One World or None

 

World-threatening dangers cannot be averted by means of trifling tinkering. Capitalists are not interested in production to benefit the people of the world. They are interested only in profits. If the technology already available in the world were to be used for the purposes of construction, the entire planet could be transformed and the standards of living and level of culture raised to undreamed of heights. This is not possible under capitalism. Plenty under this system can only produce crises of over-production, recessions and lay-offs, because of the basic necessity of the capitalist class to make profits. The insanity of  capitalism is that it creates inequality, poverty and unemployment and all the crises of society because it over-produces. Not, to be sure, in relation to human needs, but in relation to the market. Consequently, a garment manufacturer, instead of conducting consumer research of the number of people who need clothes, produces as much as he thinks he can sell at a profit. So does his rival. The market becomes glutted, because there are more clothes produced than the consumers can buy – not, of course, more than they need.  Their motives are not the needs of men and women but: how much profit can we make?

Despite hunger in dozens of countries, crops in millions of bushels are diverted to fuel vehicles. It is also more profitable to feed livestock than starving people. This fact alone indicts capitalism as the great obstacle to human progress.

Many socialists say the alternative is world socialism or inevitable, catastrophe and that  barbarism will prevail unless a socialist reorganisation of society takes place. Global warming has made socialism incalculably more necessary because the only alternative under capitalism is misery and suffering for the entire population of our planet.

 The capitalists know how to destroy mankind, but not how to create harmony for  humanity. Given the continued existence of capitalism, the prospects for peace and prosperity is remote. Only socialist one world can abolish scarcity and economic hardship. Capitalism has long provided the knowledge and the technology which are necessary for a socialist reorganisation of society, but it fails to provide for the simple wants and needs of working people. We want peace, instead of bloodshed and destruction. We want security instead of insecurity. We want decent homes for our families instead of slums, good healthcare for everyone and plentiful schools rather than child labour. We want comfort and prosperity, not low wages, unemployment and hunger. We want democracy and freedom instead of totalitarianism, bureaucracy and racial and religious conflict. But capitalism with its giant corporations, automation and robots and abundant natural resources, capitalism is unable to provide us with these elementary needs. It is unable to avoid wars. Capitalism produces more and more for destruction. It continues to direct more and more production into armaments production, to protect the wealth interests of the few. A constant redivision of the sources of wealth and profits takes place, with the carving up of the spoils. Unless the working class eliminate the system of profits and plunder wars will persist forever. While the  capitalists are united against the workers, they are in competition against each other and against their capitalist counterparts abroad. They all try to outproduce and outsell each other on the market because the mainspring of capitalist production is profit, not human needs. As long as capitalism endures, the crises of capitalism will only be accentuated. It is a little more difficult for workers to understand this but on a world scale capitalism has reduced the standard of living and decreased the freedom of mankind. It has produced privation and totalitarianism in most of the world. 

Every new discovery and invention which improved the productive technique of capitalism and made possible a saving of human labour and a refinement of the product, the benefits have not been distributed to mankind. The more advanced become the tools of our society, the more wealth becomes polarized at one end, and poverty at the other. We see the phenomenon of poverty in the midst of plenty.

Under this system of capitalism a handful of oligarchs and plutocrats control the wealth and power of the planet. They own corporations. They own the politicians because they finance the big business parties which put them into office. They have the power of life and death over all of us. Socialism, and only socialism, will create a true world society, a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, without master and slave nations and, hence, a world without war. There will not be a global government of a dominant economic elite but a worldwide administration of all the peoples that inhabit the planet. Its primary duty will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, diseases, hunger and insecurity. while solving the climate crisis we all face.  Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people. In abolishing classes in society, socialism will change the form and type of governments which exist today. Governments will become administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class.

Socialism will end the  root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories farms and mines which produce the necessities of life.  Production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth.

In abolishing classes and the state socialism will at the same time destroy all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. The world socialism will be the freest, most democratic society the world has ever known truly representing the majority of the population. 

World socialism will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment.

World socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent housing for all the people.

World socialism will provide for a multitude of schools for all the people.

World socialism will cease to regard education primarily as institutions to produce skilled labour to help operate the profit economy.

World socialism will create a system of good healthcare.

World socialism will provide worthwhile work with job satisfaction for all as this will be labour without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of workplace, but the increasing technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress.

World socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help create an ever-improving social life for mankind. Today’s society contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism, gigantic industrial enterprises containing machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed a marvellous technology to create a fruitful life of abundance.

Only world socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.

The world is ours

 

It is the contention of the Socialist Party that socialism,  production for use and not for profit, will make capitalism of today seem primitive by comparison. Capitalism means neither democracy nor individualism. It dehumanises a person on the job and turns him or her into a cog in a machine. Ours is a class society, based on capitalist exploitation. The working class is kept in a condition of wage slavery.  Poverty in the midst of plenty, that distinguishing mark of the capitalist system of production.

If any one thing stands out above all else, it is the fundamental anarchy of the capitalist system. It is just impossible to make the profit system fulfil the election promises made by the politicians. The purpose of production remains the same – how much is there in it for the owners of industry. The profit system has one unshakable purpose: PRIVATE GAIN. The sole end and aim of business is PROFITS. No matter how much the bosses may talk, in public, for newspaper advertising, you know that they consider everything connected with the shop, the business, the mine or the mill from the standpoint of whether it will bring MORE PROFITS to them.

Today our poverty cries out for the need of a new social order. All that stands between us and the things WE have PRODUCED, the houses we have built and do not occupy, the food we have produced, which we may not eat – all that separates us from these things, that belong to us, is our habit of thinking what the employing class wants and teaches. You will find almost everything and  every social institution directly related, in one way or another, to PROFITS, if you stop to think about it. As long as profit for the few is the basis of the economic system, that system–capitalism–will continue to go from crisis to deeper crisis, with more misery for the masses of people.

Working men or women know that something is wrong with things as they are today. No matter how hard we may work and save, we  know that we are always up against it to make ends meet. Profits are the cause of poverty and squalor. And socialism proposes to end deprivation. This is why every working man and woman ought to be a socialist.  We in the Socialist Party intend to make the factories, farms, mines and shops the collective property of society; to do away with bosses and to abolish the PROFIT system.

Under capitalism, workers have no control over what is produced and how. All that is decided by how much profit some capitalist will gain. But socialism enables the working class to decide how to organise itself and the resources of society to meet the needs of the people. So long as private property and profits remain the backbone – the unbroken backbone – of the economic system, a planned economy remains like a watery mirage in the desert, something thirsted after but far-distant and unattainable. 

Bosses make their profit out of the labour and sweat of their workers. They can’t have their cake and let the workers eat it too. The fact is that CLASSES EXIST. They exist because some men live by owning the factories and mines and machines, and have to go to work on these machines which they don’t own. The boss tries to squeeze as much profit out of the worker as he can. The worker tries to wring as close to a living wage out of the boss as he or she can.

And if the workers stopped struggling, they’d just be squeezed more, that’s all. That’s why there’s a class struggle. There are kind bosses and tough bosses. There WERE kind slave-masters and cruel ones. The working class wants NO slave-masters and NO bosses. 

To be sure, the Socialist Party demands the abolition of the profit system altogether. 

 

Scottish Republicans?

 In Edinburgh, a woman holding a sign saying, “Fuck imperialism, abolish monarchy” was arrested moments before the reading of the proclamation. The incident took place outside St Giles’ Cathedral, where the Queen’s coffin is due to lie on Monday.

A police spokesperson said a 22-year-old woman had been arrested in connection with a breach of the peace. 

Some people were heard booing at the proclamation of the King during the Edinburgh event.

Socialism is the ONLY answer

 

The working class must make its stand against its own capitalists– whose lust for profits and interest, for investments, markets and expanded capital, for raw materials and cheap exploitable labour, can mean only exploitation at home and abject slavery for the peoples of developing and undeveloped nations.

In socialism, there will be no wages at all. There will be no prices or market. In socialism, goods are produced for the use of people and NOT for the profits that they bring in to bosses. Labour power is no longer regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not purchased at all, let alone purchased at the lowest possible price to keep it alive and able to produce more value. People, in socialism, will work and produce useful goods. But they will produce these for their mutual needs. People who have been freed from the capitalist system will also have been freed from wage labour, price and profit. That is why, instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” workers must inscribe on their banner the REVOLUTIONARY watchword: “Abolition of the wage system!”

It is the very essence of capitalism to keep the price of labour at a minimum point, just sufficiently above the subsistence level so that working people can continue to produce – never enough above this level so that the worker could save for a period of not working. The boss has no other interest in the worker. Capitalism, no matter how it plans and prays, is never actually able to do more than keep the worker at the level of subsistence – although there is plenty to provide luxury for all.

The way to cure a disease is not to put a palliative balm upon the symptoms, but to remove the cause. The profit system is the cause of nearly all the suffering poverty, sickness, crime, as well as war. It is the One Great Enemy of the working class. Amidst the horrors of famine, poverty, crime and war there is one way out for the working class of every country. There is one way that means victory for the useful workers of that country. That way means socialism (or industrial democracy as others prefer to describe it.) All the power lies in the hands of the workers. We can make the whole world our world. But it must be an educated, organised class.

Capital is simply money and commodities assigned to create a profit and be reinvested. Profit is made by the "magical" addition of surplus value to the value inherent in the product. The "added value," the profit, is produced by workers. And this capital is born to expand or die. To be useful, the investment must result not only in a profit but in a growing rate of profit.

Market relations isn’t a conspiracy plotted by a group of secret schemers. Marx who pointed out the truly anarchistic nature of modern industrial capitalism - an irrational, disorganized hodge-podge operation that enormously rewards price fixers, crooks, gangsters, exploiters, con artists, gamblers, stock manipulators, and all manner of corruption. It's a crazy and ruthless economy that survives by inflicting misery on untold billions. Marx who pointed out the truly anarchistic nature of modern industrial capitalism - an irrational, disorganized hodge-podge operation that enormously rewards price fixers, crooks, gangsters, exploiters, con artists, gamblers, stock manipulators, and all manner of corruption. The market is coordinated by trade (what sells and what doesn't) "trade" doesn't determine basic prices anyway. Rather than being basically dependent upon supply and demand, prices in the marketplace actually fluctuate around the real value inherent in a commodity.

The value of a commodity comes from the labour invested in it, including the labour that manufactured the machinery and extracted the raw materials used to create the item. And the boss' profits do not come from his smarts or his capital investment or his mark-up, but from the value created by labour - specifically, surplus value.

Surplus value derives from unpaid wages. The worker is never paid for the value of the product, only for the value of her or his labour time, which is considerably less, and which meanders widely depending upon the historical, cultural and social conditions of a country.

With Labour-power you get more out of it than you put in. Workers produce a commodity which has more value than what they get in wages to keep them functioning. This differential is surplus value, which is the source of capital.

Socialists will produce for use according to a rational plan without a thought for the idea of profit. And with no insatiable parasitic class to maintain, a socialist society will produce abundance for all the global human family 

To End All Wars

 Throughout history philosophers and politicians deplore the miseries of war. They still deplore them but war remains in all its brutality. Only the victims can alter this. Every war brings a flood of declarations and statements relating to its cause and proposals for its future prevention. After World War One  the  League of Nations was thought to be the panacea, but it failed. The end of the Second World War created the United Nations and that has failed. The bitter fact is that the world is no safer for peace today. The great lesson is that the war-like nature of capitalism continues.

Our party has always stated that it is impossible to prevent wars without abolishing the capitalist system which breeds war.  It is impossible to prevent wars while this system, and its conflicts between nations, remain. The Socialist Party holds the opinion that wars are caused by international economic conflicts, and not by the goodwill or bad will of some people. fundamentally wars are caused by the efforts of all the capitalist powers to expand into other fields. The only way they can get them is by taking them away from some other power because the whole world has been divided up among a small group of competing powers. That is what leads to war, regardless of the will of the people. Our party is unalterably opposed to all wars. We write against them; we speak against them and we campaign against any participation in wars.

We say if the working class dissipate their political energies by pursuing plans and schemes calculated to solve the problem of war by adjusting the political relationships of nation-states, then they will be faced in the future with more war and all the horror and tragedy it brings. War is a product of capitalist society and its conflicts, and the solution lies in the abolition of this system and its replacement with socialism; there is no other way.

We do not believe in capitalism. We do not want any blood shed to make profits for the capitalists. The main fact is that wars are a product of the clashing economic interest of various property owners in different parts of the world who struggle for markets, trade routes, sources of supply of raw materials, and so forth. While private property with its clashing sectional interest remains war in all its barbarity will always cast a shadow over the planet, a world disfigured by its warfare by torturing, murdering, persecuting, and raping. Given the conditions that lead to war then war will always produce barbarities that have upset and disturb people. The solution is the building of a new system of society in which private ownership will have no place.

 Wars will stop when people no longer support the social system that gives rise to them and replace it with one where wars are a thing of the past. What iv n s needed was a clear analysis of why humans go to war. It is not because of our genes, our natures or our beliefs. It is because capitalists make themselves richer and more powerful by obtaining more and more markets and trade routes and exploitable populations and raw materials. And until capitalism is abolished, its ruthless, competitive drive for profits will condemn workers to die needlessly in wars.

Wars can be stopped forever by simply removing the reasons for their existence. A system where property law and violence separate people into two classes can be replaced by one in which all property, wealth, and land is held in common, and where the owning class no longer has the ability to sustain itself. This system is called socialism which does away with governments and private (as opposed to personal) property, freeing the sum of all the world's wealth to be shared equally by all humans and removing the need to fight over anything. Socialism, and the end of all war, is not a utopia or a lunatic's pipe dream, but a real solution to many problems. Are you ready to take the first steps to end war?