying Capacity Carry-ons

• Book Reviews

• Cooking the Books 2

• Proper Gander

• Meetings

• 50 Years Ago

• Rear View