Socialism is the hope of the workers

 

Socialism is the sole solution to what is called the social question, meaning the question of poverty, the question of exploited labour. Workers cannot remain apathetic in the face of a party who tells them: only we bring the cure to the abuses that you suffer in society. The Socialist Party hold that the exploitation of labour will not disappear until the day the means of production –– land, machinery, and in general, all that serves production –– will be transformed from private property into commonly-owned property.

What is the aim of the Socialist Party? It is to establish socialism. The fundamental feature of a socialist society is that all the means of production – transport, the mines and mills, the factories – are owned by the people and the goods that are produced, are produced for use. Under the present system, which we call capitalist, the means of production are owned by private persons or corporations and they operate their industries not because people need the goods that they produce but because they want to make a profit. No one will be permitted to own any productive wealth and thus exploit others. There are no classes under socialism – that is, there is no class that owns the wealth and no class that is exploited. Today a worker has only labour power and  sells that to someone who owns machinery and he or she gets a wage in return and the man who owns the machinery makes a profit out of the labour power. That is what socialists term exploitation of labour.  

Given a society that produces enough to satisfy the needs of all human beings, the struggle for the means of life will be abolished. A society that produces enough to satisfy the reasonable needs of people will do away with all the brutal struggles characterising present-day society. With  socialism people will be educated not to think of profit but of service to society. Great scientists even now do not work in their laboratories because they expect to make millions of dollars; they work because they are interested in science. We want a socialist society where all the productive wealth is owned in common and there is no exploitation. We want a social revolution. A new social system gives birth to new ideas. Society cannot be changed by the mere desire of a small group to change it. It must, in the first instance, be ripe for a change and in the second instance the majority must understand the necessity for a change.

 “All previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority.”

If we are expecting the majority to accept our ideas, we cannot conceal those ideas. Our task is to inform our fellow workers of our ideas and that our solution to the problems of mankind are correct and so it is impossible to use force against the masses. We can use only the power of persuasion and no other power. You can realise how absurd it is to accuse the Socialist Party of advocating violence. One thing that convinced us to join the socialist movement, it is a hatred of the violence that exists in society – the violence of war– the violence which condemns working people to hunger because of the poverty. Everywhere in society there is violence of one sort or another, culminating in the dreadful violence which sacrifices millions of human beings. It is this violence that drives us into a movement which has as its aim the creation of a world free from violence, where human beings will cooperate in the production of goods to satisfy their needs, where peace and security will prevail.

Mankind must take control of social forces and determine the operation of those social forces. We want a majority of the people to accept our ideas, why should we advocate a violent change from capitalism to socialism? The fact that we want a majority of the people to accept our ideas proves beyond all doubt that we want a peaceful transformation. The Socialist Party desires to have a majority of the people on its side.  If we want a majority of the people, as we do, to accept our ideas, then we must be in favour of a peaceful dismantling of the State. The existence of bourgeois political democracy offers a chance to achieve socialism in a peaceful manner. We want to take over the means of production peacefully. We are not pacifists. But to accuse us of wanting and advocating violence is to accuse us of something that is against our very principles.

For the Socialist Party internationalism is the very heart of socialism. We conceive of the world as an economic unit. No nation, no matter how wealthy or powerful, can separate itself from the rest of the world. We are not isolationists. We do not believe that it is possible to isolate this country from the rest of the world.  socialism is a world system under which all lands  and all peoples will cooperate to produce enough goods to satisfy the reasonable needs of every human being. Every country will produce that which it is best fitted to produce. If a region  can produce good machinery then let it not busy itself with producing agricultural products. Let some other country best fitted for the production of agricultural products produce those products and exchange its products for the machines produced by another country. Peace will come to a world cooperating in this way, which will be made possible only by socialism, which will do away with colonies and markets. The Socialist Party rejects the idea that one nation or one people is superior to any other nation or any other people. To us all human beings are equal. The prejudices that exist are a product of the social system and not inherent in human nature. The unity of mankind will be made possible and real under a socialist society which will do away with economic conflicts. Our party belongs to the World Socialist Movement.

The senseless suffering and death of millions of human beings are not abstractions to ourselves.  We feel the pain of our fellow workers and we react by trying to create a world where destruction and war and poverty and disease will not be the fate of humanity. We proclaim to the world that it is possible to build a new social system guaranteeing every human being a decent livelihood and a chance to develop ones individuality, free from economic worries, free from the dangers of war. We say mankind must go forward to socialism or else back to barbarism. we try to stir up the people. We try to bring them a message of hope that a new world is possible and can easily be created if only they take their future into their own hands, a new world where hunger, war and the destruction of the environment will be unknown. There is no road other than socialism that will bring for mankind a peaceful prosperous planet. If the capitalist system is permitted to endure, the inevitable result will be continuous agony, sobbing and wailing amid tears and blood.

The Socialist Party still holds hope that the people will come to accept the ideas of socialism.

Common Ownership and Community - Not Capitalism and Competition

 

Socialism is a  society in which all the members of the community collectively determine their conditions of life and their way of living. In order to do so, they must control, collectively, the use to which machines, factories, raw materials – all the means of production – are put. Unless the means of production are effectively in the hands of the whole society, not where 1 per cent of the population owns most of the wealth, there can be no question of the collective control of the conditions of life.

 Every capitalist competes with every other one for a market. When they sell similar goods, their competition is obvious. Even when they sell altogether different goods, like TV sets and houses, they still compete for the limited wage packet of the worker. If one capitalist does not compete, he is lost. To grow the Capitalist must first squeeze out his weaker competitors and add their capital to his – centralisation of capital – or make as much profit as possible from his current sales and reinvest it – accumulation of capital. The first method is of no direct interest to the worker as it matters very little who the boss is. If the capitalists want to fight things out amongst themselves, it is their business. It is of little interest for another reason: it adds nothing to the productive powers of society; the national wealth does not grow as a result of it. In fact, all it leads to is the concentration of the same amount of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

The accumulation of capital has made capitalist society the dominant form of society in the world. This is what affects the worker most directly. How do capitalist firms accumulate? Where does the money which they reinvest come from?

In order to produce commodities for the market, every capitalist must buy other commodities which he uses in production. The things he buys are mainly: machines, raw materials or semi-finished goods, and labour-power. Machines, raw materials or semi-finished goods, although an item of expenditure on the part of one capitalist, are commodities sold by other capitalists and appear as part of their incomes. Those capitalists also spend money on machines, raw materials or semi-finished goods and labour-power, the money spent on machines, raw materials and semi-finished goods being the income of yet another group of capitalists who spend money on ... and so on indefinitely. Whenever one capitalist spends money on machines, etc., that money is part of the income of other capitalists who then hand it over to yet other capitalists for machines, etc. If all the capitalists belonged to one great trust these transactions would not take place and the only buying and selling that there would be is the buying of labour-power by the capitalists and the selling of it by the workers and technicians in exchange for wages and salaries. Taken all in all, the capitalist class (not the individual capitalist) has only one expense – buying labour-power. Whatever remains to that class after its purchase of labour-power is profit (surplus value).

Part of the capitalist’s expenditure which is spent on machines, raw materials and unfinished goods goes the rounds from one capitalist to another in a perpetual circle – this is the social wealth that has already been created. If the productive forces of capitalism were to remain static and not increase, this expenditure would appear like a constant, fixed fund thrown from hand to hand in an endless relay race of production, each capitalist handing on to the next the exact amount required to renew his stock of machines and raw materials. No profit would be made on such sales as each capitalist would swap exactly that amount of machines, etc., for an equivalent amount, and, when all the exchanges were done with, everyone would be where he started.

There is, however, one item of expenditure which makes all the difference, namely, wages and salaries – the expenditure on labour-power. This expenditure is the only one that is not a transfer of goods already produced from one capitalist to another. It is the only item of expenditure that is productive in the dual sense of producing the wealth of society and in the sense of producing profits for the capitalist. Labour alone produces wealth.

The capitalist controls the physical means of production; the workers control nothing but themselves, the capacity to work. They are driven to work, to sell their labour-power to the capitalist, in order to keep themselves and their families. When they sell, they demand a ‘living wage’ for their labour-power, and, if unions are strong and there is not much unemployment, they usually get it. Of course, there are exceptions, but by and large, for the working class as a whole, this is true.

If the worker produced exactly that amount of products which he could buy for his weekly wage plus what would replace the raw materials and machinery used up in its production, the capitalist would clearly not make a profit. Profit can only be made when the workers produce more than their wage bill and the depreciation of machinery and the depletion of stocks of raw materials put together, i.e. when they produce surplus value, value over and above the wages necessary to maintain themselves and their families.

The existence of these profits makes the world the Hell it is.

Socialist Standard No. 1404 August 2021

 

SS AUGUST 2021 PDF

• Editorial

• Pathfinders

• Letter

• Cooking the Books 1

• Material World

• Where is Labour going?

• George Galloway: would-be Populist Leader

• Countdown to COP26

• What is Marxism?

• Capitalism ‘bad’, socialism ‘good’

• The Beef Chain

• Cooking the Books 2

• Proper Gander

• Book Reviews

• 50 Years Ago

• Obituary – Robert Vallar

• Meetings

• Rear View

Socialism for sanity

 

WORLD SOCIALISM

Socialism is not only desirable, it is also possible practical. Socialism is desirable because only Socialism can put an end to the exploitation of man by man and of women by men. Because only socialism can put an end to the struggle for the re-division of the world, for national possessions, which takes place between the different continents, nations and peoples. Only socialism can put an end to war and poverty and the innumerable injustices which are an everyday feature of our lives. Capitalist society has made science an instrument of slaughter. Weapons of war, machines of destruction is invented with powers that exceed all imagination. It threatens to destroy all humanity.

Present-day society is based on mistaken and blind individualism, where we have a small class of owners who have in their possession all the means of happiness but who are incapable of spreading it because they pass their lives fearful their privileges, are threatened. Modern technology has created all the conditions of well-being and even of luxury. If applied to increase the things of life, our society would become a heaven on Earth. Through the absurd system in which we live, we find ourselves existing in a veritable hell. Mankind, instead of co-operating in the building of a common habitable planet, finds itself divided in a war of each against all. We, the immense majority of the producing class, the workers are condemned to menial work which undermines our health The life of the worker is often half that of the rich.

This society is pervaded by internecine struggles between different classes, peoples, nations and individuals. Such a society is always in an unstable state of disequilibrium. The result is a useless waste of individual and social strengths.  Socialism ends the cause of these rivalries and antagonism, the monopoly ownership and control of the means of production, and, instead, form a new society based on the principles of human solidarity and reciprocity, and economic soundness. It will put an end to all waste and all unproductive work. It will abolish the antagonism of interests and reduce authority to a minimum, making it function not in the interests of a class but in the interests of society as a whole. Socialism consists of the rationalisation of production, of all our activities and our very lives themselves. And that, not in the interests of some, but for the benefit of all.

Socialism is from every point of view desirable. Socialism is possible now. It is possible because it corresponds to the interests of all; because it satisfies the desire for well being, and the common interest of the immense majority in all countries. Socialism is possible because men and women are more and more brought into close co-operation in pooling their efforts. All sorts of associations and organisations, political, intellectual and moral, are accustoming humanity to regulate its work and life. Socialism is possible because the forces of production, thanks to technological development have reached previously unheard of heights and progress. Automation and robotics only need to be put in action for the benefit of everyone in order that all members of society may be assured of complete well-being. Socialism every day becomes more possible through the social education of the working class, organised as it is in political parties, trade unions, and co-operatives. Rational organisation of production becomes more urgent as a consciousness of solidarity develops among the producers.  An army of organised and connected producers can take over control of production. Everything stands ready to be placed in the hands of the workers. Social evolution leads to socialism.

We are practical men and women, not Utopian dreamers,  but visionary in our goal, yes, we concede that. We want to change society to ensure happiness for all and to offer everyone equality.

Human behaviour does change. Everything changes in Nature and in life. Everything is in a process of transformation. Movement is the universal law of everything that exists. That is the conclusion all science of our era comes: to the science of astronomy, the natural and biological sciences, social and historical science, all. Everything evolves. Everything is constantly being modified. Even the ancient philosophers said. “Everything changes. It is impossible to bathe twice in the same stream.” We never meet the same man twice because during the interval he has grown older, his constitution and his character changed; he is no longer the same. The human species also has evolved. The planets themselves, the sun, the moon, the stars have not always been what they are today. Our earth has undergone an innumerable number of geological revolutions. Human history is a record of perpetual change. If everything changes, is subject to transformation and modification, how is it possible to believe for a moment that the present system of property will always remain the same? That would be, indeed, contrary to nature. Look around you and compare what you see with what existed at other times. The earth is covered with railways. Floating palaces cruise around the oceans. Mankind has conquered the air and is as at home in it as is on earth. We fly from one continent to another. The internet carries the news in seconds from one end of the world to the other. We can carry on conversations with friends and family using social media a thousand miles away. Everything in our lives has changed. And yet they want us to preserve and maintain society in its old barbaric state of struggle and poverty.

In face of the overwhelming array of facts, that there is no reason whatsoever to despair of human progress. What appears to us impossible today is done tomorrow. Today’s dream is tomorrow’s reality. Slavery was replaced by semi-slavery the serfdom and wage slavery will give way to socialism which is the end of the exploitation of man by man and slavery in all its forms.

Socialist society puts the land, the natural resources and machinery at the service of all who work the land and in the factories will guarantee real liberty to all. Because then, men and women will be masters of themselves.  Workers of the various countries will no longer have any necessity to destroy one another. The state-machine will disappear together with the parasitic class whose privileges it safeguards. The producers will have free access to the fruits of their labour has worked producing the necessities of life We will be free to spend our time at leisure. All the natural wealth freed from the control of the property owners, all the inexhaustible riches of science and human art will be at our disposal. The only care of society will he how to increase the necessity and pleasures of life, to perfect the instruments of labour in order to create for the citizen a proper amount of ease and leisure; Freedom will then cease to be a slogan and will become a reality, an everyday fact the property of all. Work well regulated and apportioned will become attractive. It will become a joy and a pleasure.  Science makes humanity free and happy by reducing to a minimum its dependence on the exploitative rape of nature. Humanity must choose between the continuation of the capitalist system which leads to destruction and the organised revolution of international labour founded on the basis of solidarity and reciprocity through the socialisation of the forces of production. Socialism can make the world one country, single and indivisible. Socialism stands for the end of the war and poverty. There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome in a society that is based on labour and not on profit. The future alone can tell what will be the precise forms and special methods of organisation. As we approach the socialist reality we will be able to foresee the general plan and the decisive direction.

THE CONVEYOR BELT OF CAPITALISM