Socialism a Different System

 

The capitalists grind out their profits from the sweat and blood of the working class. In this, they are no different from the rulers of old. Both feudal lords and ancient patricians lived on the sweat of the lowly.

But capitalism, as we have pointed out, is a different system. Unlike the slave-owner, who was content to have his hundred slaves, each to serve his various whims, the capitalist must expand or die. Chattel slavery and the feudal system stayed the same or nearly the same for hundreds of years. Not so the capitalist system.

It does not matter whether the capitalist is personally greedy, or whether he wants to exchange champagne baths, for whole swimming pools of champagne, or whether he is a nice likeable old lad like the father of the rich heroine in a movie. Regardless of these things, his hired managers and superintendents must whip his thousands of slaves into ever faster production. And the bulk of the surplus value produced by these slaves must be turned into more capital, more machines – constant capital – more contradictions for the capitalist system.

Capitalism carries its own seeds of destruction. The flames of war and the stench of hunger are inseparable from this living-death. It was progressive once – and even though it sweated and tortured millions of workers it still increased the good things of the earth. Now  it is turning good into bad.

Capitalism gestated in the womb of dying feudalism. The lusty infant, in its day, pushed over kings and monarchies, fought revolutions so that the factory system might grow. Now this capitalism, grown old and evil, likewise bears a brand new system within itself. It bears new life as well as death. Factory production only needs to be free of its out-moded individual ownership to be born anew. The world working class is going to act as midwife in a forced birth. It is going to deliver the socialist future cut of the womb of the dying past.

Socialism will do many wonderful things. It will eliminate recessions, starvation and war. We know this for sure.

Capitalism is a system of production and exchange. It is a system under which individual capitalists own the means of production. The great majority of the people operate them. They represent values that the capitalist lays out so much cash for (VARIABLE CAPITAL). Their main product is SURPLUS VALUE (profit.)

The capitalist runs the factory, not to provide the world with shoes and suspenders, but to provide himself with profits. This leads to fiercer exploitation of the mass of workers on the one side; and a sharper aggravation of the capitalists’ own problems on the other, it leads to economic crashes, depressions and wars.

Socialism is an entirely different system. The workers run the factories themselves. By doing so, they produce useful things instead of profits. They put an end to their own status as commodities. They are no longer bought and sold. They no longer have a “value” as they do under capitalism. And their aim is no longer to produce a surplus value above their own wages. Everything they produce is now theirs, and all the world’s.

They produce with an eye to what is needed. They elect a planning board to administer production so they, don’t waste time and energy producing more than the world can use. Thus there are no unsold surpluses except for those they intend to have – if they need to build up a reserve. Thus no scramble for markets to dump the surplus, as under capitalism.

They can expand production without catastrophe – without throwing millions on the street to starve, without breeding wars to take up the products of expansion, as the capitalists do.

They can decide just where and what they want to expand, where expansion is needed and desirable. They can decide just how many workers shall be detailed to make new machinery and better equipment, just how many can be spared from the production of immediate consumers’ needs. There will be a planned expansion, with no bubbles.

But all this is only a beginning. The elimination of war and depression alone would give every human being at least 100 per cent more of the material goods of life. But it will do far more than that. It will reverse humanity’s present plunge downwards to austerity, and turn it into abundance. All the things that can already be made so easily, will be within everyone’s reach. Still newer products will be made. Newer needs will be felt. In a short time, material needs will not seem so important. People will require more beauty in their lives. New needs will arise. They will be satisfied. But there will be no terrible decline again. For when we come to the top of the hill, we can throw up new heights to climb. We will become masters of their own destiny.

Economic Exploitation

The capitalist makes nothing out of idle factories or rusting machinery. New wealth, including machinery itself, can only be created by labour. And it is a portion of this newly created wealth that the capitalist keeps for himself. It is legal and just that he should do this under a capitalist system with capitalist laws.

He pays dollar for dollar for everything he gets. He buys according to the labour worked up in things. He buys labour-power in the same manner. Then he sets his labourers to work. And he sells the things workers produce dollar for dollar according to the total labour worked up in them. He has paid the workers the value of their labour-power, or enough for them to live on. But of course not the value of what they have produced.

The source of all capitalist wealth – rent, interest, dividends – “profit” – is the surplus the workers produce over and above what they get paid – the difference between the wages and the product. This is called by Karl Marx “surplus value.”

The appropriation by rulers of the surplus product was not invented by capitalism. Assuredly the ancient slaves produced surplus-value, say the capitalists’ professors. “And of course the serfs of the middle ages did.” Each of these serfs worked about four days on his own miserable land and two days on his lord’s. He had to perform unpaid labour and so create surplus value. The capitalist professors acknowledge that.

“But today” they exclaim – “Why today the worker is paid wages for every day and every hour in the day. He works for himself, not for the capitalist!”

If these wise gentlemen saw thirty brand new cars an hour whiz down the assembly line as they felt their muscles get sore, they might think otherwise. But it is quite true that we work for so much an hour in the plant. The hourly wage conceals the systematic robbery of the workers by the capitalist and helps to give it legal justification.

It is very obvious that the feudal serf was performing unpaid labour a couple days a week. There he was working on the lord’s estate without wages – without a return of any kind.

The wages system seems to give a return for all work performed. We look back upon the feudal serf system and think the serfs were an awful gullible bunch of fools. It’s so clear to ‘us now that they were just making the lords rich all the time, working on their land for nothing, as they did.

We are working part of every day and part of every hour and minute for nothing, regardless of the testimony of time- cards and professors. We are working part of the time “for ourselves” and part of the time for the company. Suppose we are producing new value at the rate of two dollars an hour, and get paid just one dollar an hour – then we are working just half the time for ourselves and a half for our “lord” – the company. All the man-made wonders of the world are monuments of surplus-value. Capital itself is that part of the surplus-value which is put back into production. It is the surplus-labour of the past that is turned into new machinery to exploit new labourers. The harder the workers labour, the more they produce, the more surplus they produce – then the more capital they produce. Capital is dead labour that lives “vampire-like on living labour.” And under capitalism, the completed surplus-labour – the dead labour – returns to haunt the living labourer in the form of a machine that makes him work faster, produces more surplus for the boss while he produces himself an early grave.

Under Capitalism and capitalist law, this is just the way things should be. “To them, that hath shall be given.” Under Capitalism, the capitalists have every right to all their riches. They have every right to own the means of production even though the whole world should starve. The surplus product belongs to the capitalist. The working class can only take this surplus by rooting out capitalism itself, by changing the laws of society and establishing socialism.

The wealth of the rich is made up entirely of surplus values produced by the poor. All profits, rents, interest, dividends, etc., are produced by the working people. They all come from the surplus over and above their own food, clothing and shelter, which workers also produce.

For one rich man, there are many poor. And so, the argument is often heard that none of us would be much better off if all the wealth in the world were divided “evenly.” The whole point is that socialism would not just divide up the wealth, but would increase the production in order to divide up the things that are produced.

The Socialist Party has never abandoned its aim

 

Undoubtedly we live in a world of great and rapid change—but one thing has not changed, even for the prosperous worker—the dependence on the capitalist for a livelihood, who allows us to live only while our work keeps the employer in opulence. Capitalism poisons human relationships and isolates people, causing immense unseen misery.

The Socialist Party hold that capitalism cannot be improved for the workers. We see no evidence at all to prove the unsoundness of our case. People are now looking for something to be pro and were tired of being just anti.  Only common ownership of the means of production can solve the workers' problems. World society can no longer advance under the capitalist system. National boundaries are like a strait-jacket. The only hope is to end capitalism and build a socialist society. With socialism, the rule of a privileged minority is ended forever. The national resources, transportation system, mines, mills and factories pass into the hands of the people. A planned economy is introduced. The necessity for piling up profits for a wealthy few no longer cripples and binds the production system. Rational boundary lines no longer tie down industry. The new rule for society is production at the greatest possible capacity for the use of the people.

How can there be equality between rich and poor, between exploiters and exploited, between those who control the state and all the main means of production including the news media and those who have nothing but their labour-power to sell to make their living? There cannot be equality between the exploiters and exploited. There is freedom for the rich to exploit and further enrich themselves while the only freedom for the poor is “freedom” to be exploited and thank their lucky stars that the rich are so generous as to provide them such wonderful rights to be exploited and be always at their mercy. The working people should not be confused by the empty bravado of the rich. The rich flaunt their democracy saying people have “freedom of speech” and that there is “freedom of the press”, etc.

 This is hardly true. Freedom of speech and press for whom and for what? Freedom of speech insofar as there is no danger to the profits of the rich and once their profits are endangered, then the real beast, the true nature of this democracy, is exposed as the most brutal dictatorship. And the question of freedom of the press is a real joke. The rich monopolise the entire news media and only print the material which serves their interests but still they call it “freedom of the press”. Any honest journalist knows and will admit openly that all the content of the news media is censored according to the interests of the rich. There is freedom of the press for the rich as there is democracy for the rich. Our enemies are the capitalist class, and capitalist henchmen of every kind and stripe. They know that if the workers understood socialism they would flock to its standard and enrol themselves into its membership by hundreds of thousands. Therefore, every power which the capitalists control is directed to slandering the movement, misrepresenting its principles, lying about its methods, and vilifying it. With assumed regard for human welfare, the capitalists, with their lick-spittle apologists have insidiously cultivated the belief that socialism means the violent destruction of human society. 

The capitalists calculatingly and cold-bloodedly took, and still take, the advantage of the disposition among the working people to adopt ready-made opinions in preference to forming their own opinions. 

The Socialist Party is dedicated to the great goal of guiding the working class out of the blind alley of capitalism and into the planned society of socialism and as a guide that can show the workers the way out of the misery, despair and bloodshed of capitalism into the better world of socialism. The road to socialism is the road to peace and plenty. The Socialist Party believes in the international solidarity of the working class. The interests of the workers extend across all frontiers. We defend the workers of other lands against oppression and against despotism.

 Although many workers may have never heard about the Socialist Party, we are not a new party.  The Socialist Party will give the only genuine answers to the most vital problems facing the workers. “But you can’t change human nature!” Everyone who has argued for socialism has heard this which is supposed to be an annihilating answer to “impractical” socialists. 

But people do change. The human being is a much more flexible creature than our capitalist-minded friends would have us think. It would be possible to list thousands of facts from history, anthropology, sociology and psychology to prove that human beings have changed their habits of thinking and acting over the years. 

Our policies are based on the principles worked out by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels over a century ago.

 

Socialism - Not bread and butter but strawberries and cream

 

Governments running a system concerned above all else to ensure that rent, interest and profit are secured for the capitalist minority are bound to anger and frustrate workers. After all, workers have no real material interest in capitalist prosperity; indeed, the capitalists' privilege is obtained at the expense of our relative poverty. 

In Britain, the richest ten percent own more than half of all the accumulated wealth and just one per cent own more between them than the poorest eighty per cent. 

There is a class division arising out of diametrically opposed material interests. Faced with a multitude of problems arising out of the system where production is for profit rather than need, workers become frustrated, angry and determined to do something to change things. Socialists depend on this active desire to change society: every worker who decides to do something to protest against the way things are — however misguided that action might be — is, at least, proof of the fact that workers are discontented and not brainwashed. After all, if workers were wholly contented and totally indoctrinated, there would not be any socialists.

Socialists stand in uncompromising opposition to reformism. We reject all attempts to make capitalism run efficiently from the working class point of view. That does not mean that we have nothing in common with reformist workers — in fact, we have much to agree about. They want change and so do we; they envisage the possibility of eradicating unpleasant features of society which conservatives say are inevitable, and so do we; they are anxious to alert their fellow workers to particular problems and so are we. Where is the big difference, then? Socialists are aware that the changes which reformists want are futile for three reasons: firstly, they are usually directed to just one problem of capitalism, leaving all the others intact and, even in relation to these "single issues”, the reformists are often willing to compromise (abolish nuclear bombs, but keep conventional ones, for example); secondly, the reformist is unaware of the fact that capitalism produces social problems as a matter of course, and that therefore it is as idealistic to seek to eradicate mass starvation without ending production for profit as it would be to abolish the spots without curing measles; thirdly, socialists want more than to make capitalism tolerable for the working class — we want to end capitalism and, in so doing, to abolish wage slavery as a permanent social condition for the vast majority of people.

The reformist answer to the case for revolution — it will have been going through some of our readers' minds as they looked at the three reasons we have stated for opposing reformism — is that, whatever its limitations, at least the reformists are doing something. Indeed, they are; they are voicing their frustration and that is no bad thing. But a man with a toothache who expresses his frustration by sending a petition to the optician is doing no more than diverting his energies from the practical solution which is to be found in the dentist's surgery. Of course, workers who are mugged and demand that the government publicly flogs criminals are doing something, as are women workers, who, feeling oppressed, conceive of liberation for them as the oppression of men by women. Wrong solutions to real frustration arising out of real problems will not change society.

It is true that many reformist actions alert workers to aspects of capitalism which need to be exposed.   But we must expose futile waste of energy on illusory attempts to change society, because the need to end a system which threatens to blow us all up is more important than humouring the naive sentiments of self-righteous reformists. Workers have nothing to gain by engaging in protests which stop short of confronting the social system as a whole; half-loaves will not satisfy the appetite which most of us have for the best society can produce. That is not to say that socialists oppose reforms or that we deny the usefulness of reforms to certain workers — often at the expense of other workers. Our argument is not that workers would be better off without reforms, although we would certainly be better off without many of them. Socialist understanding starts off with all the recognition of the problems and all the anger about them which reformists show. 

Our opposition to capitalism is not academic, but is based on material experience. The answer staring us in the face is that we are living in a world which organises itself on the basis of producing goods and services with a view to profit. World capitalism forces workers’ needs to be secondary to the purpose of making profits so that capitalists can stay rich. In short, production for profit is at the root of virtually every modern social problem. (Of course, there are natural problems, such as earthquakes, which neither reform nor revolution could eradicate.) The socialist response is to make the one revolutionary demand to abolish capitalism and, in so doing, to carry out the job which all the separate reformist protesters are trying to do — but to complete them all in one fell swoop.

Socialism and nothing less is the object of the Socialist Party. But as we have been advocating this for a very long time, are not reformists entitled to tell us that the failure of the revolutionary movement to win over a majority of workers is as much a demonstration that we are wrong as is the failure of reformists to achieve their limited aims? The answer is that socialists are not criticising reformists because they have failed to win support — on the contrary, millions of workers have been attracted to the slogans of reform; our disagreement with the reformists is based on the fact that, even with mass working class support for their aims, they have failed to change society in such a way which leaves them with no more reforms to enact. Indeed, the essential problem about the reformist strategy for change is that it envisages no prospect that the problems will be solved and reforms will not be necessary. In this sense, reformism presents the working class with a never-ending operation of gradual improvement to a fundamentally rotten structure. Socialism, on the other hand, has never been tried and has never had support from millions of workers. We are not able to force workers to be socialists, and we would not wish to do so if we could, because only conscious men and women of the working class who want socialism will be able to establish the new social system.

 

There is no certainty that workers will turn their attention from attacking the effects to abolishing the cause. But workers do inevitably learn from history and it is to the lesson of revolutionary success which the experience of reformist failure must lead. It is. therefore, to workers who have swallowed the illusions of partial change, and have become disillusioned, that socialists present the case for fundamental social change. Instead of banning nuclear bombs, let us ban every weapon from the face of the earth, by removing the cause of their existence. Instead of pleading for better let us demand the best. And to those who, with a sneer, tell us that they have no time for such grand aims because they are engaged in bread and butter politics. we respond that they are free to demonstrate for their bread and butter but we social revolutionaries will not be content until we have the strawberries and cream.

This is what socialism really means

 The number of people living in poverty is rising relentlessly. All the summit meetings, all the hand-wringing, all the reports, have been to no avail. With every passing year, it becomes more and more obvious that nothing short of a revolutionary transformation of society will serve to wrench the mass of humanity out of the debilitating cycle of deprivation and despair. The Socialist Party puts forward the socialist proposition that the only solution to social problems is the establishment of a world without frontiers, based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living, with production solely for human need. 

How many more years will be wasted on a system which is utterly unworkable as far as the interests of the whole community are concerned? Only one interest rises above the economic, political and military divisions of national and international capitalism—our single, worldwide common interest as working people. Its political direction is clear—we must ensure the growth of the world socialist movement with the object of capturing political control of all the powers and machinery of governments by democratic political activity. From this position, we will enact the common ownership of the means of living. This will strip the capitalist class of their monopoly of land, industry, manufacture, transport and resources, whether maintained by private ownership or state control. We will establish free access by the democratically organised community to all these productive means and resources so that they can be freely used to provide directly for human needs.

 

This will involve the abolition of the state and the conversion of all useful government functions for the democratic administration of needs, operating through a decentralised system of decision making on world, regional and local levels. Socialism will remove all economic constraints on social action, and will involve the abolition of all distribution by buying and selling through the use of money; and therefore will establish free access to all the goods and services which the community could more freely make available. The wages system, which is the market for labour-power, will be replaced by direct co-operation between people. With this world co-operation, socialism would abolish all armed forces and armaments production. Thus all the potentially useful resources of labour, materials, technique and equipment now used for the military would be re-directed for human needs. During all the years which have been wasted on support for capitalism, socialism could by now have solved the major social problems. The urgent priority is for our fellow workers to join the growing world socialist movement. This is the only practical activity that is now being directed at the solution of social problems. 

Socialist democracy requires the widest participation in decision-making at all levels. Socialism is fundamentally the opposite of capitalism, substituting social ownership of the means of production for their private ownership. Market relations would have to be eliminated.

Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid of. Very few are consciously anti-capitalist, with the vast majority trying to satisfy their needs within the system rather than by overthrowing it. All that is needed is for workers to produce goods that people want and need, a  system of production for use instead of profit. Revolution does not mean that we would “demand” that the governments and corporations do this or that. It means that we, the working class take over the running of society and make the decisions ourselves and proceed to abolish the market economy. The injustices of slavery and serfdom were eliminated by abolishing the social institutions of slavery and serfdom themselves, not by prohibitions against the maltreatment of slaves and serfs. The injustices of wage labour will be eliminated by abolishing the social institution of wage labour itself, not by legislating employers to treat their workers better. We do not just want slaves to manage some of their own affairs. We want to overthrow the slave owners and abolish slavery altogether. Electing new bosses does not abolish the boss system. Elected cooperatives or workers’ councils would be in exactly the same position of having to lay off staff if there is no market for the goods they produce. 

 

Opponents of socialism usually fall back to one argument – human nature,  suggesting people have a tendency towards competitiveness and violence   Rather, we possess human behaviour which is flexible and variable according to the situation in which people find themselves. Humanity has lived in many different sorts of society. Socialism brings — or is it at least more conducive to — the end of alienation and commodification, sexism and racism, environmental degradation, militarism and nationalism.