A New World to Come

 

The toiling millions, find it impossible to live in the increasing austere conditions everywhere and some  are getting ready to end capitalism and to establish socialism. As Marx said:

“Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital . . . grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation, but with this grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of capitalist production itself.”

Reformists have always presented their conception of the gradual rise in the standards of the workers and their progressive acceptance of capitalist evolution as the way to socialism, bringing about improved conditions for labour, lending an air of plausibility to the theories about the advancing standards of the working class under capitalism. But the truth of Marx stands out with crystal clarity.

 As the Communist Manifesto says:

“pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth...it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society . . . because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave in his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him.” 

The unrest of the working people is worldwide as unemployment balloons and one wave of wage-cuts follows another. The developed world is not exempt from the growing global movement of resistance. Workers, faced by intolerable conditions, are exhibiting the initial characteristic signs of radicalisation in strikes, protests and militancy. The possibility of revolution begins to menace capitalism. There is a revolutionary storm brewing. The producers suffer intolerable exploitation and misery from capitalist conditions. 

The policy of the ruling class is to try to find a way out of the crisis by throwing its burden upon the shoulders of the working class. This is being done by a vast system of starving the unemployed, wage-cuts, speed-up and inflation schemes. Under capitalism, science is a slave to the class interests of the bourgeoisie.

Capitalism is doomed. The capitalist system of private ownership of industry and land, production for profit, and exploitation of the workers is reaching the end of its course. It has outlived its historic mission. The limited progress that capitalism has accomplished for humanity has been achieved at the cost of incredible misery, poverty, ignorance and slaughter of the working class. Capitalism has created the objective conditions for socialism. But it can go no further. The workers of the world are getting ready for their great social task of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism. They are freeing themselves from the illusion that capitalism provides the way to prosperity.

Socialism will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the anarchy in production, it will abolish all forces of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will represent a united commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energies to the struggle against the forces of nature, to the development and strengthening of its own collective might. The future socialist society will be free of the State. With private property in industry and land abolished (but, of course, not in articles of personal use), with exploitation of the toilers ended, and with the capitalist class finally defeated and all classes liquidated, there will then be no further need for the State, which in its essence, is an organ of class repression. In the words of Engels, the State will “wither away” and be replaced by a scientific-technical “administration of things.” 

The guiding principle will be: “From each according to ability, to each according to needs.” That is, the distribution of life necessities—food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare etc.—will be free, without let or hindrance.

Socialist production, carried out upon the most efficient basis and freed from the drains of capitalist exploiters, will provide such an abundance that there will be plenty for all with a minimum of effort. There will then be no need for pinch-penny measures. 

Capitalism is a crime against humanity

 

The whole world is now chained to the capitalist system. The immediate aim of the socialist movement is to overthrow the capitalist class and the creation of a class-free and state-free society in which the guiding principle will be ’From each according to ability, to each according to need’. As the Communist Manifesto explains “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Capitalism is deeply concerned that the workers do not get this message that the capitalists and their governments cannot cure their problems. The old tricks and slogans  are no longer potent. Pessimism and confusion begin to appear. As the capitalists intensify their drive against the workers’ standards of living, they at the same time increase their propaganda about the impending return of prosperity. The burden of their song is that this is “just another crisis,” that the crises of the past have been overcome and have been followed by “prosperity,” and that the same thing must happen again. The cultivation of such prosperity illusions is one of the principal methods of the capitalists to break the resistance of the workers against wage-cuts and labour intensification

The revolution will be won not with guns, but with words, with argument and persuasion. The capitalist system, with its mounting economic misery, exploitation, racism, war and religious terrorism is already full of violence. Working people suffering under the burdens of recurring and multiple crises, are discontented and want to find a way out of their intolerable situation. Wholesale poverty and hunger  is the order of the day across much of the world. The capitalists who have callously imposed austerity policies upon our fellow workers have, however, been very carefully looked after their own interests. The capitalists waste the gigantic booty in their possession luxurious living, by the creation of hordes of parasitic occupations, by an immense military  to plunder and pillage others,  leaving much of the planet’s population to actually starve and die for want of the barest necessities of life.

The fundamental weaknesses of the foundations of capitalism hastens  the socialist revolution. The basic contradiction of capitalism, the source of all its weakness and of its final dissolution, is found in the fact that this system does not carry on production for the benefit of society as a whole but for the profit of a relatively small owning class. The great industries by which society must live are owned by private individuals who ruthlessly exploit the people who work in these industries. Under capitalism production is regulated not by the needs of the people  but by whether or not the capitalist class can make a profit by such production; commodities are not produced primarily for use, but for profit. The system of private ownership and production for profit generates the whole series of contradictions and conflicts—economic, political and social—which torment present day society, causing disruption in the economic life and violent struggles between individual capitalists, between social classes and between capitalist states. Under capitalism there is and can be no general plan of production to fit social needs. Capitalist production is anarchic. The innumerable individual capitalists and companies, ruthlessly exploiting the toiling masses, produce whatever they think they can sell by dint of sharp competition with each other. 

War is inevitable under the capitalist system.  The capitalist consciously use war as a weapon for furthering their interests just as they do tariffs and free-trade. Frequently, they hide their war plans behind a mask of peace-keeping and humanitarian intervention. They cold-bloodedly send many to slaughter in order to eliminate their competitors and to subjugate whole populations to their programmes of exploitation. Capitalists consider war as a necessary part of their business. Many  politicians believe that at this time a foreign war would do them a great deal more good than the risks of domestic insurrection and revolution. The world stands in the most imminent danger of shorrible blood baths. The whole capitalist system is a complicated diplomatic labyrinths of war alliances and antagonisms, bred of and stoked by economic rivalry.

The Socialist Party rejects the artificial national boundaries imposed by capitalism and the state to segregate and divide the workers into hostile camps. The nation-state is not a natural community. Nationalism, must not be confused with one’s love for the place and the people with whom one lives alongside. National self-determination is not synonymous with the freedom of individuals, groups communities and certainly not with social revolution. Minorities, struggling to escape the domination of central governments to establish states of their own, will only find themselves shackled by new rulers. The socialist alternative to nationalism is a state-free cooperative commonwealth of various peoples with all other peoples of the world

Socialism, the alternative to capitalism

 

The oldest existing socialist party in the UK has been propagating the alternative to capitalism since 1904

Socialism is almost globally misunderstood and misrepresented. Socialism will be a basic structural change to society, and many of the things that most people take for granted, as "just the way things have to be", can and must be changed to establish socialism.

People tend to accept as true the things they hear over and over again. But repetition doesn't make things true. Because the truth and the facts often contradict "common knowledge", socialists have to show that "common knowledge" is wrong. That takes more words than just accepting the status quo.

Commodity production is organised within the constraints of the circulation of capital. This capital can accumulate, maintain its level or become depleted. The economic pressure on capital is that of accumulation, the alternative is bankruptcy. The production and distribution of goods are entirely subordinate to the pressure on capital to accumulate. Therefore the practical, technical organisation of production is entirely separate from the economic organisation of the accumulation of capital in which cost/price, and value factors play a vital part. The economic signals of the market are not signals to produce useful things. They signal the prospects of profit and capital accumulation, If there is a profit to be made then production will take place; if there is no prospect of profi, then production will not take place. Profit not need is the deciding factor.

This market system, involving the circulation of capital, generates commodity values which are brought into a relationship of exchange in the market, so that value , surplus to the value of labour-power, embodied in commodities is realised through sales. When enterprises calculate costs as a relationship of labour-time to output this is not with a view to passing on socially useful information about the organisation of production. They are calculating costs plus the average rate of profit. Through the exchange of labour-power for wages, capital is invested in the power of workers to produce goods. It is with active labour functioning as deployed capital that capital expands. Labour-power generates more values than it consumes. These surplus values belong to the enterprise in the material form of commodities which are then sold on the market. This is where capital realises its self-expansion and thereby accumulates. The market price of commodities produced must exceed the price of the materials and labour-power required to produce the. This is what costing is all about, it has nothing to do with the practical organisation of production In its overall effect the subordination of useful production to the accumulation of capital distorts and constrains social production. The market is at every point in the system a barrier to exchange between production, distribution and social needs. The circulation of capital confines useful labour within a self-enclosed system of exchangelabour-power. Labour is activated by an exchange of labour-power for wages and this is determined by the capacity of the market to provide profit through sales.

In a socialist society, there will be no money and no exchange and no barter. Goods will be voluntarily produced, and services voluntarily supplied to meet people's needs. People will freely take the things they need. Socialism will be concerned solely with the production, distribution and consumption of useful goods and services in response to definite needs. It will integrate social needs with the material means of meeting those needs.

Common ownership is not state ownership. State ownership is merely the ownership by the capitalist class as a whole, instead of by individual capitalists, and the government then runs the state enterprises to serve the capitalist class. In the self-proclaimed "communist" states the state enterprises serve those who control the party/state apparatus. The working class does not own or control. It produces for a privileged minority.

Common ownership means that society as a whole owns the means and instruments for distributing wealth. It also implies the democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, for if everyone owns, then everyone must have equal right to control the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

The task of capitalist ideology is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life ,the task of Marxism is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent. As soon as people accept money as an equivalent for life, the sale of living activity becomes a condition for their physical and social survival. Life is exchanged for survival. Creation and production come to mean sold activity. As soon as people accept the terms of this exchange, daily activity takes the form of universal prostitution.

Capitalist ideology treats land, capital, and the products of labor, as things which have the power to produce, to create value, to work for their owners, to transform the world. This is what Marx called the fetishism which characterizes people's everyday conceptions, and which is raised to the level of dogma by Economics. For the economist, living people are things - factors of production -, and things live money - works, Capital - produces .When men refuse to sell their labour, money cannot perform even the simplest tasks, because money does not " work ". The notion of the "productivity of capital," and particularly the detailed measurement of that "productivity," are inventions of the "science" of Economics.

The production of surplus value is a condition of survival, not for the population, but for the capitalist system. Surplus value is the portion of the value of commodities produced by labour which is not returned to the labourers. It can be expressed either in commodities or in money , but this does not alter the fact that it is an expression for the materialized labour which is stored in a given quantity of products. Since the products can be exchanged for an "equivalent" quantity of money, the money "stands for," or represents, the same value as the products. The money can, in turn, be exchanged for another quantity of products of "equivalent" value. The ensemble of these exchanges, which take place simultaneously during the performance of capitalist daily life, constitutes the capitalist process of circulation. It is through this process that the metamorphosis of surplus value into Capital takes place.

The portion of value which does not return to labour, namely surplus value, allows the capitalist to exist, and it also allows him to do much more than simply exist. The capitalist invests a portion of this surplus value; he hires new workers and buys new means of production; he expands his dominion. What this means is that the capitalist accumulates new labour, both in the form of the living labour he hires and of the past labour (paid and unpaid) which is stored in the materials and machines he buys.

The capitalist class as a whole accumulates the surplus labour of society, but this process takes place on a social scale and consequently cannot be seen if one observes only the activities of an individual capitalist. It must be remembered that the products bought by a given capitalist as instruments have the same characteristics as the products he sells. A first capitalist sells instruments to a second capitalist for a given sum of value, and only a part of this value is returned to workers as wages; the remaining part is surplus value, with which the first capitalist buys new instruments and labor. The second capitalist buys the instruments for the given value, which means that he pays for the total quantity of labor rendered to the first capitalist, the quantity of labour which was remunerated as well as the quantity performed free of charge. This means that the instruments accumulated by the second capitalist contain the unpaid labour performed for the first. The second capitalist, in turn, sells his products for a given value, and returns only a portion of this value to his laborers; he uses the remainder for new instruments and labour.

If the whole process were squeezed into a single time period, and if all the capitalists were aggregated into one, it would be seen that the value with which the capitalist acquires new instruments and labour is equal to the value of the products which he did not return to the producers. This accumulated surplus labour is capital.

In terms of capitalist society as a whole, the total capital is equal to the sum of unpaid labour performed by generations of human beings whose lives consisted of the daily alienation of their living activity. In other words capital, in the face of which men sell their living days, is the product of the sold activity of men, and is reproduced and expanded every day a man sells another working day, every moment he decides to continue living the capitalist form of daily life.

Matters little if capitalism is small or large - either way, it is based on robbery.

The choice of "good" or "bad" capitalism is little different than choosing between typhoid or cholera

Solidarity

 More than 100 campaigners have gathered in Edinburgh to foil an "immigration raid". The crowd assembled amid reports that two immigration vans had arrived at Nicolson Square officers and were attempting to detain people from a nearby restaurant on Potterrow. 

William Morris

 

William Morris designer of furniture and wallpaper, printer, architect, novelist and poet and Socialist agitator.

"We believe that to hold out hopes of amelioration of the condition of the workers, to be wrung out of the necessities of the rival factions of our privileged rulers, is delusive and mischievous." Letter of resignation from the SDF, William Morris

"Those who believe that they can deal with capitalism in a piecemeal way very much underrate the strength of the tremendous organisation under which we live… ; it will not suffer itself to be dismembered, nor to lose anything which is its essence…" - William Morris 1886

"The palliatives over which many worthy people are busying themselves now are useless because they are but unorganised partial revolts against a vast, wide-spreading, grasping organisation which will, with the unconscious instinct of a plant, meet every attempt at bettering the conditions of the people with an attack on a fresh side."

"I believe that the Socialists will certainly send members to Parliament when they are strong enough to do so; in itself I see no harm in that, so long as it is understood that they go there as rebels, and not as members of the governing body prepared to pass palliative measures to keep Society alive."

“. . . it should be our special aim to make Socialists, by putting before people, and especially the working classes, the elementary truths of Socialism; since we feel sure, in the first place, that in spite of the stir in the ranks of labour there are comparatively few who understand what Socialism is, or have had opportunities of arguing on the subject with those who have at least begun to understand it; and, in the second place, we are no less sure that before any definite Socialist action can be attempted, it must be backed up by a great body of intelligent opinion – the opinion of a great mass of people who are already Socialists, people who know what they want, and are prepared to accept the responsibilities of self-government, which must form a part of their claims.” - Hammersmith Socialist Society , Statement of Principles , 1890

"This time when people are excited about Socialism, and when many who know nothing about it think themselves Socialists, is the time of all others to put forward the simple principles of Socialism regardless of the policy of the passing hour. I say for us to make Socialists is the business at present, and at present I do not think we can have any other useful business. Those who are not really Socialists - who are Trade Unionists, disturbance-breeders, or what not - will do what they are impelled to do, and we cannot help it. At the worst there will be some good in what they do; but we need not and cannot heartily work with them, when we know that their methods are beside the right way. Our business, I repeat, is the making of Socialists, i.e. convincing people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles into practice. Until we have that mass of opinion, action for a general change that will benefit the whole people is impossible. Have we that body of opinion? Surely not. . .Therefore, I say, make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else that is useful, and preaching and teaching is not out of date for that purpose; but rather for those who, like myself, do not believe in State Socialism, it is the only rational means of attaining to the new Order of Things " - Commonweal 15 November 1890,

"We had better confine ourselves to the old teaching and preaching of Socialism pure and simple, which is I fear more or less neglected amidst the said futile attempt to act as a party when we have no party"

"I confess I am no great lover of political tactics, the sordid squabble of an election is unpleasant enough for a straight-forward man to deal in: yet I cannot fail to see that it is necessary somehow to get hold of the machine which has at its back the executive power of the country, however that may be done and that by means of the ballot-box will, to say the least of it, be little indeed compared with what would be necessary to effect it by open revolt; besides that
the change effected by peaceful means would be done more completely and with little chance, indeed with no chance of counter-revolution. On the other hand I feel sure that some action is even now demanded by the growth of Socialism, and will be more and more imperatively demanded as time goes on. In short I do not believe in the possible success of revolt until the Socialist party has grown so powerful in numbers that it can gain its end by peaceful means, and that therefore what is called violence will never be needed, unless indeed the reactionaries were to refuse the decision of the ballot-box and try the matter by arms; which after all I am pretty sure they could not attempt by the time things had gone as far as that. As to the attempt of a small minority to terrify a vast majority into accepting something which they do not understand, by spasmodic acts of violence, mostly involving the death or mutilation of non-combatants, I can call that nothing else than sheer madness" - "What we have to look for" spring 1895

"As to mere politics, Absolutism, Constitutionalism, Republicanism. All have been tried in our day and under our present system, and all have failed in dealing with the real evils of life.
Nor, on the other hand, will certain incomplete schemes of social reform now before the public solve the question.
Co-operation so-called—that is, competitive co-operation for profit—would merely increase the number of small joint-stock capitalists, under the mask of creating an aristocracy of labour, while it would intensify the severity of labour by its temptations to overwork.
Nationalisation of the land alone, which many earnest and sincere persons are now preaching, would be useless so long as labour was subject to the fleecing of surplus value inevitable under the Capitalist system.
No better solution would be that State Socialism, by whatever name it may be called, whose aim it would be to make concessions to the working class while leaving the present system of capital and wages in operation: no number of merely administrative changes; until the workers are in a possession of all political power, would make any real approach to Socialism.
The Socialist League therefore aims at the realisation of complete Revolutionary Socialism, and well knows that this can never happen in any one country without the help of the workers of all civilisation." - Manifesto of the Socialist League, drafted by Morris and Bax and adopted in 1885

"As long as men are slaves, woman can be no better. Let the women's rights societies adopt that last sentence as a motto - and act on it"

"...the interests of the workmen are the same in all countries and they can never really be enemies of each other"

Irish Nationalism - would merely impose a "new tyranny" on the peasantry by turning them into "...a fresh Irish proletariat to be robbed for the benefit of national capitalists".

"Undoubtedly when there is a parliament in Dublin the struggle of the Irish people for freedom will have to be begun again".

"Of course, as long as people are ignorant, compromise plus sentiment always looks better to them than the real article."

"Intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel. If our ideas of a new society are anything more than a dream, these three qualities must animate the due effective majority of the working people: and then I say the thing will be done."

Religion - Divide and Rule

 

Religion is not simply a jumble of confused ideas. It is a powerful weapon in the hands of the capitalist class. It divides us and blinds us to the class action that is required to overcome the menace of capitalism. Religion is the ideological expression of a long-gone world and its ancient social conditions, a world of superstition, slavery and little education. Far from providing an answer to today’s problems, it tells us to put our faith in the supernatural hopes of a past age. Instead of uniting us as a class, we are to become meek and mild and to submit to the whims of an ancient god. From the dawn of civilisation, religion has been a weapon of political domination. The working class though not as yet hostile to religion, are nevertheless becoming increasingly indifferent to it. Religion is dying but not yet dead. None of us is born Christian or Muslim or anything else. We’re born with no knowledge or beliefs in any god. In fact we’re all born into a state of atheism. Wherever the accident of birth sees each child born, each individual is born totally dependent and without language or religion. A child develops speaking the language of its home. A child raised in a religion-free zone will not acquire religious knowledge. For this to occur it would need to be exposed habitually to ideas, concepts and beliefs by those around it. How many people make a conscious choice of religion and how many simply continue with what they were born into as part of their traditional culture, religious or not?

Belief in religion – any religion – hampers the ability to think objectively, particularly about social and political issues. The disappearance of all religious beliefs should be seen as an essential part of our struggle for socialism and not just as a fringe irrelevance. It isn’t simply a question of religion being false, or brutal or divisive; it is a weapon of the ruling class, a bulwark in the way of the emancipation of the working class, a hurdle to be overcome in the progress to socialism nor could it be overcome while the conditions that nourished it continued to exist. Thus, the socialist sees religion as an integral part of the class struggle.

Despite occasional public pronouncements that the West had no quarrel with mainstream Islam, there is no doubt whatever that, with help from the media and repeated insinuations from various officials, the widespread impression has been created that opposition to, hatred of and terrorism against the West is essentially “a Muslim thing” and that the Islamic faith itself carries the seeds of violence and terrorism. Thus we see that a difference in religion has offered the opportunity for capitalism to denigrate as scapegoats the Islamic world: and to drive a wedge of suspicion and distrust between western workers and their eastern counterparts – a good present-day example of the old imperial dodge of “divide and rule”.

A Society Without Masters or Slaves

 As much as people are opposed to war, history teaches us that mere opposition is not enough. Socialists are more than just opposed to war. We are opposed to a system that is the direct cause of war situations and finally of war itself. What is this system? It means private ownership, working for wages, the buying and selling of goods, and the acceptance of trade, both national and international, as the only way people can get the things they need. Armies and police forces exist and function for the sole purpose of maintaining and protecting property institutions. This is the main reason for the division of the world into national competitive groups. Socialists want a world based upon voluntary co-operation, in order that the products of men’s efforts can be of free access—a world where money will not be necessary. We want people to break out of this vicious circle that perpetuates the ideas of property society. We want their thinking to be socialist thinking.

Let’s examine the conditions in which we live our lives. What do we find? We work long and hard. We produce endless wealth. From the depths of the earth we extract minerals and ores. We build machines, and we construct roads and railways. All the wealth of the world is the product of our hands, of our sweat and blood. Yet what kind of wages do we get for this forced labour?

If things were as they should be, we would be in decent housing, we would possess good healthcare, and would never have to suffer any need. But we know well enough that our wages never suffice for our living. Our bosses push down wages, force us to work overtime – in a word oppress us in every way. And then when we give voice to our dissatisfaction, we are thrown out of work without further ado.

All those to whom we turn for help are the servants and allies of the bosses. They keep us in darkness, they keep us ignorant so that we shall not dare to fight for an improvement of our conditions. They keep us in slavery, they arrest and imprison everyone who shows any signs of resistance against the oppressors. We are forbidden to struggle. Ignorance and slavery – these are the means through which the capitalists and the government that serves them oppress us. We can expect nothing from them, we can rely only upon ourselves.  Our strength lies in our unity and our stubborn resistance against the bosses. Our masters understand where our strength lies and they try in every way to divide us and hide the identity of interests of all workers.

If we unite together, then the time is not far off when we will be in a position  to join the common struggle of the workers of all lands, without distinction of race or creed, against the capitalists of the whole world. Our strong arm will rise and the chains of slavery will fall. The toilers of the world will arise and strike fear in the hearts of the capitalists and of all other enemies of the working class.