Capitalism comes in all forms

 

Getting something for nothing is the great anathema of the right-wing. They abhor the very thought of a single mom or a jobless dad on the dole, living off the government’s “welfare state.” Capitalism condemns millions to lives of poverty and despair just to enhance the worthless lives of a few. It is not the welfare queens or the “idle” unemployed who bleed society. It is the capitalist vampire that is sucking the working class dry. Speaking on behalf of the capitalist class, the intellectual lackeys answer that workers have been asking for, and getting, too much, from the government. Workers have demanded too much improvement in air and water quality, too much job security and safety, too much retirement pensions, too much health care, too much protection from racism, too many holidays, too much pay, etc. Gone are the days of expanding State spending on social services. Economic austerity is the order of the day.

Getting something for nothing is what capitalism is all about and it is what capitalists do best. Indeed, that is all they do. Capitalists do not earn, or create, or build anything. They live by profiting from the work done by others. They live off the labour of the working class. The names these two classes bear tell the story. Workers work and capitalists capitalise on the work that workers do. Capitalism exists and can only exist as a system of exploitation. Capitalists are the exploiters and workers are the exploited.

Working people are being victimised by an array of absurd contradictions. Basic needs like housing and health remain unmet while billions of dollars are being spent on the military and the armament industry.  While millions of working people suffer poverty goods that could serve their needs sit in warehouses, inaccessible to the working people who need but can’t buy them. Education, transport and other social services are being curtailed or eliminated for “lack of funds.” Less spending citizens generally means higher budgets to protect capitalist investments. Profit-motivated production and private ownership of the economy are the hidden causes of our misery and current divisive policies are fostered to increase competition among workers for the limited number of jobs and restricted access to social services that capitalism has to offer. In this way, the ability of workers to mount a unified defence against enforced austerity is crippled.

The needs of workers are never met. This is so because the capitalist economy does not operate to meet workers’ needs. It operates for capitalist profit. That profit is generated through the exploitation of working people—that is, by paying workers wages that amount to only a fraction of the wealth they collectively produce. Profits are made not primarily by cheating in the market or arbitrarily adding a “profit margin” to the price of a commodity. Instead, they come from appropriating at the point of production the greater portion of the values labour creates.

A socialist economy is based on the common ownership of industry. Production would be for social use instead of for private profit. Through representatives elected by workers where they work, they would democratically administer the industries and make all economic decisions. Resources would be allocated and production would be carried out on the basis of social needs and wants. A socialist economy would thereby free society of the limitations now imposed by capitalism. Such a society will not, of course, come into existence by itself. If the working-class majority is to become master of the economic forces, rather than its victims, workers must organise to gain control from the capitalist class to lay the foundation for a socialist society. Working people must break with the political parties of the capitalist class and independently organise politically around their common class interests for the transformation of the present economy into a socialist economy run by, and in the interests of, working people.

In regards to the environment, despite their lip-service, industrialists and politicians utter not a word about the waste and destruction of raw materials and natural resources by the anarchy of capitalist production—its unplanned, irrational duplication of effort in a mad, competitive drive by each capitalist to “capture” the market—or the bulk of it—for his corporation. Not a word is mentioned about the manner in which every corporation is trying to exploit the existing circumstances to destroy its competition and entrench itself more solidly as one of the few that control the overwhelming proportion of the nation’s resources and wealth. Nor a word said about the incredible waste and destruction, not only of finite resources but of human life itself, through capitalist wars and continuous preparations for ever more destructive wars.

The issue confronting the peoples of the world is not the climate crisis that threatens to grow worse. Those are merely the effects of the issue. The real issue is, shall we continue to tinker with those effects or shall we get rid of their cause—the capitalist system and replace it with socialism—a system of social ownership, democratic management and planned production for use. The issue, literally, is survival. The harm and damage already done to all of us and to our environment by capitalism are beyond exact calculation. If it is not abolished and replaced with a viable Socialist Cooperative Commonwealth it will destroy itself. And there is the distinct possibility that it may destroy humanity and the world in the process.

That can happen, but it need not happen. And it won’t happen if all who realise the need for a socialist reconstruction of society join with us to appeal to our proletarian brothers and sisters of every race, of every colour, of every creed, to organise their latent political and industrial might as a class to accomplish the revolutionary change to socialism and thus guarantee the future safety and well-being of the human race.

Social Justice is Socialism

 Working people run society from top to bottom. The potential political and economic power that rests in their hands is enormous. The workers are in the best strategic position to take possession in an orderly yet resolute manner via elections. With socialism, all power to make social decisions will be vested in the people. Socialist society will be administered democratically from bottom to top by representatives elected directly by the citizens in each neighbourhood and industry and subject to their control. Production will be carried out to satisfy the people’s wants. The useful producers will receive in goods and services the social equivalent of their work. Those unable to work will share in that abundance. There is nothing which in any way resembles the workings of class-divided capitalism and its political state.

 

Our freedoms and liberties are not mere privileges we enjoy by the grace of the ruling class. They were wrested from tyrants by our forebears at the cost of their blood. Capitalism is increasingly incompatible with freedom and democracy. To save capitalism, its ruling class must destroy freedom and democracy. To save freedom and democracy, the capitalist system, the system of economic despotism, must be destroyed. Socialist democracy alone can fully guarantee lasting freedom and democracy. While many liberals, reformers and other supporters of the capitalist system are sincerely opposed to white supremacy and police violence, they are blind to the fundamental causes of both crime and injustice within capitalist society. They will not alter the social conditions that produce capitalism’s need to maintain a form of “law and order” that is designed to protect the system and the ruling class from the consequences of the larger crimes it commits against the working class as a whole. They attribute it to prejudice without asking themselves what it is about the society in which we live that creates these prejudices. The Socialist  Party opposes the political state for the vicious and hypocritical thing it is. At the same time, however, socialists do not permit themselves to fall victim to any illusions about capitalism’s capacity to dispense any other form of justice than ruling class justice. The Socialist Party maintain that the solution to class-based prejudices and viciousness of capitalist “justice” is the abolition of the crime breeder—of capitalism itself. The oligarchy’s need for a new level of repression and restriction of democratic rights can no longer be doubted. Working people are losing their democratic rights and civil liberties at an alarming and accelerating pace.

Fundamental freedoms are being eroded and taken away. The government itself has become the number one violator of democratic rights. Its intelligence agencies routinely ignore every constitutional protection, compile files on tens of thousands of citizens, spy, hack into computers and mobile phones to monitor dissidents daily taking on more of the trappings of a secret police force. To enforce “order” as it sees it, the ruling class hires mercenaries drawn from the working class. These are the police, one of the armed branches of the political state. Any movement aspiring to bring about social change must be prepared to deal with a State willing and capable of turning its military—ostensibly produced to fend off foreign enemies—against its own citizens. That means a movement that understands the need for education first, then political and industrial organisation to enforce the will of the majority in face of the anti-social tendencies of the capitalist system and its political tools.

Free elections, supposedly the most basic process of democracy, no longer exist. They are largely restricted to two capitalist parties and packaged by media which censor nearly all another political opinions. What was once a free ballot is today a restrictive bureaucratic maze of polling rules that effectively keeps the political process controlled and contained at the very time society's problems call for new revolutionary ideas. Access to the means of communication, a fundamental condition of meaningful free speech, is blocked by monopoly control of the news media and social media for corporate profit. The right to strike is under persistent attack by both the courts and legislatures. More and more unions are forced to face injunctions and fines.

 

Dissent and discontent are always a threat to a small tyrannical class and the capitalist class is no exception. Its system has created problem upon problem which it cannot solve but can only repress. Its only response to crime is repression. Its only response to opposition to its imperialist foreign policy is repression. Its only response to growing resistance to poverty, unemployment, racism and the anarchy of its system is repression and more repression. To put it simply, the capitalist class is passing repressive laws to protect itself from its own people. The ruling class seeks to keep the working majority from using democratic rights to organise itself.

The right to engage in free and open political activity, to use free speech and a free press to expose official lies and deceptions, the right to fundamentally alter society, all pose a threat to continued capitalist rule. Repression is fast becoming the only means left to block change and hold the system together. In short, capitalism is becoming totally incompatible with democratic freedoms. The longer it continues, the more thoroughly it will try to sweep away the hard-won democratic gains of the past.

Unlike the ruling class, workers and the socialist movement have a definite interest in seeing democracy preserved and extended. Democratic rights are vital to the working class, which must defend them at every point. Likewise, democracy is inseparable from socialism, which is based on democratic majority control of every social institution, including the economy.

Society has reached a point where capitalism and democracy are irreconcilable enemies, one declining in proportion to the advance of the other. To reverse the current trend toward repression, to defend the rights now under attack, and to make democracy a reality in every sphere of life, a socialist reorganisation of society has become absolutely essential.

We Are The Future

 

The Socialist Party's goal is a class-free society based on common ownership and collective control of the industries and social services, these to be administered in the interests of all society. Its primary role is to challenge the political apparatus of the capitalist class and promoting worker class consciousness. Socialism means production to satisfy human needs, not as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Socialism does not mean government or state ownership. It does not mean a closed party-run system without democratic rights. Those things are the very opposite of socialism. Socialism is a social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people. The cause of political and economic despotism is abolished and class rule is at an end. Socialism will be a society in which the things we need to live, work and control our own lives—the industries, services and natural resources—are owned by all the people, and in which the democratic administration of the people within the industries and services is the “government”.

Socialism means that rule of the people, for the people and by the people will become a reality for the first time. That is socialism, nothing short of that. If it does not fit this description, it is not socialism—no matter who says different. Those who claim that socialism existed and failed in places like the former Soviet Union or in Cuba or China simply do not know the facts. Socialism has never existed. It did not exist in the old U.S.S.R., and it does not exist presently anywhere. Socialism will be a society in which the things we need to live, work and control our own lives—the industries, services and natural resources—are owned in common by all the people.

The Socialist Party is the political party of the working class. This is so because the Socialist Party is the sole advocate of the principles that the working class must adopt if it is ever to achieve its complete emancipation from wage slavery and, at the same time, save society from catastrophe. The Socialist Party is the only political organisation demanding the abolition of capitalism and advocating the socialist reconstruction of society. It has been doing so for well over 100 years. It is, in short, the organisation through which the workers can establish their majority right to reorganise society through its agitational and educational activities.

Capitalism no longer serves the interests of the people. It creates countless problems that it cannot solve. It uses new technology to throw people out of work and to make those who still hold their jobs work harder. It creates hardship and poverty for millions, while the few who own and control the economy grow rich off the sweat and toil of others. It destroys the cities that we built up. It is destroying the natural environment that is the source of the food we eat and the air we breathe.

Every effort made to prevent these problems, or to keep them from growing even worse, has failed. The reason is that the country is controlled by a small capitalist class that owns the industries and services that everyone depends on. The workers built and operate all of those essential industries and services. However, they do not own and control them. They are the majority, but they have no voice in deciding what to produce or how much to produce. Their needs and desires count for nothing when those decisions are made.

When a small group owns and controls what everyone needs to feed, house and clothe themselves and their families, when that small group makes every important decision that affects the lives of the vast majority, it is called despotism. 

Capitalism is an economic despotism, and like any other form of despotism, it corrupts everything that is good and decent.

Generations of workers built the industries that can produce more than enough to wipe out poverty and guarantee the economic security of every man, woman and child.

Capitalism has twisted this great achievement of humanity’s collective genius by causing wealth and power to stay in the hands of a few. Technology such as robotics and AI and IT that could and should be used to lessen the need for arduous toil and to enhance our lives is used instead to eliminate jobs and increase exploitation. Poverty is as widespread as it has ever been. Wages remain stagnant even as productivity rises. Joblessness, homelessness and helplessness are spreading. Economic insecurity and social breakdown place an unbearable strain on our families, our children and ourselves. Emotional stress, crime, prostitution, alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, and many more signs of unhappiness and hopelessness, are on the rise.

Is this what we want? Is this what we have worked so hard to build? Should we keep a social system that is destroying the lives, the liberties and the chance for happiness that our work and productivity make possible? Is it really worth the price to keep a small and despotic class of capitalists living in obscene wealth?

Or shall we do the common sense thing by making the means of production our collective property, abolishing exploitation of the many by the few, and using our productive genius to create security and abundance for all?

Working people can expect no help from the beneficiaries of capitalism. Philanthropic capitalists may see the handwriting on the wall and support progressive policies. As a class, however, they, just like the slave-owning and feudal classes before them, will try to keep their strife-ridden and poverty-breeding system. The workers can only rely on themselves to build a better world and free themselves through their own class conscious efforts.

Workers make up the vast majority of the population. By workers, we mean the working class. We mean all whose intellectual and physical labour contributes to the development, manufacture and distribution of the goods, services and information that our complex society needs. We mean all those who must sell their physical and mental talents and skills on the labour market, and who depend on the wages and salaries they receive in exchange. We mean white-collar and blue-collar, production and office workers, those who research and develop as well as those who build, distribute and serve. We mean the whole working class, including the unemployed and those forced to settle for part-time or temporary work.

The working class makes everything and it makes everything work. 

 

Humanity must be a unity

 

The “Green” movement has done important work in drawing attention to environmental issues. However, it often evades the question of just who is going to answer these dangers. Technology is not the enemy, but its perversion by the power of capital. Compare the technical powers now available to our species with those of only a few decades ago, and you will see how much things have changed, and how enormous has been the speed of change. In the last twenty years, the advance in productive capacity and speed of communication has affected almost every part of the globe.  Isn’t technology the means to liberate us from the burden of labour?  The plight of millions of people shows otherwise.

Environmental issues are often expressed as if these were a choice between an environmentally sound policy and higher living standards. Such arguments are always based on the assumption that the existing capitalist economic set-up. Many greens seem to blame the modest living standards of ordinary people in industrialised countries for most of the environmental dangers. The ‘Green’ rhetoric has a nasty authoritarian flavour.  Freed from the market, production could be directed to providing for the satisfaction of the needs of everybody avoiding ecological damage. Instead of the environmentalist movement trying to make people feel guilty that we are consuming too much, it becomes possible to show them what collective actions are needed to look after the well-being of us all. We do not want to see the State centrally deciding what would be made and how it would be allocated in the community. Nationalisation and the command economy has proved failures, as predicted by the Socialist Party.  Private ownership of the means of production and their exploitation for profit is at the root of all our troubles.  

 

The capitalist class longs for one thing aside from profit, the base upon which profit rests political and economic stability.  Social unrest and discontent show that the rulers are not in full control. Only a socialist planned world economy can rapidly overcome the many myriad crises people face. Without socialism, capitalism will continue to waste enormous resources and subject the majority of the earth's population to abject poverty,  social and racial inequality, dictatorial regimes. To complete this grim perspective of hunger, insecurity, inequality and oppressive rule, capitalism offers the permanent threat of environmental destruction. Socialism constitutes the only certain guarantee of enduring peace. The best way to fight against the threat of wars is to fight for socialism through class struggle. The World Socialist Movement is faced with a responsibility great and grave. Ideas can be shared. The evolution of ideas has reached breakneck speed with the internet. Changes in ideas are becoming more frequent every day.  The most recent development in the evolution of the idea is within the ecology movement. It starts from a simple premise that if an economic system and an eco-system are not in harmony,  then one will destroy the other. At its heart is the ability to maintain a symbiosis to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising future generations’ ability to meet theirs. And at the heart of sustainability is the notion of stewardship, the duty to act as custodians or trustees for future generations and for all other orders of creation – to behave like responsible tenants of the globe in its entirety.

In the third volume of Capital Marx explains:

“From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth, they are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias [good heads of household].”

 

The Hope Is Socialism

 

Freedom in its truest sense is yet unknown to mankind. The emancipation of labour is essential to the freedom of humanity. The working class is still on all fours, worked, ridden, whipped and stabled, to serve the convenience of its master. Economic freedom will elevate humanity to a higher level than it has ever known. Wealth and leisure for all. Socialism alone stresses the importance of the individual in a free society. 

Our system is based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production in our hands, in the hands of the workers. This will permit us to begin a planned socialist economy.

Look behind the mask of propaganda and lies that are told about wars and you will find, no matter what the country, that this is a gigantic struggle between the capitalist powers for land, raw material, markets, cheap labour, in a word, for PROFITS!  The aims of one nation’s capitalism are essentially the same as those of all other capitalist countries.

 Owners and capitalists do not sufficiently exploit the means of production they own and prevent others from exploiting them, partly for incompetence and indifference, and largely because of a system that often makes profits decrease with abundance and increase with the shortage. Because of the disorder inherent in the individualistic economy, there are unbalances between one place and the other, overproduction crises, etc., but all in all the general production is always on the verge of shortages.

The Socialist Party’s aim is to replace the 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 the 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.

 Our aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed out by a system of regimentation. Nor shall we interfere with the 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. The idea of a cooperative commonwealth has to be supported by a majority of the people. We do not believe in change by violence.

The essence of the capitalist system is the ownership and control of the materials and tools of production and distribution by a small class whose legal title to the lands, forests, mines, transport, quarries, mills, factories, and other industrial and commercial utilities and plants gives them control over the lives of the working masses. The workers subsist in a new form of slavery, wherein labour-power is paid for by wages, and the bare chance to live depends upon employment by some capitalist master. There is but one solution for the ills of capitalist society, but one way for the workers to achieve freedom and human life — the way of the social revolution.

Under this system, each one is forever pitted against the other one. We want a system in which we can live side by side like brothers and sisters. With socialism, we would have real democracy. Socialism does not mean equal pay to all but about ending the wages system.