“An injury to one is an injury to all.”

 

Mutual aid is basic to human nature.  Most of us think that no one goes without food, healthcare, or housing. Human beings are born compassionate. Altruism and charity are strong traits that build communities,

There is only one world. The capitalist economy is truly global. Economic booms and slumps spill over national borders and ripple around the globe in synchronous waves. So do revolutions. Working people  must unite across borders to defend their common interests. Despite language barriers and cultural differences, our similarities are overwhelming.  Our lives are remarkably alike. National borders exist to maximize profits. Jobs are allowed to migrate to cheaper locations, while the people who work those jobs are blocked from re-locating to higher-paid regions.

The accepted solutions to these problems is generally posed as either free trade or protectionism. However, both policies benefit the capitalist class. Protectionist policies shield weaker industries from global competition, while free-trade policies enable stronger industries to penetrate foreign markets. A more effective strategy is  for workers to defend all jobs as if these borders did not exist. he solution is to include all workers in an industry into unions that do not stop at national borders and to demand wage parity across the globe. This is a pro-worker antidote to the divide-and-rule profit policies of employers. One union long ago recognised this - the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies.

While many capitalists promote the mobility of capital to cross frontiers for free trade, few support opening borders to the free movement of workers. Demarcated national borders control and to divide the working class. In all nations, forcing native-born and foreign-born workers to compete makes it easier to exploit both groups. The result is rising inequality within nations and between them. National divisions are maintained by racism, the myth that the people on one side of a border are fundamentally different from those on the other side.

The way humanity is divided by nationalism and sovereign nation-states prevents people from working together to solve their common problems such as climate change and pandemics. Competing nations can never solve international problems like war, environmental pollution, and global warming. In a world without borders, people could solve these problems. Because capitalists can never have enough profit, they continually push to expand their control into other nations. This inevitably leads to war, and the victors redraw the borders to consolidate their conquests.

While goods and services cross borders with minimal restrictions, the workers who create these goods and services are denied the same right. Borders allow corporations to move production to lower-waged countries. The same borders prevents workers from migrating to higher-waged countries. The answer is uniting to improve life on both sides of the border. The division of the world into nations conflicts with an international economy where parts are produced in one nation and assembled in another, where the finished product may be sold in a third nation, serviced by workers in a fourth nation, and dumped as garbage in a fifth nation.

Most people do not want to leave their homes and families; they migrate to survive. Abolishing national borders would enable us to raise global living standards, because goods and services developed anywhere could be made available to everyone, everywhere, and because the vast resources that are currently devoted to policing borders and waging wars could be used instead to meet human needs. The benefits of world socialism will be so great that our grandchildren will wonder why we allowed ourselves to be divided for so long.  Enough is enough. It’s time to end the division of humanity into have-lots and have-nots. However, capitalism is not about sharing.

The work that we do each day should provide for human needs: feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, treating the sick, and raising living standards. Instead, the surplus-value  produced by working people is confiscated by the bosses to accumulate capital to support the profit system that deprives the majority of what they need.

By standing together, we can claim the abundance that rightfully belongs to all. That is the Socialist Party message to all to hear.  Our planet can produce more than enough to meet everyone’s needs. The myth of scarcity has one purpose: to justify not sharing the social wealth. There is no evidence that society cannot meet human needs. On the contrary, the resources spent on war alone could provide everyone in the world with a good life. The myth of scarcity is used to dismiss the possibility of a world of plenty for all and instead legitimize fabulous wealth for a few and falling living standards for the rest of us. The myth of scarcity is necessary to reconcile the obscenity of growing wealth alongside growing poverty regardless of the incredible potential of technology and robotics. 

A Letter To A Worker

 

Nationalism has nothing to offer you—except a change of masters. Your problems will still continue, will still confront you—worrying you and causing you many a headache—while the present system of society lasts. To solve those problems—which never leave you, be you in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales or any other part of the world—you’ll most certainly have to struggle. But let your struggle be one against the real origin of your problems, against the system of capitalism, and against those who support it. Struggle against the system which condemns all workers, regardless of the place of their birth to a life-time of toil and poverty, from cradle to grave ; struggle against the wealthy few who, because they own the factories, mines, railways and all of the means and instruments for producing wealth, compel you—because you own nothing—to labour for their benefit.

As socialists, we recognise that the task before all workers is not to win this or that skirmish or gain a few concessions which the capitalist class can well afford; our objective in the class war is to win it. In other words, no answer short of social revolution will do if the problems of the working class are to be abolished from the face of the earth.

Your struggle, in common with the struggle of workers everywhere, to be successful must be a revolutionary one. Your aim? To take from the capitalist class its ownership of the means of production and make them the common property of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex. When you’ve achieved that—when you’ve won that revolution — living will really be worthwhile then, it will be a joy and an adventure. As all workers learn through struggle, unity is strength. But unity is not just achieved on a national basis – capitalism is a worldwide social order and workers of all lands have a common interest in joining together against the common foe. There can be no room for nationalist notions if we are to fight and win against the international ruling class.

As Marxists, we fight for emancipation from a system which turns useful work into wage slavery. Your real enemy is the present system, which produces commodities to sell on the market with a view to profit. Capitalism, with its hideous contradiction of mass poverty amid the potential for plenty, is your real enemy. It persecutes you at every level, advertising itself as a world of plenty and then rewarding the wealth producers with deprivation. For too long workers have suffered under this rotten set-up, when the means are at hand to create a society of production for need in which we can all give according to in abilities and take according to our self-determined needs.

The Socialist Party takes the side of the robbed against the robbers. For it is only through the conscious solidarity of workers, that the system of legalised robbery will be compelled to make way for the reign of a united humanity.

Socialism is more than simply a great idea; it is an obtainable alternative to the chaos of the system which puts profit before use. Then things will be produced because people need them and not in order to sell for the purpose of making a profit; then poverty will disappear, insecurity vanish, and wars will be nothing but memories. 

That will be Socialism—so, speed the day!

Today Capitalism - Tomorrow Socialism

 

The capitalist nature of present-day society is a fact. No thinking person nowadays denies that we live in a capitalist era, where goods are produced for profit, where the worker is a mere instrument of production, a seller of labour-power, receiving in return for the expenditure of his energies a wage, just enough to keep the worker in that state of efficiency which will enable him or her to perform work satisfactorily. Practically the whole mechanism of production is carried through by large corporations, and these in turn are owned and controlled by often anonymous shareholders. The corporation is brought into being as a rule in order to eliminate competition.  They are examples of the evolutionary development inherent in capitalism to greater and still greater monopolies.

The ownership of corporations appears to be vested in thousands of private shareholders, but as anyone knows, who has inspected the share books of capitalist concerns, while large numbers of private investors hold five and ten shares each, the great bulk of the shares is often held by holding companies, institutions such as insurance companies and banks , so that the real owners and controllers, in the background can remain more or less anonymous. The Inland Revenue returns, however, disclose the real position. With the passing of each year the private incomes of the wealthy become greater, while the number of people of great wealth becomes smaller. One can almost visualise the eventual passing of the entire productive wealth of a country and its dependencies into the hands of one family or even one man.

The slave position of the worker can only be accentuated with the further development of capitalism. We will still be a slave to the class which exploits us and we will still suffer from the poverty and its consequences which goes with that condition. The worker must concentrate attention on the cause of poverty, the capitalist nature of the world in which we live. Cause and cure go hand in hand—capitalism the cause, socialism—-in the real meaning of the term—the remedy. There is one thing, however, the ruling class forget, and that is the increased knowledge that is being imbibed by those who live by selling their labour-power. The wage slaves are not all asleep. 

The material conditions have reached the stage when the present system of production is a fetter on production. A sure harbinger of a new, and, let us hope, a better form of society, in which there will be neither wage-slave nor capitalist, nor private property in the means of life. The Socialist Party has so far lacked encouragement. The issue between the capitalist-class and the working-class has been kept clear, and moving circumstance has now brought into being those conditions which make socialism practical politics. It is the only policy that unquestionably offers peace and plenty to all mankind. It is the only policy that can be advocated honestly and without equivocation. It is most lamentable that the Socialist Party, in its long and arduous struggle to dispel working-class political ignorance, receive hindrance rather than help from those acclaimed by many as intellectual leaders.  Whatever its enemies attempt in another direction will be exposed as inadequate and harmful. The common ownership of the means of life and production solely for use is our goal. Those who ask for less condone exploitation and betray the class to which we belong.

Socialism is where the hope for humanity lies. We share an aversion for authoritarianism. Socialism cannot be till society consciously desires it. Violence will not achieve it, and consequently there will be no need of power to impose it. We strive for socialism—common ownership and democratic control of the means of life—not because it is moral, ethical, virtuous, or seemingly eligible for any other relative abstract description, but because it is a scientifically demonstrable social and economic necessity.

There can be no socialism without socialists. Socialism, which can only be democratic world, must be brought about democratically. This point should become obvious if you think about it. Democracy rules out leadership and self-appointed vanguards. Socialists who know what they want and how to get it do not need leaders to tell them what to do. The capture of power has to be done on a state-by-state basis because this is the way political power is structured in the world today. As the Communist Manifesto pointed out, it will first be necessary for the working class of a country to win the struggle for democracy over the capitalists in that country. But this does not mean that there can be socialism in one country. Nor does it mean that we can expect the workers of one country to be ready for socialism while the rest of the world lags behind. The idea of world socialism cannot be confined to one country.

Another Summer School Special

 

At Summer School, Brian Gardner will be giving the following talk:

Let Them Do Yoga! - Inequality, Mental Health and Social Revolution

This talk will explore one of the less obvious ways in which capitalism and the class divide impacts negatively on humans. As the profit system turns the screw we are faced with huge and growing mental health challenges such as depression and anxiety.

How much of our this is down to the individual’s biology, and how much is social/political? What does inequality do to our psyches? Why are humans so apparently sensitive to class divisions? And does this provide insight to why inequality is so apparently resistant to political reform?

How will the global collective trauma of COVID play out? And what about the looming existential crisis that is the climate emergency?

Once taboo, we are now encouraged to parade our mental health like some fashion accessory. Are there other ways to regain wellbeing than lunchtime meditation or a friendly chat with HR? Are we just accommodating to the pressures of being both worker and consumer under capitalism?

Or are we seeing signs of humanity growing up? Is our mental environment a key battleground? How might mental well-being influence class consciousness? And what could we reasonably say about mental health inside a future socialist society?

Brian Gardner will explore these questions and more.

Details of more sessions will be announced soon.

 For more information on the event, see here: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/summer-school-2022/

 

END THE SYSTEM

 

A “system” is, any assemblage of things forming a regular and connected whole. The name given to such a system depends upon the outstanding features of the things under consideration. For instance, we find the immediate heavenly bodies acting upon each other according to a certain order, forming a connected whole, the first of which is the sun—we call this order the solar system. We look into society at different periods and find different social forms, each as a connected whole having as outstanding features certain economic arrangements. At one time it is the exaction of dues in place of military service by the owners of the land—the feudal dues of the feudal system; at another time it is the ownership of the wealth produced by virtue of the investment of capital—as in the capitalist system.

Particular social systems are not necessarily laid down beforehand, one grows out of another owing to the development of a new form (or a latent form) in the older system. When the new form grows to such proportions that its further development is seriously hampered by the system suited to the older form, then a revolution takes place and the old system is swept away, giving place to the new. Within the feudal system, production for sale was originally a relatively minor economic form, but owing to various agencies, among them the discoveries that opened up a world market, production for sale brought into its circle of influence practically the whole of society in given countries, and those engaged in this sphere found they were constantly coming up against the laws and arrangements of feudalism. First in England and then in France, a successful effort was made to destroy the old shackling forms and remodel society according to arrangements suited to the new. Social philosophers in England and in France, prior to the revolutions, laid down very definitely “deliberate” plans “on paper” of what the new order should be like.

The coming of socialism would dispense with the need for coercive State institutions, as there would be no subject class to govern and repress. As every student of social science knows, the State did not always exist; it is a product of society at a stage of evolution. Through different forms, its essential character has been a power of coercion apart from the mass of the people. Today we know it as the parliamentary State, in which the subject class, the workers, are enfranchised. The State is the executive of the present ruling class (the capitalists), and it protects and maintains their ownership of property because the slave class politically permit it.

In our object and Principles, readers will see that production and distribution could only be vested in society, the whole people, as distinct from the capitalist few, any other method (State Capitalism, for instance) would still retain private ownership, and therefore class society.

Who would organise the maintenance of supplies in a class-free society? Who organises supplies today? The landlords and the shareholders or the working class? What the workers now do for idlers, surely with growing intelligence they can do for themselves. It is in politics they are ignorant, not in production. When wealth is no longer produced for profit, i.e., when the workers cease to be exploited. The exchange economy as a means to realise that profit or unpaid labour will be as unnecessary as the State.

 Capitalism, in its development, is carrying out Marx’s predictions. It has swelled the ranks of the workers in proportion to the other section of society. Modern technology renders more and more workers redundant. Wage slavery, high or low paid, cannot prevent these worsening conditions, because the workers’ opportunity to enjoy the results of their increasing productivity is denied them by the present outworn system of production for profit. Private property in the means of life allows an idle class to monopolise the benefits, the privileges, the comforts. United and organised by the very system that enslaves them, the workers will acquire the knowledge that will set society free from the last phase of class exploitation.

Support Socialism

 

Capitalism is beset with an immense political and economic crisis, the likes of which it has not experienced. It is rife with misery and oppression in various forms. Hunger, poverty, unemployment, racial and sexual discrimination, wars and many forms of environmental degradation. Far from diminishing with the progress of science and the advances of technology, living conditions are worsening, the gulf between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the dispossessed, is steadily widening. Capitalists seek to increase the productivity of workers. They impose speed-ups and compulsory overtime. They multiply their attacks on the democratic rights of working people and continually try to control their organisations and even to destroy them. 

Socialist revolution is the only way that the working people can ensure the abolition of all exploitation. The working class cannot free itself without freeing all of humanity at the same time, because the ultimate goal of its struggle is not to replace the power of one class with that of another but rather to abolish all classes. This is the only way to put an end to all the social divisions and inequalities that have characterised class societies thus far. The expropriation of the capitalists and the socialisation of the means of production will lead directly to the abolition of society divided into classes with opposing interests. The abolition of classes will in turn lead to the withering away of the State.

Socialism will put an end to the recurring crises of capitalism which result in the destruction and waste of productive resources. It will mean the scientific, technological, economic and human resources currently devoted to the preparation and waging of war will be redirected to socially useful purposes. Socialism will also remove the enormous waste inherent in capitalist production with its duplication of effort - the manufacture of numerous but essentially similar washing powders, cars, and so on. It will put an end to the massive sums spent on advertising and production of superfluous luxuries for the rich. Socialism will be a society where all injustice would be banished forever, a society with no trace of corruption, a society in which the weak would no longer be oppressed by the strong, a society in which one class would no longer be exploited by another. The dreams of the past have become real possibilities for a future that can already be foreseen, because the material conditions necessary for achieving them are steadily appearing. Working people are becoming increasingly aware that this society can be achieved if only they can put an end to the capitalist relations of exploitation that are now the fundamental obstacle to the further evolution of society.

Million of our fellow humans suffer from chronic malnutrition and go without food. Charities and NGOs may do their bit, alleviate a little suffering here and there, but their work in is in reality only addressing the symptoms, not the disease. The disease is the global profit-drive market system whose golden maxim is “can’t pay–can’t have”. It is a system governments believe they can run in the interests of us all. In the years to come we will see many conferences and summits looking at the problem of global hunger. A lot of rubbish will no doubt be uttered at the same and you can bet no remedy will emerge. This is because there is only one remedy and governments cannot contemplate it because, as the executive of capitalism, it runs counter to the real interests they serve. The remedy involves abolishing the money system, freeing production from the artificial constraints of profit and establishing a world of free access to the benefits of civilisation. A utopian dream you may say, but is it not more utopian to believe the present system can be made to work in all our interests?

The Labour Party pledged to make capitalism work and pave the way for socialism at the same time, has forgotten the second in face of the obstacles that have frustrated their efforts in pursuit of the first. While the working class are blind enough to acquiesce in a social system in which they are governed by leaders in the interests of the capitalist class, it is of little consequence whether the leaders are politically skilful or not. But the working class are not politically mature. They vote in ignorance and in docile acceptance of whatever capitalism likes to dish out to them.

The Socialist Party was never impressed by the extravagant claims made for the ideas of the Welfare State by the various parties in 1945. By then, we had already issued a couple of pamphlets analysing the Beveridge plan and the proposals for family allowances, and we said that they would make no essential difference to the workers' position as the exploited section of the population. Because of this, we felt sure that the worry and insecurity that is life for most of us, would continue. Social security was in fact a gigantic misnomer. Many Labour Party governments later, we still see no need to alter our claim.

We are solely concerned with the establishment of socialism. This cannot be obtained until a majority of the workers want it and work for it. Once the workers do understand and want socialism, and without this socialism cannot be established, then they will vote delegates to parliament to take control of political power for the sole purpose of establishing socialism. Clause 6 of our Declaration of Principles points out that the armed forces of the nation are controlled through Parliament, the centre of political power. Once the workers obtain a majority in Parliament, for the purpose of establishing socialism, they will have control of the armed forces.

Wake up! wake up!

 

Society contains many contradictions which have arisen as a result of the fact that production has a social character under capitalism while ownership of the means of production is in private hands. The interests of the capitalists and of the working class are irreconcilable. Exploitation and economic anarchy with its the recurring crises of the capitalist mode of production oppress the working class and working people in a thousand different ways. The continual attacks of the  capitalists on working people meet resistance in fierce and bitter economic class struggles. This resistance limits the extent to which the capitalists can increase the rate of exploitation, and trains the working class in battle. Capital must accumulate in order to survive. It grows by keeping for itself the surplus value produced by workers after they have reproduced the value of their labour power, their wages. Surplus value is the source of all profit. The unending search for surplus-value, for profit, is the motive force of capitalist production. 

Capitalism can produce only for profit. It is forced constantly to seek new ways to achieve the maximum profit. Competition between rival capitals (which still persists in modified form in the monopoly stage of capitalism) ensures the destruction of all capitals which do not conform to the blind laws of capitalist production. The  capitalists must continually try to raise their rate of profit by cutting the labour costs of production. The capitalists cut their costs of production mainly by stepping up their already vicious exploitation of the working class. They cut their wage bills by reducing wages and sacking workers. They also make the remaining workers work longer hours and they increase the intensity of labour. Capitalists also reduce their wage bill by buying more advanced machinery in order to produce the same goods with less labour.

Working people are highly socialised. Working alongside one another in their work-places, making the products the capitalists sell for profit, workers learn through their own experience the need for organisation and cooperation. Clearly, the products could never be made if the workers themselves were disorganised and did not cooperate with one another. Similarly, workers gain through their own work experience an understanding of the need for a sensible approach to solving problems. Clearly, the products could never be made if clear-headedness on the workers’ part didn’t exist. Of course, in a capitalist society such as our own, these qualities of organisation and cooperation are used to benefit not the workers, but the capitalists. The capitalists use these qualities of the workers to make huge profits and, in the process, keep workers in a state of near or actual poverty. These qualities, however, are very important for a revolution and building a socialist society after the capitalist society is destroyed. Moreover, since the workers are the ones who are directly exploited by the capitalists, they have the most potential for seeing most thoroughly the absolute unjustness and insanity of the capitalist system. Thus the working class also has the most potential for seeing the need to overthrow capitalism and to replace it with a new system – socialism – that will benefit not a handful of capitalists, but the workers and the masses of the people. Also, in building the mass movement of all sections of the people to overthrow the capitalist system, the workers have the greatest power to cripple the capitalists. If the workers don’t work, the capitalists don’t profit. Finally, as the only thoroughly productive class in society, as the only class which produces and distributes the things necessary for life, the working class is the only class which literally holds in its hands not only the ability to destroy the old, rotting capitalist society but the ability to build the new, healthy socialist society. 

The working class, the sleeping giant, is already beginning to stir, and when it fully awakens, when it recognises the great power it has in its hands, the whole world will shake. It is only a matter of time.

FREEDOM TO ALL HUMANITY

 

The Socialist Party aim is the complete emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital. This emancipation can be achieved by the transfer to social ownership of all the means and objects of production, a transfer which will entail:

a) the abolition of the present commodity production (i.e., the purchase and sale of products on the market) and

b) its replacement by a new system of social production according to a previously drawn-up plan with a view to satisfying the requirements both of society as a whole and of each one of its members within the limits permitted by the condition of the productive forces at the given time.

This socialist revolution will give rise to the most radical changes in the whole constitution of social and international relationships.

Replacing the present mastery of the product over the producer with that of the producer over the product will introduce consciousness where there now reigns blind economic necessity; by simplifying and giving purpose to all social relationships it will at the same time provide each citizen with the real economic possibility of participating directly in the discussion and decision of all social matters.

This direct participation of citizens in the management of social affairs presupposes the abolition of the present system of political representation and its replacement by direct popular legislation.

Given the present development of international exchange, it is possible to consolidate this revolution only by all or at least several of the civilised societies taking part in it. Hence follows the solidarity of interests between producers of all countries. But as the emancipation of the workers must be the matter of the workers themselves, as the interests of labour, in general, are diametrically opposed to the interests of the exploiters, and, therefore, the upper class will always hinder the above-described reorganisation of the social relationships, the necessary preliminary condition for this reorganisation is the seizure of political power by the working class in each of the countries concerned. Only this temporary domination of the working class can paralyse the efforts of counter-revolution and put an end to the existence of classes and their struggle. We shall concentrate all the efforts of the ranks on the class war, and shall aim at:

1. The capturing of political power.

2. The expropriation of capitalist property to restore it to social control and common ownership. All that under one pretext or another tends to turn away the proletariat from that supreme end, or to weaken its action, will be assailed by us because it tends to prolong, consciously or unconsciously, the present social order or disorder – the parent of all slavery and all misery.

There is no room in this direct attack on the State and on capital – or more precisely on capital by the State – there is no room for any collaboration or co-operation of any kind with the class which holds both, and of which they must be dispossessed, both politically and economically. There can be no bond of union between the exploiting class who hold the Government, and we, who wish to overthrow them, there can be nothing in common but the battlefield and the struggle, no alliance, between the two armies who are going to fight, any agreement must be the result of treachery. This war successfully carried out can alone bring about a victory, and an end of the class system enables us to attain true social peace, the great and final human peace.

There is no room either for the anarchistic illusion or policy, which disarms the working class and divides it by counselling an abstention from political action, as this only helps the holders of capital, whose privileges will remain intact until political power has been taken from them.