Against our capitalist enemy

  

"My friends, never put your trust in, and never follow after, men who pretend to be able to manufacture a revolution. A revolution, a rolling away of the whole from evil to good, from wrong to right, from injustice and oppression to righteousness and equal rule, never yet was manufactured, and never will be manufactured..." - Rev. Joseph Rayner Stephens, Chartist  

The objective of socialists is the abolition of man’s exploitation by man. Socialism is as staunchly opposed to the conquest and exploitation, by whatever means, of race by race, nation by nation, or state by state, as it is to the exploitation of man by man.

Socialism is conceived as a society without exploitation, organised democratically for the common good. Socialism would mean the end of economic anxiety and insecurity for all. The ruling class does not like reasoned rational thought; it prefers regimented minds. Capitalism has shown that it cannot advance civilisation, but only drive it further along the road of conflict, human degradation, barbarism and ruin. It simply makes no sense to us when we are told that approaching capitalist barbarism diminishes the prospects of socialism and it is better for us to give up the fight. That is the talk of demoralised wage slaves. It is precisely the fact that capitalism is a growing threat that we should redouble our efforts to bury it. We reiterate our trust in the working people and dedicate our organisation to socialist emancipation.

Economic democracy means the end of the capitalist market, whose only goal is to gain the highest profit through the maximum exploitation of the working class. Labour-power will no longer be a commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. Workers will no longer be exploited. Workers will collectively own and run the workplaces. Workers will democratically control all of society. Production will be based on the needs and wants of all working people, taking into account environmental protection, conservation of resources and the needs of workers of other countries. Because we will be working and producing to meet our own needs and not for the profit of others, and because we will own and control the technology and use it to meet real human needs, we will be able to provide everyone with a comfortable and secure livelihood working far less than we do now. The workweek will be reduced and leisure time increased for all workers. We can't know exactly how the revolution will take place. But we do know that without organisation -- both political and economic, it can never take place.

Marx used the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" to mean control by the working class and excluding the property-owning bourgeoisie. He did not mean dictatorship as the word is often used today, as one-man rule or the one-party state.

All social wealth is ultimately the product of labour and labour alone. This includes the factories, technology and all other means of production, which are the product of past labour.

Capitalist development has placed the modern facilities of production under the lock and key of private ownership. As a result, the working class majority suffers from growing privation and all the social ills emanating from that maldistribution.

The only solution is for the working class to organise and establish economic democracy. In doing so, it can reestablish and reclaim possession of the wealth that past generations of workers created.

Since this wealth was created by the collective labour of society, it rightfully belongs to all society. The fact that it today is privately owned by a few is the result of it being "legally" stolen from the working class. Society thus has the right to reclaim the property in the name of human survival, social well-being and progress.

When a majority of society asserts its inalienable right to reorganise the structure of society, it must break the bonds of the old system's precepts. The new society will not "compensate" any capitalist, large or small, for taking over the means of production that rightly belongs to all society. In liberating society from all the constraints and evils imposed by the system of private property. Former capitalists need not lead deprived lives under economic democracy. They will be free to join former members of the working class in the community of free, self-governing producers. Like everyone else, they will be able to enjoy a life of material abundance and security, with a shortened workweek and under improved conditions. They will enjoy all the other numerous social benefits of life under a sane, healthy and peaceful social system and will enjoy the fruits of economic democracy.

Capitalism: The Real Enemy

 

Economic, social and environmental problems cannot be solved under capitalism. Working for a new system is the only practical course of action.

What is fair about the conservative mantra, "A fair day's wages for a fair day’s work..."? What is fair about a pickpocket economic system wherein capitalist profit derives from labour that the capitalist does not pay for? Socialism will harbour no such paradox as poverty in the midst of plenty. This is because workers will have united on both the political and industrial fields to inaugurate social control and worker administration of all industries and services, thus ending capitalism and wage slavery. What is more, it follows that in so doing they, the workers, will have also dumped into the garbage-bin of history the very thing that they are today struggling to get more of! MONEY. No more money? Are socialists mad? Not so. How, then, will a money-free society make available goods that are necessary for life and well-being? 

Disregarding a possible need for rationing in the immediate aftermath of a socialist political victory, the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties of the World Socialist Movement advocate free access.   We believe that deprived of the minority ownership of the means of production, the drudgery of work (and even within such a system, our natural creativity shapes our workday into as pleasurable and challenging an endeavour as possible) will be replaced by harmony between our product and our relationship to it. In short, we will all want to work as much as possible because the distinction between work and art (or free time) will have been eradicated. 

Today we have no problem with one-quarter of the workforce engaged in socially necessary products and services while the remaining three-quarters either produce unnecessary services such as accounting, banking, ticketing or policing, or are unemployed, or are being massacred in wars, or are dying of illnesses secondary to malnutrition. If a relatively small percent of workers' labour is able to maintain the millions of unemployed, "socially unnecessary" workers, starving workers, or murdering workers, then it will hardly be such a bad thing if all of humanity, now liberated of wage labour forever, sustains an ongoing percent (perhaps even half of the population at a time would be a realistic figure for all we know) whatever class they were in before. In fact, laziness, as Paul Lafargue once argued, should be the ethic replacing the current workaholism. We want socialism to be free, don't we?  Socialism will not be founded on the principle of "who does not work, neither shall he eat", also known by the distorted Marxist principle to make it "from each according to ability, to each according to work", a principle used to justify big salaries for civil servant bureaucrats,  a principle that says nothing about the needs of those who are unable to work -- the sick, the disabled, the old, the young. 

Capitalism has already solved -- potentially, at least -- the problem of scarcity, so that rationing would not be needed in a Socialist society. But, to be realistic, Socialism may be confronted by serious problems from time to time -- earthquakes, epidemics, crop failures, etc. -- which would put temporary and unusual pressure on a system based on 'free access.' Then, there may be local situations where some form of rationing might be necessary on a temporary basis. In such a situation, if the Socialist principle of "to each according to their needs" applied, priority would be given to those most in need, and -- if their need was less not necessarily to those who work hardest. 

Our goal seeks to bring the entire economy under the ownership and control of all the people. A democratic economy will provide useful and satisfying jobs for all workers. It will end production for-profit and will produce to meet human needs. By eliminating the profit motive, will end waste and pollution and will make the conditions of work as safe, comfortable and gratifying as possible. the workers will need a political party to spread the idea of social ownership, and to gain the support of the majority at the polls. When this is achieved, the workers will assume control of their workplaces, and manage them democratically. Socialism is not state control from the top down. It's a state-free democracy from the bottom up. A workers' political party with a single demand -- The Workplaces to the Workers! -- will educate and rally the majority for a revolution at the ballot box, the people's mandate for economic democracy.

Create a good society for the World. Replace bosses' economic dictatorship with a peoples' economic democracy

 

Two Very Sick Symptoms of Capitalism.

Last month you read about the devastating fire which destroyed Lytton B.C. The residents are dealing with confusion about where to go for support. It's a problem some of them think could be solved with the support of the provincial and federal governments. There have been fundraisers, but how many of them are trustworthy is a moot point.

 Patrick Michell, chief of the Kanaka Band in the area said that determining the legitimacy of fundraisers has been a huge problem for the community.

 To quote,''...I am concerned about scams, wasted donations, profiteering and ensuring sustainable supports given the time it’s going to take to get the Lytton 1200 homes.'' 

So, we have two very sick symptoms of capitalism at work here: governments who don't care and those who seek to profit from others’ misfortune.

S.P.C. Members.

The Capitalist Class Don’t Give a Damn.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford want to increase greenhouse gas-fired power plants by 300% by 2030. To help fuel this massive increase in fossil fuel electricity and climate-damaging pollution, Ontario Power Generation recently bought 3 gas plants for $2.8 billion. 

Obviously, Ontario will not be able to meet its climate target for 2030. 

This is just another instance of the capitalist class not giving a damn about the well-being of the population.

S.P.C. Members.

Imagining Socialism

 

The poverty afflicting the world’s people is not due to moral defects in its victims. It is not due to "laziness" or "." Nor because of too many babies. It is due to the capitalist system under which goods are produced for sale with the aim of making profits. Capitalist profits come from the exploitation of the mass of workers who have only one thing to sell -- their labour-power. The average price they get for this in the jobs market amounts to a so-called living wage. And millions of workers get far less than the minimum necessary to make ends meet. But the chance to earn even a meagre "living wage" is periodically denied to numerous workers. This happens whenever their employers can't sell the goods their employees produce. At such times, workers who have been living from hand to mouth while employed are soon destitute. Worse yet, capitalism has reached the stage where millions of workers are permanently doomed to unemployment and pauperdom. And the increased use of automation is steadily swelling their number. Poverty is a consequence of the normal functioning of capitalism. It is an evil that persists under this system despite constant increases in productivity.

Our natural environment and resources are rapidly being destroyed: Our atmosphere is choked with toxic fumes. Our water systems is poisoned by industrial pollution. Our forests are being razed to the ground and ashes. Our soil is being contaminated and our food is adulterated by chemical additives. What is responsible for the suicidal destruction of our natural heritage? It is the rapacity and greed of the class that owns the industry. Driven by a hunger for profits, and by the pressure of competition, capitalists operate with a wanton disregard for our health and safety. To lower their production costs and boost their profits, they wilfully use our air and water as their private sewer.  But the destruction of our natural environment will not be stopped by blaming particular individuals or corporations. It is the capitalist system that is at fault. The laws of economic survival inherent in this system dictate the actions of the capitalist class. And the capitalist who hesitates to engage in the same antisocial acts as his competitors soon faces bankruptcy. There is no room for human considerations in the capitalist system. It is time we returned the compliment by forming a society in which there is no room for capitalist greed.

People born into the working class are fated to stay wage-slaves, with very few exceptions. While some may rise to supervisory or acquire professional positions, even there they remain hirelings subject to the capitalist will.  Capitalism is a most unfree system. It is, in fact, economic slavery because it compels that majority to toil for the benefit of the capitalist minority. The situation is not improving. The trend is definitely the other way. More and more small businesses going bust squeezed out by their much larger competitors, more and more employees becoming gig uber workers without steady hours or even contractual conditions. New automated technology is displacing workers. Capitalist exploitation is the breeder of poverty, racism, corruption and crime. It is the underlying cause of wars. There exist ample reasons to condemn this economic system.  

Capitalism is a despotic, anti-social power, political as well as economic, that places ownership and control of industry in the unaccountable capitalist minority's hands. The capitalists make all the momentous decisions affecting our lives. They decide whether the industries are to run in the first place or are to be shut down or moved to another region. They decide what is to be produced, how much, and where it is to be marketed. They decide what laws are to be enacted, what policies are to be followed, what changes are to be made in our environment. And, naturally, every capitalist decision is shaped by the aim of maximising profits. Since we, the working people own no property other than their personal possessions (which obviously is not the kind of property that confers power and influence), we are excluded from participation in decisions on which their lives depend. We are mere passive onlookers. The political process, though ostensibly democratic, simply masks the decrees of the handful who compose the ruling class. The vast wealth of the capitalists gives them political ascendancy and assures their control of the government -- a government that has become inherently disposed to foster capitalist interests no matter who holds its offices; and that is as ready to crush rebelling workers as any police state.

These are the economic and political facts that characterise capitalism as a social system. One thing is certain: This system cannot be made to work in the interest of everyone. No reformers, however sincere, can possibly reform it. For capitalism feeds on human exploitation, and inequality is its breath of life. More than ever before, the events of recent years prove that material facts, not men, determine the course of history. The material facts of capitalism are rushing this nation from crisis to crisis. If these crises are to be overcome and our society made to serve the interests of all, capitalism must go.

 The Socialist Party rejects capitalism in its entirety, proposes a new form of society, socialism, that can serve the needs of all people in this modern age. World socialism means all power to make social decisions will be vested in the people. The means of producing all goods and services will be owned collectively by all the people. Production will be carried on to satisfy the people's wants, not for private profit or any government’s profit.  Rationally used, our planet’s resources make possible the production of an abundance that will wipe out every vestige of poverty. We will make use of our natural resources intelligently, using every pertinent science to keep our land bountiful and beautiful.

Use the ballot to affirm our revolutionary right to replace capitalism with socialism.

Our Socialist Plan

 

What is socialism and how can it be established. Socialism speaks to the needs and problems of the working people in a way no other political ideology can. It ties all the many and varied problems confronting people today, from economic crises to racism, from eroding democratic rights to environmental ecocide, back to their common origin in the system of capitalism. Socialism explains the basic reason why people increasingly dissatisfied with the oppression and deteriorating quality of life have not been able to gain the freedom and security they've sought for decades. Around the world, the obvious reality is that the great majority of people have no control over their lives and no way to ensure even the basic necessities of life for themselves and their families. Everywhere, they confront the rule of a small class whose ideas and interests dominate. Socialism exposes superficial excuses for this status quo of inequality and gets to its roots. It shows that tinkering with the system as it is, or waiting for "better times," or relying on politicians, are unsuccessful remedies and keeps the majority from challenging its domination.

 The Socialist Party offers no promises nor mouths appealing slogans.  Our plan is to mobilising the working people into organisations that will enable them to resist and overturn the rule of the capitalist class, and to build a better society, more democratic, more open and freer than any that has ever existed. Anything short of such a revolutionary formula leaves control of society right where it is, in ruling-class hands. And no matter how that control may be "modified," if the ruling power of society is left where it is now, this world is headed for disaster. The tremendous productive potential of the economy will continue to be used for private gain and corporate profit. It will be used, as it is today, to exploit workers on the job, to rape the environment for profit, and to amass mountains of wealth for the few. It will keep pitting worker against worker, race against race, and sex against sex, fighting over scraps while the capitalist class reaps the harvest. A small ruling class will continue to use its monopoly on the means of life to shape the entire course of our lives.

If control of society remains where it is now, the government will remain an instrument for advancing the ends of a ruling minority against the rest. It will continue to serve capitalist interests. The repression will grow more drastic and dangerous. The system will head toward ever-worsening crises and more conflicts. To change course, the political and economic power of society must be transferred from the small ruling class to the working majority. In essence, this is what socialism is all about. Socialism does not mean control by the state, or domination by a party, or the regulation of capitalist rule, or more reforms and bureaucracy. It means the transfer of power over all social institutions and operations to the working people themselves. Revolutionary change can only come through the direct activity of the workers themselves. They must break with the illusion that they have to endure capitalism forever, or are powerless to change society. Through their conscious political and economic organisation, they can not only overturn class-ruled society but, in the same process, build a better one in its place.

Politically, the working class must build a party that stands for their own collective interests. For too long workers have relied on capitalist politicians to speak for them. They must build their own political organisation, to challenge the domination of the capitalist class and help all workers realize how socialism serves their needs, and how it can be won.

Socialism is the common ownership by all the people of the factories, communication networks, mines, transport, land and all other instruments of production. Socialism means production to satisfy human needs, not as under capitalism, for sale and profit. Socialism means direct control and management of the industries and social services by the workers through a democratic administration.  All authority will originate from the working people in the places they dwell and the places where they work,  electing whatever committees or representatives deemed necessary to carry out their decisions and facilitate their wishes. Socialism means an end to economic insecurity and exploitation. It means workers cease to be commodities bought and sold on the job market, and are forced to work as appendages to tools owned by someone else. It means a chance to develop all individual capacities and potentials within a free community of free individuals. It means a class-free society.

Socialism is not government or state ownership. It does not mean a state bureaucracy as was in the ex-U.S.S.R., with the working class oppressed by a new bureaucratic class. It does not mean "nationalisation," or state capitalism of any kind.

 It means a complete end to all capitalist social relations.

To win fellow workers over to socialist freedom requires enormous efforts of organisational and educational work. It requires building a political party of socialism to contest the power of the capitalist class on the political field, and to educate the majority of workers about the need for socialism. You are needed for a better world, to end poverty, racism, wars, environmental disasters and to avert catastrophic climate change.

Our goal always remains the same

 

Capitalism threatens the existence of civilisation and a few say, even of mankind. The pollution of our air, soil and water. Other problems that defy capitalist solutions are wide displacement of people impoverishment of the population, mounting corruption and crime,  racism and xenophobia. All these are symptomatic of a doomed system that is taking us toward social catastrophe. They are a plain warning that we cannot prosper under capitalism. In this grave situation, the Socialist  Party's views deserve the closest attention that capitalism has outlived its usefulness to the majority. And that this obsolete system breeds ever-multiplying evils.

 Capitalism is an economic system in which goods are produced to be sold at a profit. The goods are produced by the working class in industries owned by a small class of capitalist parasites. The capitalist owners of industry become the owners of the products. The workers get for their creative efforts a wage, an amount just sufficient to maintain themselves and their families. 

Only when our economic life has been entirely rebuilt on a new foundation can lasting peace and economic well-being for all be achieved. Production for private profit must be replaced by production for the common good. Instead of letting a tiny useless class appropriate the lion's share of our collective product, the workers who create it must retain its full social value. Likewise, the existing despotic capitalist control of the national economy must yield to democratic management of the industries by the workers who run them. And, of course, to permit the foregoing fundamental changes, the industries and natural resources must become the social property of all the people. We must establish a new society -- a socialist society. Don't, though, get any wrong impression. We mean genuine Marxian socialism and emphatically not the counterfeits with which was the Russian and now the Chinese versions of state-capitalism.

 Socialism is a democratic economic administration where there will be no political State, and no political parties either. The workers themselves will have a democratic mastery of their tools and products -- the indispensable condition of freedom in an industrial age. There can be no peace or economic security without socialism. We cannot solve our tragic problems until we get rid of their capitalist cause. Put your full influence behind the only movement that can transform this country into a model of peace, abundance, freedom and social sanity.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to create a society in which wars will be but evil memories, a society in which poverty will have disappeared, in which freedom and democracy will have become the prevailing order of society for all. Socialism embraces and embodies the hopes and dreams of the ages, a society of peace and abundance. We of the Socialist Party believe that socialism is attained peacefully.

In a socialist society, there will be no private ownership of the land and the industries. When we say this, we are not talking about; your house, or your clothes, or your car, or any of your personal belongings. What we are talking about are the factories, communications, the mines, transport - in short, what is used in the production and distribution of goods. We say that these means of production and distribution must belong to society as a whole. There will be no wage system r. We shall produce for use, rather than for sale with a view to profit for private capitalists. We shall produce the things we want and need rather than the things for which a market exists in which the goods we produce are sold for the profit of the private owners. In a socialist society, we shall have a complete democracy - - an economic democracy. Today ownership and control of industry rest in the hands of a numerically small class (the capitalist class) who contribute nothing to production. The rest of us (the working class) own nothing but our ability to work, whether it be physical or mental, or both.

The unnecessary evil of the system of capitalism has long since outlived its usefulness. A parasitic class, which contributes nothing to human welfare exists in luxury based on the exploitation of another class that, producing everything worthwhile, yet exists in mortal fear of want and degrading misery, and now faces new horrors of environmental destruction to be added to nuclear annihilation in a third world war. In a socialist society, on the other hand, since we shall collectively own the factories and means of production, we shall have full and free access to the means of wealth production and distribution. We shall collectively produce the things we want and need for full and happy lives. It will be to the benefit of all to find new inventions, new means of production, improved means of distribution. Society as a whole will have a vital interest in providing the opportunity to each individual to find the work for which one is best suited and in which one will be happiest. There will be the fullest freedom and opportunity.

Democracy will truly be based on the broadest lines. Democracy in which the final and only power will be the great mass of our people, the useful producers, which in a socialist society will mean everybody. No more will society be split into two contending classes. We shall all be useful producers, collectively owning the means of production and distribution, collectively concerned with producing the most with the least expenditure of human labour, and collectively jealous of the rights of the individual to a full, free life of happiness.

 It is within the power of working people to establish such a society as soon as they recognise the need for it and organise to establish it. The Socialist Party points the way. By supporting it at the ballot box you will say that you demand the end of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. This is the civilised way of revolution. This is the peaceful way to revolution.

The Workplaces to the Workers

 

Socialism will have a mutual understanding as its fundamental principle upon which the future will build. Perhaps you are shaking your head at this point and saying, "All this sounds like heaven on earth. But it can never be. We have to contend with human nature, you know." Are you opposed to helping create a "Heaven on Earth"? Do you actually prefer the hell on earth of today? Are you so different from others? Is your nature so unique that you are the only one against the insecurity of employment and the exploitation under capitalism? Are you the only one yearning for economic freedom and comfortable decent life for yourself and your family? Do you endorse the fear-instilling and intimidating measures used by some politicians to curtail freedom of thought, and encroach upon your liberties? The Socialist Party maintains that the best in men and women will only be brought out by better social and economic conditions.

We seek a socialist world where there will be no private ownership in the necessaries of life, i.e., the industries and the system of communication and distribution, as well as the social services, there will be no political State, no political parties, no politicians, and, accordingly, there will be no State ownership or bureaucratic control of these necessaries of life and where will be no wages system, hence, no exploitation. We shall have common ownership of the necessaries of life. We shall control and administer these. Socialism is a social system under which all the instruments of production, distribution, education, health, etc., are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people and at all times responsible to the people. That is socialism, and nothing short of it is socialism.

On the Left, there are "socialist" parties that have for decades have advocated a hodgepodge of reforms of municipalisation and nationalisation, while the more radical call for cooperatives. All of which would make necessary the retention of the political State and give politicians and civil servants positions of power as the ruling bureaucrats. In their effort to be "all things to all people," they also advocate private ownership of small businesses unaware that the capitalist system fosters accumulation of capital, expansion of markets and leads to centralisation and monopolies. Walmart was once a “mom and pop” neighbourhood store, Bank of America was formerly a community bank for Italian immigrants.

The Left are reformists seeking political power by making meaningless promises in the name of "socialism," while the Socialist Party is a revolutionary political party whose aim is, and always has been, the abolition of capitalism.

 The World Socialist Movement is the only organisation that stands uncompromisingly for the abolition of capitalism and denies that there is any possibility of real or lasting improvement for the vast majority, the working class, within the framework of the capitalist system. On the contrary, the Socialist Party warns that the longer capitalism lasts, the worse becomes the condition of the workers as a class, and the more difficult will become the transition from capitalism to socialism. And this is despite the persistent efforts of the progressives and liberals with their reforms, whether they pretend to be socialists or not. The Socialist Party has learned through the hard school of experience that reformism leads away from the progress of socialism. Every reform granted by capitalism can be a concealed measure of reaction. Therefore, we contend that capitalism must be abolished.

Support the Socialist Party and its socialist reconstruction of society. Do not be deceived by those who, lacking revolutionary principles, opportunistically trading on the word "socialism." 

 Are you going to keep the system of private ownership? Will you attempt to preserve a social system that has proved its incapacity to solve the problem of poverty in the midst of plenty? Do you favour prolonging the life of a society in which a few own all the means of wealth-production, in which labour-saving machinery, instead of lightening the workers’ toil, throws people out of jobs onto the scrap heap? Must you permit mankind to pass through still another vicious cycle of recession, crisis and conflict?

 Or shall you do the common-sense thing, make the means of production our collective property, abolish the exploitation of the many by the few, and use our species’ genius to create abundance for all?

There are certain things you must understand. The first is that we can expect no help whatsoever from the beneficiaries of capitalism. Here and there an individual capitalist may see the handwriting on the wall and join with the workers, but as a class, the capitalists, like the slave-owning and feudal classes before them, will strive to prolong their poverty-ridden, war-breeding system. The workers of hand and brain must build this new world and emancipate themselves through their own class conscious efforts. Another thing to understand is this; though the workers are in the overwhelming majority, and have tremendous potential power, they can apply their collective strength to the task at hand only through organising politically and by availing themselves fully of the peaceful method for the conquest of the capitalist political State.