SOS - Socially Organised Society

 

The beneficiaries and defenders of capitalism never tire of declaring it the “best of all possible systems.” Yet, today, after decades of wars on poverty, civil rights, government regulations and deregulations plus a host of other reform efforts, capitalism still presents an obscene social picture. Millions who need and want jobs are unemployed, including many of whose jobs have been outsourced. Others are underemployed, working only part-time or temporary jobs though they need and want full-time work. Millions aren’t earning enough to maintain a decent standard of living for themselves and their families despite the fact that they are working. Racism bigotry and discrimination remain pervasive. The educational system is deteriorating. The health care system, despite heated debate for years, still fails to meet the needs of tens of millions. The world’s infrastructure continues to crumble. Widespread pollution of our environment worsens. A pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities of society. Crime and corruption are widespread at every level of capitalist society. Many workers suffer from alcohol and drug abuse. Homeless men, women and children roam the streets of the mega-cities. 

Capitalism’s exploitation of workers and poverty continues to grow. A wide-ranging plague of social and economic problems arising from modern-day capitalism is imposing itself upon society. The bloated wasteful energy demands of capitalist consumerism have added to the environmental crises enveloping the world. Wars for the domination of resources and spheres of influence are serving to feed the capitalist appetite for profit. Problems endured by the working class have grown to monumental proportions.

 

Against this insane capitalist system the Socialist Party protests and condemns it. If our society is to be rid of the host of economic, political and social ills, the outmoded capitalist system of private ownership of the means of life and production for the profit of a few must be replaced by a new social system. That new social order must be organised on the basis of social ownership and democratic management of all means of production, distribution and all of social services. It must be one in which production is carried on to satisfy human needs and wants. It must be genuine socialism.

 

Who will pay the wages? No one. Money is discarded. Socialist distribution is free; a system of common ownership. But we must eat to live. Very well, the food processing factories, the docks and warehouses are in the hands of the workers. The flour mills, bakeries and the dairies are controlled by them. Farm labourers and smallholders send food to the cities. The railwaymen and lorry drivers deliver the food and the shop assistants and restaurant workers supply it to the workers and their families. Distribution will not be according to the amount of money a person has but according to need. Large families will receive more than small families or single persons. Children will have first call. Delicacies such as will go to the aged and infirm instead of to the wealthy overfed idle class. Clothing will be distributed to the needy. Power station workers will continue to produce electricity and distribute it to homes and factories.  Hospital and other health service workers will continue their work.

 The social economy is integrated without centralisation, that clumsy red-tape bound machine of the bureaucrat. By having the affairs of an industry controlled by the persons working in that industry, by district affairs being controlled by the district and factory affairs by the workers in that factory; by control from below instead of from above and by exercising the principle of election and recall federalism, instead of centralism, becomes the principle of the new society.

We are now poor and enslaved not because of a lack of reforms made by politicians, but because the employing class own and controls the means of production, without access to which we cannot live. So long as others control the means whereby we live so long shall we be slaves? Only by taking control of the means of production and distribution can the workers be free.

Some say to us. “But, you will still need supervisors and managers.” The worker is usually able to recognise a fellow worker’s outstanding skill and acknowledge it. The workers would have no social or economic motive in keeping a good person down, instead, it would be in their interest to nominate him or her for more responsible work. Here is a system of industrial democracy, the only true democracy, not the choice of choosing Tweedledum or Tweedledee every five, eight or ten years and is controlled by him and his partners for the period between, but the control of one’s own job and environment, the control of one’s own life. The government over people gives way to the administration of things.

Forging the tools for socialist revolution

 

The Socialist Party is the political expression of the interests of the working class and is part of the World Socialist Movement. The economic basis of present-day society is the private ownership and control of socially necessary means of production, and the exploitation of the workers, who operate these means of production for the profit of those who own them. It is the interest of the capitalist class to maintain the present system and to obtain for themselves the largest possible share of the product of labour. It is the interest of the working class to improve their conditions of life and get the largest possible share of their own product so long as the present system prevails, and to end this system as quickly as they can.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to establish socialism and abolish the right of one person to rob another of the fruits of his or her labour. This is what makes the Socialist Party different from all others. Nowhere in the world has socialism been established despite various claims and assertions. Socialism is where the bankers, landlords and profiteers no longer exist. Common ownership prevails. The Labour Party, as at present constituted and led, conducts no propaganda or fight for socialism. It preaches and practices class collaboration, rejects fundamental social change, accepts the capitalist state machine, which it has used and will use against the workers at home and abroad. In other words, it accepts capitalism and has no important disagreements with the Tories.

The capitalist state, by controlling  political parties, control the powers of the state and uses them to secure and entrench its position. Without such control of the state its position of economic power would be untenable. The workers must wrest the control of the government from the hands of the masters and use its powers in the building of the new social system, the cooperative commonwealth. The Socialist Party seeks to organise the working class for independent action on the political field for the revolutionary aim of putting an end to exploitation and class rule. Political action means  participation in elections for public offices to gain control of the powers of government in order to abolish the present capitalist system and substitute the cooperative commonwealth.

 Such political action is absolutely necessary for the emancipation of the working class, and the establishment of genuine liberty for all. To accomplish this aim of the Socialist Party is to bring about the social ownership and democratic control of all the necessary means of production — to eliminate profit, rent, and interest, and to change our class society into a society of equals, in which the interest of one will be the interest of all.

Recognising the class struggle between the capitalist class and the working class, and the necessity of the working class organising itself into a political party for the purpose of obtaining common ownership and democratic administration and operation of the collectively used and socially necessary means of production and distribution, we are opposed to all political organisations that support and perpetuate the present capitalist profit system and we are opposed to any form of trading or fusing with any such organisations to prolong that system. Ours is a great aim to make the working class the masters of their own destiny, to win political power, and establish socialism. 

The Socialist Party is the instrument of the working class for achieving this aim. The Socialist Party is based on the task of the emancipation of labour from the oppression of capital, the transfer of all means of production to common ownership. The Socialist Party calls upon the workers to rally under its banner for the purpose of advocating this revolutionary change, building class consciousness among workers and promoting the organisation that could implement this end.

 Despite the growing poverty and misery that workers are subjected to, a world of peace, liberty, security, health and abundance for all is within our grasp. The potential to create such a society exists, but that potential can be realised only if workers act to gain control of their own lives by organising for socialism. It will be the workers who make the people's ownership, control and administration of the new social structure a reality.

The Socialist Party calls upon all who may be increasingly aware that a basic change in our society is needed, to place themselves squarely on working-class principles. And to join us in this effort to put an end to the existing class conflict and all its detrimental results by placing the land and the instruments of social production in the hands of the people as a collective body in a cooperative socialist society. Help us build a world in which everyone will enjoy the free exercise and full benefit of their individual faculties, multiplied by all the technological and other factors of modern civilisation.

Our Road to Socialism

 

The goal of the Socialist Party is to help create the first socialist society based on a democratic, pluralistic and libertarian model. The sceptics and the prophets of doom will say that it is not possible. For a long time, science and technology have made it possible to assure that everybody enjoys the basic necessities which today are enjoyed only by a minority. The difficulties are not technical, and they are not due to a lack of natural resources. What prevents the realisation of our ideals is the organisation of society, and the nature of the ruling class vested interests which have so far dominated. 

Our aim is the attainment of social freedom through the exercise of political freedom, and this requires the establishment of economic equality as a basis. In the political field, the working class knows that it is fighting for the socialisation of the means of production. There is no socialism without common ownership. Those who live by their work have in their hands today the political direction of the socialist movement. The path to a new society is based on the people. The working class are being knit together in the bonds of cooperation, they are becoming conscious of their interests as a class. With the triumph of the workers the mode of production and distribution will be revolutionised. Private ownership and production for profit will be supplanted by social ownership and production for use.The economic interests of the workers will be mutual. They will work together in harmony instead of being arrayed against each other in rivalry and competition. To reach fellow workers that are still in darkness and to open their eyes, that is the task and to this we must give ourselves. The moment a worker sees oneself in true light begins our party and movement.

Capitalism is a system of commodity production (that is, the production of goods for sale and not for direct use by the producer). By replacing private ownership of the means of production with common ownership, by transforming the anarchy of production which is a feature of capitalism into planned production organised for the well-being and many-sided development of all of society, the  socialist revolution will end the division of society into classes and emancipate all of humanity from all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another. Anarchy of production is the tendency of capitalist producers in general to produce to the maximum without regard to their competitors or to the capacity of the market to absorb their production. While technological progress brings about greater productivity of labour and increased social wealth, it cannot get rid of the evils of capitalism or solve the problems of the working class. Rather, it intensifies them. Only socialism can solve them. There is nothing to the argument that human nature will not warrant socialism. The industrial system does not depend upon human nature but human nature depends upon the system. Change the economic conditions and human behaviour will change.

The Socialist Party is the only party in this country that stands against the present system and for the rule of the people; the only party that boldly avows itself as the party of the working class and its purpose is the overthrow of wage-slavery. So long as the present system of capitalism prevails and the few are allowed to own the nation’s industries, the toiling masses will be struggling in the hell of poverty as they are today. To tell them that juggling with tax reform will change this disgraceful condition is to insult their intelligence. 

The Socialist Party is the party of the workers in the mills and mines, on the railways and on the farms, the workers of both sexes and all races and colours. The working class, constitutes a great majority of the people and in fact THE PEOPLE. We demand that industry shall be taken over by  workers and shall operate for the benefit of the whole people. Private ownership and competition have had their day. The Socialist Party stands for social ownership and co-operation. The one is capitalism; the other socialism. The one industrial despotism, the other economic democracy. The workers who have made the world and who support the world, are preparing to take possession of the world. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for.

We demand the means of production in the name of the workers and the control of society in the name of the people. We demand the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery and the surrender of the capitalist class. We demand equal rights for all people regardless of gender, colour, creed or nationality. We demand that all children born into the world shall have equal opportunity to grow up, to be educated, to have healthy bodies and cultured minds, and to develop and freely express the best there is in them in mental and physical achievement. We demand complete control of industry by the workers. We demand the Earth for all the people.

Our Aim is Socialism

 

Our concern is with substituting the common social ownership of the means of life for the present system of class ownership. Our aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man. There can be no peaceful gradual transformation of capitalism into socialism, as preached by the reformists, because of the opposite natures of the very foundations of capitalist and socialist society and of the antagonistic interests of labour and capital.  Members of the Socialist Party are all agreed as to the general object for which they are striving – the ownership of all the means of production by the community; that community to be organised on the most democratic basis possible.  The point of difference here between socialists and anarchists is not on the form of organisation of the future society, or of the details of such organisation. It is not that the Socialist Party wish to impose on the future society a huge bureaucratic system, spreading its octopus-like tentacles across all social life, crushing all individuality, and reducing every detail of existence to rule and plan. The difference is the strategy of achieving our ends. The Socialist Party says the struggle to secure the social ownership of the means of production should be accomplished by first the capture of the state machine and then its coercive function withering out.

The first condition of success for socialism is that its adherents should explain its aim and its essential characteristics clearly, so that they can be understood by every one. We must do away with many misunderstandings circulated by our opponents. The main idea of socialism is simple.

The Socialist Party believe that society is divided into two great classes by the present form of property-holding, and that one of these classes, the wage-earning, the proletariat, is obliged to hire themselves out to the owners of the means of production and distribution. The multitude of people possess nothing. They can only live by their work, and since, in order to work, they need access to expensive equipment, which they have not got, and raw materials, which they have not got, they are forced to put themselves in the hands of another class that owns the means of production, the land, the factories, the machines, and the raw material. And naturally, the capitalist and possessing class, taking advantage of its power, makes the working people, the non-owning class,  pay a large forfeit. It does not rest content after it has been reimbursed for the advances it has made and has repaired the wear and tear on the machinery. Classes and class rule and their attendant progress and poverty, misery, turmoil and strife, are inherent in the capitalist system.

Why? Simply because one set of men owns the technology with which wealth is produced, while another set uses them, and there is an irrepressible conflict over the division of the product. By virtue of the individual ownership of the social instruments of production, one capitalist may exploit the labour of a million working people and become a billionaire, while millions of workers struggle through life in penury and want, towards a bleak and barren old age, to find rest at last in a care-home and eventually, the undertakers.

This rich and resourceful world should be free from the scourge of poverty but it never will be until the private ownership of the means of sustaining life is abolished and society is organised on the basis of common ownership. It is for this great  change, this worldwide social revolution, that the socialists of all countries are organising.It is not to reform the evils of the day, but to abolish the social system that produces them, that the Socialist Party is organised. It is the party, not of reform, but of revolution, knowing that the capitalist system has had its day and that a new social order, based upon a new system of industrial democracy. The working class are beginning to spell solidarity and to pronounce socialism. They are yearning for emancipation from wage-slavery and they are crusading against the ignorance and the prejudices of their fellow workers people. Common ownership is the revolutionary demand of the World Socialist Movement. Its promotion is one of education and is perfectly orderly and peaceable. The workers must be taught to unite and vote together as a class in support of the Socialist Party, the party that represents them as a class. Private ownership will give way to collective ownership, and production for profit to production for use; the wage system will disappear, and with it the poverty, misery and crime that wage-slavery breeds. A new era will dawn on human progress and the civilisation of humanity.

Words

 

Although we are in favour of keeping the term “socialism” in our party campaigns, we shouldn’t let ourselves get too hung up about words—any word can become abused and misused; indeed you only need to think how the term “democracy” has been rendered almost meaningless through its use by state and corporate mouthpieces.

 

Descriptions such as socialism, communism, anarcho-communism, social or industrial democracy, resource-based economy and cooperative commonwealth are all valid, if used meaningfully, for the sort of society we seek to see. There is nothing to stop us using a multitude of words and descriptions for what we stand for in our political activities. What’s important is that we get our ideas over as effectively as possible. There is no reason why we should constantly shout “socialism” from the material we produce and distribute, and anyway, much of the time we don’t.

 

However, for many many people the words “socialism” and “socialist” hold the sort of vision of an alternative, free society that we stand for. This makes it a strength, and something that will attract people who consider themselves politically aware or socialist to the World Socialism Movement. The title “socialist” connects us to the long tradition of revolutionary ideas and movements of which we are a part.

 

The important thing would seem to be that socialists take an open-minded and non-dogmatic approach to the way we present and develop our ideas. Discussions like this should hopefully stimulate us to think how best to spread the message of self-emancipation and common ownership. 

 

The Socialist Party is the one party (together with our companion parties in the World Socialist Movement) which stands, and has always stood, for socialism: a state-free, money-free, class-free world community, democratically controlled by the whole of society and with free access to the goods and services people need to live as true human beings. The Socialist Party must be proud of its name and now, more than ever before, must stand by it.

 

Whatever the reason for the association of the left with red, why does the Socialist Party still use this colour? If we are to change people’s stereotypical perception of socialism and socialists—which is difficult enough as it is—then we need to change how people view us rather than reinforcing what they already believe. The red flag was first used as a revolutionary emblem in the French Revolution, in 1792 when the monarchy was overthrown. in one of his articles on the revolutionary events in France in 1848 (Class Struggles in France 1848-1850) Marx referred to the red flag as being the flag of “the most extreme subversive party”. So too, the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto appeared in an extreme Chartist paper, the Red Republican. The Paris Commune of 1871 adopted the red flag as its official flag, so again Marx wrote about “the Red Flag, symbol of the Republic of Labour, flying over the Hotel de Ville” (Civil War in France). The words of the song The Red Flag (which used to be sung at pre-WWI Socialist Party meetings such as those to commemorate the Paris Commune, before the song got hijacked by the Labour Party) were written by James Connell in 1889. One line reads “we must not change its colour now”

 

To solve the many problems confronting humanity what is needed is a change in the basis of world society from existing class ownership to a world in which the Earth’s resources have become the common heritage of all. Continuous development of the world’s capacity to produce wealth could be said that sufficient plenty for all people on Earth has been produced and society of common ownership and production to meet human needs, not profit can now replace capitalism. 

Highland Hypocrisy (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spare a tear for that hard-up aristocrat John MacLeod of MacLeod. The poor man’s castle is badly in need of repair so he has had to put on the market his beloved Cuillins. This is an area of real estate consisting of 35 square miles of mountain range, bordered by 14 miles of coastline and two salmon rivers. So desperate for the readies is the poor fellow that he is prepared to let it go for a mere £10 million.

 “I regard the Cuillins as priceless”, he said. “They are part of my soul and putting them up for sale is an extremely painful experience. They are my ancestors. Our clan grew out of the history of the Cuillins” (Times, 23 March).

What the fellow doesn’t tell us of course is that, like all Clan Chiefs, his ancestors stole the land in the first place. The ownership of the land was vested in the whole clan until the Chiefs stole it from them. It is a process that is well-documented by Karl Marx in Capital:

“The Highland Celts were organised in clans, each of which was the owner of the land on which it was settled. The representative of the clan, its chief or ‘great man’, was only the titular owner of this property, just as the Queen of England is the titular owner of all the national soil. When the English government succeeded in suppressing the intestine wars of these ‘great men’, and their constant incursions into the Lowland plains, the Chiefs of the clans by no means gave up their time-honoured trade as robbers; they only changed its form. On their authority they transformed their nominal right into a right of private property, and as this brought them into collision with their clansmen, resolved to drive them out by open force” (Volume I, page 681).

The journalist John MacLeod mockingly describes how the title of “MacLeod of MacLeod” is another piece of robbery as the man exulting in that grandiose title was actually born John Wolridge-Gordon. Commenting on the proposed sale of the estate, he digs up some edifying information about how a previous MacLeod “great man” tried to raise money:

“In 1739 The MacLeod kidnapped dozens of his tenancy and attempted to sell them as slaves to Barbados” (Herald, 4 April). 

Richard Donnelly

Less Tax or More Revolt

 

In spite of the imminent world recession, many companies are managing to maintain and even increase their profits. Taxation is always in the news and it got special attention with most of the candidates for the Tory leadership and to become the new prime minister offering tax cuts galore.

 The Socialist Party states that it does not matter to the working class whether taxes are high or low, or whether they are direct, like present day PAYE, or indirect, like the duties on alcohol and tobacco. Many greet this with astonishment and unbelief; how, they ask, could anyone be so blind as not to see that workers would be better off with lower taxes? At first glance the case they make seems self-evident. If the PAYE deduction from wages goes up or if taxes put prices up surely the workers are worse off? And if PAYE or prices go down surely workers are better off? We can at once concede that at the moment when PAYE goes up or the cost of living goes up the workers are that much worse off: but what we should be concerned with is the longer-term, continuing, situation. And the fact is that, subject to variations due to other, quite different causes, the wages and salaries of the working class as a whole become adjusted to changes in PAYE and changes in the cost of living.

What really matters to workers is their “take-home pay” after deduction of PAYE and Social Security contributions, and what it will buy. It is this purchasing power that continually adjusts itself; not automatically, but through the struggles of workers inside and outside the trade unions, struggles influenced by the varying levels of unemployment. Government “wage restraint” propaganda and policies also play a part.

When purchasing power is reduced by higher tax deductions or price rises, workers react by seeking higher wages. When there are tax deductions or prices fall the workers’ resistance to pressure from the employers weakens. 

There is plenty of evidence from past experience to show how take-home pay has adjusted to tax changes, and to changes in the cost of living. So we are on the solid ground of experience in asserting that taxation is not a working class issue, not forgetting that this presupposes that the workers continue the struggle to maintain and increase wages as far as conditions allow.

For the politicians aspiring to represent the interests of capitalists the position is quite different. Having exploited the workers to the fullest extent, having got maximum output at the lowest wage they can induce workers to accept they have to pay, out of their profits, the cost of maintaining the State apparatus, the armed forces and so on. The burden of taxation falls on them. It follows that as a class they have very good cause to keep government expenditure as low as possible so that taxation can be correspondingly low. The workers have no such interest.

 

There are two conditions necessary for the establishment of socialism; the development of the productive forces to the point where they can provide an abundance, and acceptance by the world’s working class of the case for socialism. Technological and scientific progress has for some decades now ensured the attainment of the first condition. Under capitalism, these developments and inventions are not utilised for the good of mankind.

 However, in a socialist society, the fruits of human ingenuity will be able to benefit everybody. Technological progress will mean social and individual advancement. The soul-destroying work has not turned the workers into robots— that is, unthinking machines which simply respond to instructions. Society is too complex to be operated by robots; instead it is living, feeling and thinking workers who run society. The very existence of the Socialist Party shows that socialism is by no means a non-existent drive in working class politics. It is no good looking to historical materialism to bring about progress towards socialism; it is people, not history, who will carry out the revolution. The second condition for the establishment of socialism means a world-wide majority of convinced socialists, and this is what socialist education aims at achieving. 

The ideas of the Socialist Party are difficult to oppose: there are no solutions under capitalism. Socialism is the answer. Under the present-day system of society, where the tools of production are privately owned, a large majority, through their lack of ownership of these tools, are economically forced to seek employment. That means that these people are exploited and as such, never receive the full fruits of their labour. This causes much discontent and gives rise to a common feeling that work is nauseating and a “ necessary evil ” and therefore this sharp division between employment and play. To a Socialist, this is just another ugly feature of capitalism, which will remain till the machinery of wealth production is converted to common ownership. Then men and women will be released from their wage slavery, and work will become regarded in its correct perspective, that is, there will be joy in creation. Society will be producing wealth for use and not for sale and profit as it is today.

It is not people who require to be reformed, (unless one believes the Salvation Army.) It is the social system. Each reform is a patch on the system’s fabric — and not, as some people suppose, a nail in its coffin. That is why the thousands of large and small reforms cannot really change things very much—they leave the system unimpaired and even refurbished a little. Benevolence is one thing, the abolition of poverty another. The best of social reforms does not, and cannot, overturn the factor that gives some people low wages and others high profits, any more than it is able to control or predict economic crises.

Real improvement in living means creating the right conditions—and before that, doing away with the wrong ones. The Socialist Party’s unvarying answer to reformers sounds unpalatable and even hard-hearted, but it is true. Either capitalism is abolished or it remains; and while it remains, the perennial difficulties of working-class life will be there too. Capitalism sets the limits and reformism, the product of that system cannot break outside it. Only by social revolution can the working class escape from the ills which they seek palliatives.