What we seek is socialism

 

Our world is on the brink of an apocalypse—and yet it has implemented policies which avoid the root causes of our impending disaster. Without socialism, technological progress and the dream of a future of endless bounty is no longer tenable.

The workers are in the class struggle but are not conscious of their interests. Hence they fight, blindly and vainly to improve their condition. Inside the unions, in political parties and in their everyday actions they do things which work to the capitalists’ advantage. They continue to act on lines which perpetuate the system that enslaves them, and support men, measures and parties that work against the workers’ interests.

The workers must recognise that the class struggle exists. They must become aware of their slave position, and the way out, if they are to prosecute the struggle to a victorious conclusion for themselves. 

If the working class become conscious of their class interests and welfare, they will refuse to take actions which injure them. The guiding policy for class-conscious workers must be: Will a contemplated action assist the workers to triumph in the class struggle?

 With socialism the need for these national units to claim sovereign power over all internal affairs will have passed, just as city-states and other kinds of full local autonomy were rendered obsolete by the formation of the modern nations. We, the workers, are not the “Nation,” we are the slave class within the nation. The “Empire” and the trade routes are the private property of our masters; they form channels through which they dispose of the wealth of which you have been robbed and over which wars are fought and working-class lives sacrificed. We stand as socialists for the ending of capitalism and with it the noxious maladies it begets. Those who support capitalism through political ignorance are ever likely to be led into both voting and fighting for it while they remain in that mental state. Capitalism requires armed force, apart from military war. It is the final word in their political control over the working class. Capitalism cannot work to your benefit.

Socialist society, through its central organisation, will arrange for the production of goods where natural and man-made conditions are favourable, and will secure their distribution to the localities where and in the quantity required. Socialism goes to the root cause of working-class poverty. It lies in capitalism or the private ownership of the means of wealth production. By the substitution of common ownership you will ensure the leisurely enjoyment of the plenitude you now provide for others. 

A  political party which aims at a social transformation of society, which is possible only by the consent and support of the great mass of the population—We not only believe but argue constantly that a socialist organisation which takes power other than with the will of the majority cannot bring about socialism even with the best of intentions. We insist with the greatest vigour that no “benevolent saviour” can lead to socialism. Such can benefit capitalism, and has but there is one kind of society that cannot be built that way, and that is socialism. We believe that because socialism is different from all other social systems in a very basic respect. Socialism means, if it means anything, that for the first time in the history of man. the mass of people are freed of class rule over them, that they take the stage of history on their own behalf and in their own interests. And this freedom from class oppression cannot take place unless they themselves act. It cannot happen if a utopia – even a well-intentioned utopia, let alone a totalitarian dictatorship, is imposed. It makes no sense to build a movement upon the advocacy of such ideas and yet to advocate overthrow of government by a conspiratorial minority or something of the sort.

A socialist  party cannot attempt while it is a minority to obstruct the carrying out of the decisions of the majority. As long as we do not enjoy the support of a majority – and the socialist movement unfortunately does not yet in this country – and as long as the opportunity exists to reach the ears of and convince such a majority by persuasion and conviction, we will continue to use every channel of persuasion and conviction open to us to gain that majority without which the achievement of socialism is hopeless. To do otherwise would be contrary to our socialist principles.

We do not put any confidence in the ruling capitalist group in this country. We do not give them any support because we do not think they can or will solve the fundamental social problems which must be solved in order to save civilisation from shipwreck. The workers must organise themselves independently of the capitalist political parties. They must organise a great party of their own, develop an independent working-class party of their own, and oppose the policy of the capitalist parties, regardless of whether they are called  Labour or Conservative, the Democratic or Republican, or anything else. 

The handful of very rich who own and control the industrial wealth of the United States want no tampering with their property and their property rights. Any invasion of its private, privileged ground is what big capital fears. 

 We are socialists. We educate toward the replacement of the capitalist system of private profit by a democratic socialist society based on production for use. As democratic socialists, we are unalterably opposed, not only to capitalism, but to any form of what is sometimes called “state-capitalism” – the state should be raised to a position of absolute mastery over dehumanised human beings who are the de-personalised tools of an all-powerful bureaucracy.  It is as abhorrent to us as the capitalist private-profit system!. In one form it is once represented in the former Soviet Union or in today’s China are snot “some kind of socialism,” not even a bad kind; theey are nothing to what resembles.

Is Socialism Possible?

 

The Socialist Party appeals to the world’s workers along the lines of their class interests. The Socialist Party make no pretence of attempting to serve both capitalists and workers. That type of class collaboration is political sophistry of the party spokespeople of the capitalists. Capitalism is founded upon production for profit. Socialism will be built upon production for use.

A wave of real socialist development is gathering force, and it may not be long before the workers throughout the world will see that, in spite of the selling out of “labour leaders” and the dragging of the name of socialism in the mire of Leninism and the swamp of opportunist reformism, it yet holds a message of hope for the dispossessed when its basic principles are understood and acted upon. If all working people were to accept the oft-repeated statement that socialism is impossible it would remain so. The capitalists assert that socialism is impossible. But this is to be expected as capitalism means to the capitalist the continuance of his present luxury living while socialism signifies the end of it. One cannot expect the doomed to welcome the gravedigger.

Socialism only has a message for the working-class because, from a narrow point of view, it is they who will benefit from it. Socialism means taking from the rich the power to exploit the poor—from the idlers of the power to live on the backs of the workers. One cannot expect the oligarchs and plutocrats to do other than oppose socialism and urge upon workers its impossibility. 

The capitalist system of society is based upon the private ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution, by a minority of the population. The majority of the population, being propertyless, are compelled to offer their services for sale to the capitalists, and receive in return sufficient to enable them to live and keep on working. Only the working class engage in the work necessary for production, but the wealth that results from the workers’ labour-power belongs to the capitalists, and therefore the system is an excellent one—for the capitalists.

The system is essentially a competitive one, and though the capitalists’ interests are identical to working-class interests, they are not identical in the struggle to secure the greater proportion of the profit accruing from the workers’ labour-power. This results in tremendous waste. In most industries there is more plant and machinery in being than is necessary to produce sufficient to supply the markets; consequently, many works are on short time, not working to their full capacity, or are actually closed down. Thoroughly up-to-date and efficient methods of production exist side by side with inefficient, almost obsolete, methods.

As people working together have produced the factories and machinery of the past under the domination of capitalism, they can do likewise in the future under the free institutions of socialism. Money is only necessary in a society where there is private ownership and trading and therefore some common means are needed in which to assess the values of diverse articles in order to facilitate exchanges. Where common property exists there is no exchange of goods but an equitable distribution on the basis of needs and therefore neither the necessity nor the room for money in any form. In other words, with socialism, the production and distribution of wealth would be organised on a scientific basis with the object of providing for each member of society the least amount of labour, the best conditions of labour, and the greatest amount of leisure—which latter one could employ in whatever work or play suited oneself. By this means, and only by this means, will unemployment, poverty and other economic evils that we suffer to-day disappear never to return. This is the aim of the Socialist Party.

But to achieve this end we must first obtain possession of political power, and this power in Britain is Parliament. There is only one party in this country taking the road that leads to socialism, and that is the S.P.G.B. Until the majority of workers are with us, and until we have a majority of delegates knocking at the doors of Parliament, the road to the new world is blocked.

 The only problem the workers need to concern themselves about is their non-possession of the means of wealth production, the solution of which is in their own hands, by organising as a class, politically, to take possession of them. The Socialist Party is the only organisation which concentrates the workers’ attention on that problem. Labour right-wingers, who urge the workers to take an interest in their masters’ problems, and left-wingers, who urge them to attack separate features of capitalism, are equally side-tracking them from the thing that matters.

Revolution, The Only Solution

 

Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid of. Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to reform it. That failure puts the socialist alternative on the immediate agenda. Socialism is a total system. It cannot grow piecemeal within a capitalist society. A relatively small minority presently recognise this and are consciously anti-capitalist, but the majority continue to futilely try to satisfy their needs within the system rather than by overthrowing it.

How does workers’ control of production coexist with control by a ruling class when the means of production in dispute are one and the same?  The Socialist Party envisages a society in which there will be no private property, no exchange economy, no classes and no state.  The Socialist Party regards the state as the instrument of class rule. It is not the general, impartial representative of all the people, as it is represented to be and as, unfortunately, many people think it is. The state, in its essential features, is the instrument of one class for the suppression of another. The Socialist Party has a single aim, production for the benefit of all. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society and it will be accomplished by democratising all levels of society.

Under capitalism, labour is a commodity. Workers are used as replaceable parts, extensions of machines—as long as they provide profits and dividends. Employers use their power of ownership to devastate the lives of workers through lay-offs, shut-downs and neglect of health and safety. Unions, despite their efforts, have failed to eliminate even the worst abuses of management power. Socialism relies on the needs and creativity of people.  The Socialist Party believe in the ability of working people to manage their own productive institutions democratically.

Because of the fact that capitalist production is profit-production, the accumulation of capital is an accumulation for the sake of accumulation. Capitalism and its class representatives will not release the forces of abundance and abolish profit. They can be released only by socialism. “Revolution” does not mean that we would “demand” that the government or the corporations do this or that. It means that we, the working class take over the running of industry and make the decisions ourselves. When production is geared to social needs rather than profits, it is quite feasible to cope with increased labour productivity by simply reducing the hours of work.

The only experience we have of working for the common good has been in cooperatives and in a few “community projects” providing voluntary services to the public. Everything else is based on people working for wages to produce commodities for sale on the market. Often those end up adopting conventional structures and profit purposes too or remain hopelessly inefficient. When they go under it reinforces the idea that capitalist production is the only system that can really work. We do not just want to re-create the same society within which slaves can manage some of their own affairs. We want to overthrow the slave owners and abolish slavery altogether.

Workers have no stake in the existing nationalist divisions of the world nor would they have a stake in any proposed new ones, they do, however, have a stake in opposing wars.

Whenever we describe socialism, somebody always objects: “You can’t change human nature.” Wrong! Our tasks as socialists are changing human nature away from the distortion that capitalism has made of it. The ruling class wants to preserve its privileges, its interests, its power, its wealth, and its dominion. And so it engages in a very interesting psychological technique called divide and conquers. It’s a weapon designed to make us all hate and resent and compete with each other. And so many of us buy into it.  Some people try to escape the system. They try to ignore it, whitewash it, and pretend it doesn’t affect them. You may try to ignore it, but it won’t ignore you. We have to make the change and we can do it through unity. Sooner or later the system is going to bring you into a struggle. Sooner or later you’re going to find yourself in a class war. And you’ll discover you need support and solidarity. We are the people. We are the majority. If we go out and organize, we will change this world, and we must. When people realise the system has turned against them it results in very quick consciousness-raising. 

Creating Socialism to Change our Lives

 

The Socialist Party visualised socialism as based on the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, a new economic system built upon raising production to a higher level and ending all social oppression by dissolving the hostile classes into a community of free and equal producers striving not for sectional interests, but for the common good. This socialist commonwealth will liberate the individual from all economic, political and social oppression and will provide the basis for real freedom and for the full and harmonious development of the individual, giving full scope for the growth of the creative faculties of the mind.

The experiences of the Soviet Union have revealed to us the grave innate dangers of State capitalism which concentrates an overwhelming power in the hands of the government and places the citizen completely at the mercy of the State bureaucrat. The State, as the owner of industry, agriculture and transport become the universal employer, the universal landlord. It controls everything on which the fate and happiness of the individual citizen depend. The citizen is dependent on the State as regards employment, housing, and leisure. This enormous power of the State over the individual citizen leads to a dictatorship. State capitalism does not yet solve any of the outstanding problems confronting workers. It does not abolish crises, the classes, the wage system. Under State capitalism, there is production of commodities for sale, not production for use. Between production and consumption there still remains the barrier of exchange. Therein lies the chief danger of State capitalism.

The distinction between socialist and capitalist society is to be found in the characteristic relations of production, in the ordering of social priorities, and in its whole way of life. The prerequisite for this is the replacement of production for profit with production for use. Socialism will be the extension of a socialised process of production into socialised ownership. Products socially produced by the workers must be owned by the people. Then there will be no barrier to restricting production. Production is no longer guided by profit of the handful of owners but by the requirements of the workers, who now own the means of production. This is production for use and not for profit, the productive forces are released to serve people’s requirements. The economic crisis is abolished because its cause is destroyed. This is the basis for socialism.

The word “socialism” is used as a political trick. The Left call themselves “socialist” and that nationalised industries are socialist, The Right suggests that countries with large welfare programmes are socialist. These have nothing to do with socialism. Many people are against war, for social justice, and for an ecologically sustainable society that capitalism can only create a world of war, injustice and environmental destruction. There is a growing understanding that the current society cannot continue without catastrophe occurring yet we lack a vision of what might replace it. We need to create a world in which socially-validated needs form the basis of production and distribution and focus more on sustainability and sociability.

Capitalism is a world in which production is conducted and driven on a commodity basis which means that workers sell their labour power to producers (who then trade with each other and with “consumers” to get exchange value back with which to buy more labour power and more physical inputs) by tends to recreate capitalism either in its state capitalist form (which some called socialism) or its free-market capitalist form. In socialism, no one will need to, nor be able to, sell their labour power. This is the minimum criterion for a society based on socially-validated needs, since selling one’s labour power makes it (and its products) into commodities with exchange value. People will nonetheless work, not out of a need to get paid in order to live, but because we are able to re-design work so we will enjoy much of it.  Socialism is about giving a decent living standard to everybody.

It is hard to say much more about what the working class in power will choose to produce. A world of democratic freedom means decisions that may be hard to predict.  Once we have gotten away from the capitalism-driven need to produce and consume in order to make profits we will be able to re-shape our world in profound ways.  If wars are largely caused by capitalism and its needs, as the Socialist Party holds, then we no will longer need to engage in the vast amount of human labour spent on war and preparation for war, and this can give more of us more resources to devote to the common good. If we can reorganise our lives around producing for use rather than producing commodities to exchange, we can get away from a culture of competition and compulsive consumption and start to build a society of harmony.

LiarLiar Tommy Sheridan

  Tommy Sheridan has been declared bankrupt.

The 58-year-old former leader of the Scottish Socialist and Solidarity parties was sequestrated over a legal bill of more than £82,000.

Sheridan now faces having his assets and income seized.

Sheridan wound up Solidarity and joined Alex Salmond’s Alba party earlier this year.

A person is disqualified from standing for election while sequestrated.

Tommy Sheridan declared bankrupt over unpaid legal bill (yahoo.com)

TOWARDS WORLD SOCIALISM

 

The Socialist Party is frequently criticised for not commenting at length about how a socialist economy would operate. We think it would be essentially speculative. Nevertheless, the Socialist Party is able to broadly outline some generalisations about socialism. It will be an economic system based upon conscious planning of production by associated producers (not by the State), made possible by the abolition of private property of the means of production. As soon as that private property is completely abolished, goods produced cease to be commodities. Value and exchange value disappear. Production becomes production for use, for the satisfaction of needs, determined by the conscious choice of the associated producers themselves. No incentive will be needed anymore to induce people to work. ‘Labour’ will have transformed itself into meaningful many-fold activity, making possible all-round development of each individual. The division of labour between manual and intellectual labour, the separation of town and countryside, will wither away. Humankind will be organised into a free federations of communes.

 

The world to-day is in the hands of billionaires and CEOs of the biggest corporations, the biggest banks, the biggest hi-tech companies; in short, owners or controllers of Big Business.  These billionaire capitalists, not only own or control the chief means whereby we work and live but, in fact, control the whole governing machine. They pull the strings, and politicians are their puppets. And they use their power to make themselves richer and richer at our expense. They hire workers to make profit out of their labour; their capitalist production is for profit, not for use: and to get more profit they slash wages, carry through speed-ups and worsen conditions. This mad race for profit always ends in an economic crisis, and then they pass the burden to try to get out of the crisis on to us.

 

Poverty, insecurity and hunger make their inroads in the homes of millions of workers: low wages, intensified work to the point of physical and mental exhaustion, is the lot of the workers increases in the number of industrial accidents, more sickness and a lower life-expectancy amongst working people. This is the world to-day for working men, women and their families.

 

But this is not all. Capitalist war is the attempt of each national capitalist group—British, Russian, French, American, Chinese, etc. to beat its competitors on the world market and to win bigger and bigger profits for its own ruling class. Commercial rivalry becomes fiercer and fiercer and this competitive struggle is carried out, firstly by economic measures, and then finally by war. For capitalism war is inevitable.

 

There is no need for a single worker to be overworked or in dread of losing his or her job; no reason why a worker should lack the necessities of life. All over the world millions of workers are year by year coming to realise these facts and to see that nothing except the existence of capitalism prevents them from building up for themselves a decent and secure world. Everywhere the workers are becoming less and less willing to put up with an entirely unnecessary state of scarcity and deprivation. They are showing themselves more and more determined to insist upon their right to food, housing and healthcare for themselves and their families. But to get this, capitalism must be overthrown. To get this is only possible by the building up of socialism, giving peace and prosperity, happiness and new life to the whole working population.

 

It will mean that the capitalists will be deprived of their ownership and control of the factories and land, mills and mines, communications and transport. All these means of production which they have used and misused only to pile up profits for themselves and poverty for the workers will be taken from them. Socialism will end production for profit and will carry on production for use. The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the people will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation and extension of production. All production and distribution as well as the development of all social services will be organised on a definite plan. A thorough-going reorganisation of our entire economic and social life on a new basis will be required.

 

We have to-day ample resources for producing all the things we need. Today we are both unemployed and unable to get the things we need. The two things go together. For we are unemployed because the capitalists want to have their profits and will not let us produce what we need. Destitution and unemployment can only be cured simultaneously by taking over and running the industries. The workers will naturally produce far better and more willingly under their own management than they do now. For the first time, the workers will know that greater productivity of the new advanced technologies will no longer be a threat to their livelihood but will make it possible to raise the whole standard of living and shorten the hours of labour. Not only economic security, not only ever increasing comfort and leisure, not only the day’s labour turned from useless grinding toil into useful work—but a far wider prospect is opened up. These new material conditions will be but the basis for the most rapid intellectual and cultural development of the whole population.

 

This will be a new world and it is for us to bring this new world into being.