Nationalism or No Nation

 

A nation is not a natural community that existed before the state, but that it's the other way around: the state existed first and then proceeded to impose on those it ruled over the idea that they formed a “nation”. States pre-existed and in a very real sense created nations. Nations are groups of people ruled by a state or a would-be state. The Polish nationalist Pilsudski observed that "It is the state that makes the nation, not the nation the state." What is a nation? It is simply the people and the territory which have been appropriated by a class of robbers at some point in history. It has less to do with a common language, religion, race, culture, and all the other things which nationalists imagine or pretend are essential ingredients in the making of nations.

The concept of the nation is very real force in the minds of people today. The idea that the world is naturally divided into nations is widespread. This can be partly explained by the propaganda of nationalist groups, but there are other reasons too. People are not machines; they need something else, something to sustain them. By no means do they get this at work, they feel lost in this vast meaningless world of capital, just another cog in the machine, and they would be right. So naturally they seek meaning. Often they find meaning in the idea of the nation. This search for meaning and identity can often be found in the notions of “us and them” even though this is profoundly illogical. It is no coincidence that a person with a immensely draining and alienating job, say repetitive work, will tend to cling desperately to this collective idea of nationality, as they find meaning and comfort in this idea, since they have no meaning in their work.the ideology of nationalism ultimately means that workers and capitalists living in a particular geographical area must have a common interest. As with most myths there is an element of truth in this. Normally, a common language is shared (Language became a factor in establishing state power, and thus it became a factor in determining a "nation". It's no coincidence that the rise of the nation-state coincides with the invention of the dictionary ) and on a superficial level at least, a common "culture" can be defined, i.e. "the British way of life". However, if one probes slightly deeper such an analysis fails to stand up.

The only way to define such national identity is to define it in terms of what and who it is not, i.e. negatively. Thus nationalism sets itself as being against other countries, striving to define a uniqueness of national culture so as to once and for all set its country apart from others, to know itself by what is un-like it. At one extreme this can include myths about race and blood, trying to attach the national abstraction to some trait of genetics or similar such nonsense. Since people have a strong desire to retain their own perceived identity, and to have a good opinion of themselves, often the creeds based on such identities function in a highly irrational, and ultimately, defensive way. Thus it is usually a sign of desperation and of an incapacity to formulate a coherent argument when our masters resort to playing the nationalist card.

All this of course benefits the ruling class. If the workers were ever to put their passion into something like socialism, then it would be the end of the ruling class. It benefits them to see the workers placing meaning and identity in things that are irrelevant and mythical to the truth of class struggle. Keeping the workers unable to see the true state of affairs in the world works to the ruling class's advantage.Class existed before the nation state. Throughout history one ruling class or another has attempted to impose its view on those they ruled over, manipulating their passions and pretending that its interests and their interests were the same. So, in another of life's ironies, the masses waste their energy fighting amongst themselves, believing their interests and the interests of their rulers are linked. Nationalism has always been one of the biggest poisons for the working class. It has served to divide workers into different nation states not only literally but ideologically. Today it is probably fair to say that a majority of workers—to one extent or another—align themselves to their domestic ruling class.Historically, nationalism and national feeling have been the tool of the capitalist class for both winning and retaining power. The ruling class have cultivated such ideas as nationalism, propagating the illusion that we live in a society with a collective social interest. The more enlightened capitalists probably saw the effects of separating and alienating people from each other and their labour, and so stepped up the spreading of beliefs like nationalism in order to try and convince people that they were not so exploited as they really were, and that everyone had a common interest.

 Nationalism is a relatively new concept for social control, (religion was once the principle method of control over the majority).

To the Socialist Party, class consciousness is the breaking-down of all barriers to understanding. The conflict between the classes is more than a struggle for each to gain from the other: it is the division which reaches across all others. The class-conscious working person knows where one stands in society. His or her interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class. Nationalism is not their interest but their rulers'. The presence of nationalist ideas is an indication that some groups in society feel its real material interests are being frustrated by forces outside or even inside the nation. But the desire to achieve their aims is never expressed in terms of their own needs only. In order to enlist the necessary working class support such arguments as “justice”, “freedom”, and “the nation” are used to justify the real bone of contention and to give it an aura of sanctity.The concept of nationality, the idea that an area dominated by a privileged class which thrives on the enforced poverty of that area's productive class, should grant to the latter the right to live there providing its members accept their wage-slave status and endorse the right of the privileged to live on their backs is offensive to any intelligent person. Those who promote such nonsense are enemies of our class.

The world of nationalism is full of contradictions, odd ideas and illogical notions. The idea that a line of a map, a so-called “national border”, should actually mean something concrete to the workers is laughable. Let's imagine that a human, born in the area of land known as France, is standing two feet from the “border” with the piece of land known as Germany. Another human is facing them from across this line, a so-called “German”. Are these two people utterly alien to each other? They may speak differently and have differing customs perhaps, but that is all due to material conditions and the ideology of the ruling group. Both people have to sell their labour power for wages, and are manipulated and exploited by a capitalist class. A typical nationalist would argue that they are alien because all French people are a certain way and all Germans are a certain differing way. But any differences that do exist are minor. A true understanding of the implications of socialism will reveal that the very idea of nations as a political concept can have no part to play, though there will of course still be cultural differences among people (e.g. language). Despite many workers finding it difficult to communicate with and understand each other because of language or cultural barriers this does not alter the fact that they are all part of one globalised exploited mass with more in common with each other than with their indigenous bosses.

Workers do not share a common interest with their bosses. It does not follow that if the "national wealth" increases, or if trade increases, or even if profit increases, that higher wages will be gained by workers. In fact capitalists can only make a profit by appropriating the wealth produced by the workers to themselves; but in the topsy-turvy world of ideology, it seems that workers will only have good pay and wealth when the capitalists are doing well. So it appears that workers and capitalists share a common interest. In fact, the interest of workers is conditioned by the interest of the capitalist, in exactly the same manner as hostages held by a kidnapper: unless the kidnapper-capitalists's demands are met, they will not allow the hostage-workers to have what they need to live. There is a well-documented effect of hostage situations, called "The Stockholm Syndrome" in which hostages under duress began to identify with their kidnappers, and believe in their cause. Nationalism works in much the same way. It is the Stockholm Syndrome on a grand scale. The working class who are dependent on the capitalists, to whom they are bonded by state-boundaries across which they are not permitted to escape, begin to believe that they share an identity with them.

Leninist-inspired distinction between the nationalism of the oppressors ( which is always bad) and the nationalism of the oppressed (allegedly always worth supporting, even if critically). This even though that oppressed nations, once "free", can easily become oppressors in turn. Oppression, however, has to be seen in class, not national terms. Both so-called oppressor and oppressed nations consist of oppressor and oppressed classes, and "national liberation" enables an oppressor class to consolidate and expand its power, rather than freeing all the people of a formerly oppressed nation. The absurdity of Lenin's theory can be proved by a living example from the life of a worker in the Indian subcontinent. Suppose he is 70 years old and now a citizen of so-called independent Bangladesh. He was a subject of Pakistan and before that of the British Empire. According to Lenin's theory, he was subjugated by "British imperialists" up to 1947, then by "Pakistani imperialists" up to 1972. Now by which? Yet all through these years he remained a wage slave, not free, though his masters and nationality changed. What a ridiculous proposition is Lenin's theory! Many on the political left will argue that Palestinian nationalism is somehow progressive and different to Israeli nationalism and should therefore be supported. As socialists, we say that this is a dangerous poison that is being spread by the left. We argue that every nation state is by its very nature anti-working class. The “nation” is a myth as there can be no community of interests between two classes in antagonism with one another, the non-owners in society and the owners. Self-determination for "nations" just equates with freedom and self-determination for a ruling class.

 Lenin's theory of imperialism made the most significant struggle at world level not the class struggle but the struggle between states, between so-called anti-imperialist and progressive states and so-called imperialist and reactionary states. This was a dangerous diversion from the class struggle and led to workers supporting the killing in wars of other workers in the interest of one or other state and its ruling class.

To sum it up, the illusions of nationality are yet another tool of the ruling class, intended to trick workers into thinking that this really is some kind of collective society, and to misplace their passions that could otherwise be directed into the class struggle. Nationalism is the ideology which seeks to justify the capitalist division of the world into separate “nation-states”.

 We utterly reject this view of the way humanity should organise itself. We condemn all nationalisms equally. When countries achieved independence little changed except the personnel of the state machinery.

As socialists we re-affirm that all peoples should seek their emancipation, not as members of nations or religions or ethnic groups, but as human beings, as members of the human race. They should unite to abolish the division of the world into so-called nation-states and to establish a World Cooperative Commonwealth of which we will all be free and equal members - citizens of the world, not subjects of nation-states. The goal of the socialist movement is not to assist in the creation of even more states but to establish a real world community without frontiers where all states as they currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society communities, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places that are real and tangible – but the nation states will be consigned to the history books where they belong.

Can we vote for revolution?

 

Revolution seems a frightening concept but it doesn't have to be scary. In fact, we should not need to use the adjective "revolutionary" in regard to socialism because by its nature is a revolutionary theory. To attempt a revolution without majority support is almost inevitably bound to result either in a counter-revolution or in a dictatorship which destroys the goals for which the revolution was undertaken. No doubt as the socialist revolution approaches people will be organising in all kinds of informal bodies ready to take over and run society after the end of class rule, but as long as democratically-elected parliament exist winning control of them through the ballot-box must surely be central to the strategy of any socialist party.

When the workers first won the franchise many of them voted for their masters out of a sort of feudal loyalty, and others were cheaply wooed with flattery and petty bribes: only a few saw that they had in their grasp the instrument to gain their emancipation. You may have noticed that whoever gets elected, nothing really changes. This is because politicians have no intention of changing anything. We give the politicians a blank cheque to do what they want or can get away with. They're really doing very nicely out of the system, recession or no recession. Fewer and fewer people are bothering to vote in elections, for example, correctly realising that it will have little effect on their everyday lives. Attempts to reform capitalism, whether through parliament or dictatorship, have failed.  This leaves conscious majority revolution as the only way forward.

Are elections and voting a waste of time? After all, don’t anarchists say that if voting changed anything it would be illegal? The standard anarchist argument against the revolutionary movement contesting elections is that this inevitably leads to it becoming reformist; revolutionary politicians, whatever may have been their original intention, end up merely administering capitalism - the lame explanation of “power corrupts”. Anarchists, in their criticism, tend to argue that all "parliamentary" parties, within which they include the Socialist Party of Great Britain, have in the past, and in the present, betrayed the working class; that Parliament is not the real seat of power but a "talking-shop"; that the Socialist Party contests elections aims at parliamentary majorities and so on it perpetuate what anarchists see as harmful illusions about law, the state and parliamentary democracy and are therefore no different from all other parties.

Voting has not changed the most fundamental reality that needs to be changed - the reality that is capitalism, for it is this economic system that is ultimately responsible for the inequality and desperation that currently exists in so much of the world. On the other hand, voting has occasionally made things better for some on some occasions. Social Democracy never satisfactorily settled the problem of reform and revolution, of whether or not a party aiming at socialism ought also to campaign for reform of capitalism. They tried to combine the two, having a maximum programme of Socialism and a minimum programme of reforms. This minimum programme was called variously "immediate demands", "partial demands" and "reforms". The question the Social Democrats did not face was: did campaigning for reforms hinder the struggle for Socialism? All the evidence seemed to show that it did. The policy adopted by Social-Democratic parties has generally been described as "parliamentarianism". By which is meant the idea that a parliament dominated by working-class representatives can, through various types of legislation, control the existing system of society in the interests of the community as a whole. Whilst workers have made some gains this way, more and more people are becoming aware that such a path offers no solution to any of the major problems they face because it leaves untouched the basic structure of society which is their root cause. The failure has been attributed, as much to the mechanism of parliamentary elections as to the nature of social reformism itself. It has been argued that the experience Social-Democratic governments prove the uselessness of parliamentary institutions to the workers. We can agree that this is what happened to these parties but offer an explanation: that such parties were co-opted because they advocated reforms of capitalism and not its abolition. Social Democratic parties had in addition to the “maximum” programme of socialism what they called a “minimum programme” of immediate reforms to capitalism. What happened, we contend, is that they attracted votes on the basis of their miniumum, not their maximum, programme, i.e. reformist votes, and so became the prisoners of these voters. In parliament, and later in office, they found themselves with no freedom of action other than to compromise with capitalism. Had they been the mandated delegates of those who voted for them (rather than leaders) this could be expressed by saying that they had no mandate for socialism, only to try to reform capitalism. It was not a case of being corrupted by the mere fact of going into national parliaments but was due to the basis on which they went there and how this restricted what they could do. In short, it is not power as such that corrupts. It is power obtained on the basis of followers voting for leaders to implement reforms that, if you want to put it that way, “corrupts”. There is no reason to suppose that the electoral process necessarily corrupts. On the other hand, we contend, a reform programme does corrupt. The appropriate approach is contesting elections only on the basis of delegates being given an instructive mandate for the sole purpose of carrying through the formalities involved in winding up capitalism.

While elections may seem to be irrelevant, workers should not turn their back on the electoral system as such. Once the world’s working people demand socialism, the electoral system can be utilised to effect the revolutionary act of abolishing capitalism by signalling that a majority of ordinary people fully understand and want to effect that change. So we should not be fooled by the myth that there is no alternative to capitalism, that it will always be with us. It will not, it is true, simply collapse.  But its structure rests primarily on the effective control of public thought aimed at persuading people that the society that exists is ‘good’ and works in their interest.  Yet, ultimately, force is always on the side of those who are governed and when ordinary people decided to end the misery and change society the numerical superiority of ordinary working people will make their demands unstoppable.  Critics of the Socialist Party's position fail to appreciate the different content of the term "parliamentary" as applied to orthodox parties and to the Socialist Party. We indeed hold it essential that the transformation to a new society be started by formal democratic methods—that is, by persuasion and the secret ballot. For there is no other way of ascertaining accurately the views of the population. The result of a properly conducted ballot will make it clear, in the event of an overwhelming socialist vote, to any minority that they are the minority and that any attempt to oppose the desires of the majority by violence would be futile. The formal establishment of the socialist majority's control of the state avoids the possibility of effective use of its forces against the revolutionary movement. An attempt to establish a socialist society by ignoring the democratic process gives any recalcitrant minority, the excuse for possibly violent anti-socialist action justified by the.claim that the alleged majority did not in fact exist or that the assumed majority was not likely to be a consistent or decisive one.

 The Socialist Party's aim is a revolutionary change in society. Socialism does not mean a different kind of government, or State control of industry. It means a completely different social system, based on the ownership of all the means of life by everybody. Socialism means a world where the things of life will be produced solely to satisfy the needs of mankind, instead of for the purpose of realising a profit for your bosses; a world where the whole of humanity will own and control the means of living and where wars and international strive cannot exist: a world where people will no longer be subject to the threat of unemployment and to the perpetual struggle to make ends meet—in short, a world where everyone will freely and equally associate and enjoy all the fruits of their labour. We're talking about a world community without any frontiers. About wealth being produced to meet people's needs and not for sale on a market or for profit. About everyone having access to what they require to satisfy their needs, without the rationing system that is money. A society where people freely contribute their skills and experience to produce what is needed, without the compulsion of a wage or salary.  There is no need for the food we eat, or the clothes we wear, or the houses we live in, to be restricted by the size of our wage packets. There is no need for the output of factories and farms to be restricted by having to make a profit. The productive resources are sufficient to make it possible to abolish buying and selling and thus money and to go over to free distribution of the things people need.

How is the Socialist Party is going to do all this? The answer is that it is not. YOU are going to do it. No politician can help you.The only barrier to the immediate establishment of socialism is that most people, for various reasons, do not accept socialism as a practical option and prefer to keep capitalism in the forlorn hope that it can be made to serve human interests. Even though the politicians share the responsibility for keeping capitalism in being, it is no use your blaming their failures on dishonesty or incompetence since it is capitalism itself that sets the limits to what they can do. The governments you elect have to work within the constraints that profit must come before human need. When a majority use our votes to win control of political power so that class property rights can be ended and the means of production belong to the community as a whole. This new society can only come about when a majority want it and are determined to get it. Nobody can bring it about for you. In our Declaration of Principles we say: "That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself." The Socialist Party does not present itself as a would-be ruler or a new leader. The world will not change for the working class until they themselves change it. What we propose is that workers throw off the domination of the ruling class and organise and run society in their own interests instead of in the interests of their bosses. Then and only then will we see an end to the problems that have beset the working class for so long. We need to organise to bring about a world where the Earth’s resources have become the common heritage of all and where every man, woman and child on the planet can have free access to what they need to lead a decent and satisfying life.

Despite their shortcomings, elections to a parliament based on universal suffrage are still the best method available for workers to express a majority desire for socialism. The ruling class who monopolise the ownership of wealth do so through their control of parliament by capitalist parties elected by workers. Control of parliament by representatives of a conscious revolutionary movement will enable the bureaucratic-military apparatus to be dismantled and the oppressive forces of the state to be neutralised, so that Socialism may be introduced with the least possible violence and disruption. Representatives elected by workers to parliament have continually compromised to the needs of capitalism, but then so have representatives on the industrial field. The institution is not here at fault; it is just that people's ideas have not yet developed beyond belief in leaders and dependence on a political elite. When enough of us join together determined to end inequality and deprivation we can transform elections into a means of doing away with a society of minority rule in favour of real democracy and equality.

 The Socialist Party adopted the policy of trying to gain control of the machinery of government through the ballot box by campaigning on an exclusively socialist programme without seeking support on a policy of reforms; while supporting parliamentary action they refused to advocate reforms. This has remained its policy to this day. Mandating delegates, voting on resolutions and membership ballots are democratic practices for ensuring that the members of an organisation control that organisation – and as such key procedures in any organisation genuinely seeking socialism. Socialism can only be a fully democratic society in which everybody will have an equal say in the ways things are run. This means that it can only come about democratically, both in the sense of being the expressed will of the working class and in the sense of the working class being organised democratically – without leaders, but with mandated delegates – to achieve it. The socialist movement must stand firmly by democracy, by the methods of socialist education and political organisation, and the method of gaining control of the machinery of government and the armed forces through the vote where possible and only with the backing of a majority of convinced socialists

We appeal is to those activists who are committed to the concept of a self-organised majority revolution without leaders to abandon their dogmatic opposition to the working class forming a political party to contest elections and eventually win control of political power, not to form a government but to immediately abolish capitalism and usher in the classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society that real socialism will be.The socialist message is that workers should think long and hard before casting their vote. it would be difficult in one short article to prove any case beyond question, especially a case as big as this. All we can do is give you the bare bones, so don't be surprised if it doesn't convince you straight off. We're not magicians. If you don't have questions to ask at the end of this then we're not doing our job properly, or you're not giving it any thought. And if you have questions, we can only suggest you contact us to ask them. It's up to you. The future is in your hands.

After Capitalism?

Capitalism can sell everything; but it can’t sell “less.” Capitalism knows no limits, it only knows how to expand, creating while destroying.

Right now there are hundreds of campaigns globally for fossil fuel divestment as a strategy in the fight against climate change. Many are proposing that when institutions divest from fossil fuels, they should then "re-invest" in clean energy and low-income communities. The debate about divestment raises important questions about how we bring about social and economic change and how much we should engage with capitalist enterprises and government.

For sure, to address climate change, we clearly need massive development of solar, wind and other clean energy. And we need improved and expanded public transit, energy-efficient housing. A "divest and re-invest" strategy is being advocated of universities and other institutions to use their endowment money to support environmental initiatives. Selling fossil fuel stocks will not significantly hurt fossil fuel companies financially. Buying solar company stocks may lead to small increases in the price of those stocks but that’s all. A divest-reinvest strategy is not likely to lead to the clean energy economy we need. We have evidence. Ethical investors have failed to end the arms trade or the tobacco and alcohol industries.  Such campaign gives a legitimacy to the capitalist system by focusing on money rather than politics undermine the rationale for capitalism’s existence.

There exists two rival conceptions of socialism. What is known as “state socialism” and what is called “market socialism”. One advocates a system of state-ownership, where there exists no private enterprise of individual capitalists. The economy is run by a series of plans under the centralized command of the State. Wage labour still exists but the employer is the government and the bosses are the officials of the various ministries and departments. The other model promoted is where the economy is operated by a mixture of co-operatives and nationalized industries that will no longer possess the imperative to accumulate capital or compete with other nation states. Wage labour remains but because enterprises are worker-owned or, at least managed, the worker pay themselves (profit-sharing), they are their own employers. The Socialist Party rejects both types and even challenge them to legitimately call themselves versions of socialism as they both involve buying and selling, the continuance of private property (albeit collectively owned) and the retention of the prices system as an expression of value.

Advocates of either “state socialism” or “market socialism” describe the socialist vision held by the Socialist Party as utopian. The idea of overthrowing existing “corporate” capitalism and replacing it with a nicer sort of capitalism is a political project that the Socialist Party would ascribe as the fantasy. The Left strangely enough share the same criticism of socialism as the Right.  “It sounds good on paper, but socialism will never work, because if everybody gets everything they need whether they work or not, then there is no incentive to work at all!” So the old argument goes, you need wages and you need money to force people to work. “No money, no honey.” This is the case against socialism shared by those avowedly pro-capitalist and some who declare themselves to be some sort of “socialist.” They ten present a picture of a society where there will be no pressure among competing enterprises to undersell one another by allotting some workers a smaller share in income, working some harder than others, laying some off, hiring the poor from other regions. Workplace democracy within the market is supposed to minimize such exploitative tendencies. It should be obvious by now that neither “state” nor “market” socialism are “realistic” proposals that provide a solution. We might as well revert back to Henry George or Major Douglas plans for a “post-capitalist” society.

Workers sell their labour power as a commodity. That is why we concentrate efforts on the price of our labour power (wages) and the terms and conditions at which it is sold.

 Certain workers’ cooperatives anticipate a new society growing within the womb of the old.  It reunites workers with the means of production and removes the capitalist from the workplace. It gives ownership to the workers and elevates their power, confidence and consciousness. It can prepare the workers involved and other workers for the task of making the whole economy the property of the working class, which is socialism. Some co-ops provide the services that are currently provided by the state and which leaves them at the mercy of the state and the politicians who preside on top of it.  Such services include education, health, welfare and pensions. Thousands of cooperatives already exist; they are not purely idealistic mental constructions.  What’s more they can be, and many are, very successful; providing hundreds of thousands of jobs.  Living proof that workers can do without capitalists to tell them what to do.  Workers can take control, can make decisions and can be successful. When critics say – “where is your socialist alternative after over a 150 years of your movement?” we might be ventured to point to the cooperative movement as a simple promise for the future. Of course, cooperatives are not a solution to everything. An objection is made that cooperatives will simply teach workers to exploit themselves within a market economy based on competition.  They will simply become their own capitalists. Co-ops aren’t anti-capitalist because they do not provide an alternative to capitalism, except in the legal sense of ownership. In capitalist society ownership entitles control and capitalist ownership entails capitalist control. Markets do not disappear and therefore capitalism does not disappear.

We must urge the start of a new period of major struggle against capitalism, after a long time of relative inaction. The Socialist Party can be thought of as representing, in embryo, the democratic participatory socialism of the future, in which popular groups will make economic decisions.  In this way, socialism can be made real, although socialism cannot fully be installed without making a radical break with current property relations and the current allocation of political power. There is a need for mass education about the ways in which capitalism lies at the root of the problems afflicting ordinary people around the world. The belief that nothing beyond capitalism is possible can be countered by a vision of a workable socialism, based on democratic participation in the economic as well as the political institutions of society. The socialist movement can be rebuilt, and socialism can become a real possibility again, only when millions of people become convinced, not only that capitalism does not meet their needs, but that a better alternative system is possible. If the resistance to reformism can prevail, a vision of a socialist future for humankind may again be placed on the world’s political agenda.

We cannot be effective socialists if we work alone. We cannot inspire socialism without embracing self-education. Revolution is not a product, but a process. We don’t ever “finish” our training. Class struggle remain a perpetual work-in-progress. It’s tempting to write off all those so-called comrades who don’t share your epic vision or your one-of-a-kind discipline or whatever. You’ll start the damn revolution all alone. Who needs them, right? You need them. We all need “them.” For many reasons. For example: it is collective efforts that create the checks and balances. Unless we work as a team, we might aim our rage and anger at the wrong targets. A socialist party needs commitment. It doesn’t need loners. It needs teammates and solidarity support for all who join the struggle. Our shared personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action. Let’s join together to work towards collective liberation.

Truss, Starmer or Socialism

 While everyone else is worrying about problems like the rising price of energy, sewage on the beaches, inflation and disruption to the rail service, the Socialist Party concentrates its attention on the only solution the prospect of a class-free, money-free world community.

As the media’s knives come out for Truss, Starmer is hailed as the new messiah, it seems always to escape the attention of most of the people that every period of Labour rule in this country has been notable for a bitter fight with the working class over wages. Workers who resisted wage restraint have always been castigated by Labour Party politicians as saboteurs of their policy plans.  Workers have always been foolish enough to think that another Labour government would handle the crises of capitalism better than the Tories. Union leaders such as Mick Lynch still hope for the return of a Starmer-led government in spite of all the recent experiences that have taught him about Starmer’s “solidarity”. He and other union heads have been well warned.

The Labour Party is now a party with a new outlook; a fresh departure from the discredited old gang run by Corbyn. Well, anyway, that’s what we are told. Instead, they are simply rehashing the elements of the traditional conservatism of the Tories, a mixed mess of cynicism, hypocrisy and double-dealing. And in that, there is nothing new.

Capitalism is the cause of war. Currently, the means of production and destruction are the property of a minority, worked by us for their benefit. Only a democratic movement to put these things into the hands of the whole community will ensure a world of peace. Then we can carry out production for human enjoyment, not for profit, and melt down the weapons.

When you examine why the world erupts into war it becomes apparent that until we reorganise the basis of society it will be as necessary to carry on producing armaments as it will be to produce truncheons for policemen and keys for prisons. As society is presently arranged, the means of producing and distributing social wealth (the farms, factories, mills, mines, offices, transportation and communications) are monopolised by a small minority of people. This division is between the small minority who possess most of the wealth but do not contribute to its production and the great majority who possess almost nothing of the social wealth but produce it all.

Under this arrangement, wealth is not produced simply and directly to satisfy human requirements. This creates antagonism between members of the owning class as they compete to capture markets for their commodities, gain control over sources of raw materials, and dominate strategic trade routes. The international competition between capitalists is sometimes conducted through negotiations (“business deals”, bribery and threats) at conferences, summits and through diplomatic relations, but periodically such negotiations will break down. At times, although many people may be starving or in need of all sorts of goods, too much will have been produced to be profitably sold and then the competition between the capitalists will intensify as they struggle to dominate fresh markets in order to maintain their level of sales.

The industrial and commercial concerns will expand at the expense of others. The final stage in this sort of competition is war. It is an integral feature of the social process of the profit-system and in trying to gain superiority and bargaining power over one another, sections of the wealth-owning class from different countries will have developed for their protection even more barbaric weapons. 

The dawn of socialism is rising on humanity’s horizon.

 

What is the future of humanity? Who dares to answer? Are we upon the threshold of death and destruction for the whole of mankind? Or do we stand upon the threshold of a new age of unparalleled peace and plenty? The Socialist Party pose the alternatives that have arisen.

The future of humanity must not be decided by those in power, the bankers, the industrialists, the politicians, or all those who have taken the world through recurring economic slumps, bloodbaths of war and the destruction of our environment. Working people must organise, speak out and with one voice demand life under socialism before death under capitalism overtakes us all. A programme of planned production for the use of the people rather than for the profits of the owners of industry would bring an age of peace, plenty, and prosperity. This is already technologically possible. How can any sane person conceive of capitalism coping with the climate change crises? The only permanent solution to capitalist exploitation is the workers' revolution to establish a socialist future for humanity worldwide.  Workers must awake, and awake quickly, to the understanding of all the horrors of the capitalist system.

A capitalist economy produces goods for a market the limits of which are determined not by people’s needs, but by the ability to make a profit, and to re-convert, the profit realised into further production. It is impossible for the economy of any national capitalist state to be self-contained. In the first place, because of the uneven distribution of natural resources in the world, no nation contains all of the raw materials that it requires. Secondly, the effective consumer market in all advanced capitalist nations is never sufficient to absorb the total output of the economy, and markets must be sought outside the national boundaries. Thirdly, because of the limitations of the domestic market and the disproportions generated within every advanced capitalist economy, there is never a sufficient outlet for capital investments internally, and such outlets must also be sought elsewhere.

Goods and services are produced, not in order to satisfy human needs and wants, but in order to make as large a profit as possible. And so long as there’s a profit to be made, all sorts of anti-social products, including such things weapons of mass destruction are cheerfully produced. Socialism – or perish!

 Only the working class, which suffers the cruelties of capitalism in peace and war, can deal the death-blow to this foul system. The workers can rally around their liberating banner and can change the world. Having abolished capitalism, they can harness the productive forces and the wondrous technology of science to the service of human needs, eliminating all poverty and raising the living standards of all peoples to undreamed-of heights. Hazardous and unhealthy occupations can become things of the past. The drudgery and servitude of ugly and unnecessary toil can be ended. There can be leisure and comfort for every man, woman and child on earth. We are certain that before long the world will witness the working people in all countries seeking to break once and for all the chains of exploitation and establish the truly free society of socialism.

The capitalists have not solved a single social ill. They have opened new sores. World capitalism, as a system of production for sale on a market with a view to profit, not only ignores needs that can’t be paid for, but it also distorts the pattern of world food production

Food, like everything else under capitalism, is not produced for use. It is not produced to be eaten but to be sold, with a view to profit, on a market, a local market, a regional market and, increasingly, the world market.

When there is production for the market it is only market demand, not a real need, that is satisfying and it is this that, in the context of food production, condemns millions of people in the world to go hungry or be badly fed and others to actually die of starvation. These people are malnourished not because it is technically impossible to produce enough food to feed the whole world’s population, but because the present world economic and social system capitalism produces only to satisfy profitable market demand and not human needs. It is as simple as that. These people don’t starve to death; they are starved to death, by capitalism.

Big Ag  will not invest in anything that is not profitable even if they are corporations with the best will in the world they are not free agents. They must, under the logic of the capitalist system and the laws of the market produce in countries that get the best possible return on investment. Undeveloped and developing countries are caught in a vicious circle. In order to modernise they must have funds to invest. How do they get these funds? By selling on the world market the crops that they are apparently best qualified to produce. This means forcing their peasants and farmers to stop producing to satisfy their own needs or local markets and turn to produce the cash crop in question. This in turn means that money has to be spent on importing fertilisers and food crops, paid for by the profits from the exports of the cash crops. And, if the price of the cash crop on the world market falls? Then they do not have enough money to import enough food and the world hears about a “famine” somewhere caused by some “natural” disaster. Famines are artificial in the sense that they could be avoided if we had a social system geared to satisfying needs rather than profitable sales.

Towards a Socialist Future

 

The ruling class and their governments can trick and deceive the people by relying on our short memories. No matter how careful the capitalists and their apologists may be, the inconsistencies of the present economic system constantly are revealed. The world is engaged in some of the bloodiest and most destructive wars in history. People fear another world war which may be a nuclear exchange. What has happened to the peace which we were assured would be ours with the end of the Cold War? The people were not only promised peace, but also security, and freedom from fear and from want. Where is this security today? The promises made to us were fraudulent. The United States has the largest military budget in its peacetime history and more and more billions of dollars are added to it every few months. It is pouring still more billions of dollars into militarizing and arming countries around the world. Russia is likewise preparing for war. Its great and long-suffering people are still held under a totalitarian ruling class which has now tried to add Ukraine to its empire. Each side, in its own way, is telling the truth about the other. But even if only half of what they say about each other is true, they stamp themselves as criminal fools or criminal liars. If the people are to live and prosper, capitalism must be ended.

The Socialist Party is not organised for the purpose of relieving the more or less obvious results of poverty. Our object is to abolish the cause of poverty, not to waste our time and energies in futile attempts to mitigate some of the more glaring effects. 

Many workers have yet to hear the socialist case, but our efforts to enlighten them are severely restricted by our meagre resources. We need support to enable us to carry on the struggle for socialism. The Socialist Party calls upon fellow workers who sell for wages the only commodity that they own—an ability to work—to consider its case—the case for socialism. Consider your position as a member of a class that is sweated in industry and bled in wars; consider the poverty, misery, disease, and slum life of your fellow workers and class consciousness—not leaders—will enable you to capture the control of the machinery of government and thereby the means of producing and distributing the wealth that will allow us to live like men. The alternative is existing like slaves.

The outstanding social problem of our age is poverty. It exists side by side with great wealth and affects the employed as well as the unemployed. It is the result of the private ownership by the capitalist class of society’s means of producing and distributing wealth. The facts of this concentration of ownership in the hands of a small minority of the population are well enough known.

The Socialist Party has been telling fellow workers for years, not merely that the Labour Party do not believe in socialism, but that they are an organisation which hopes and attempts to reform capitalist society, neither understanding the basic structure of capitalism which it wants to modify, nor socialism which it claims as its objective. The Labour Party can govern and can administer capitalism— only in the interests of the capitalist class. Past Labour governments are ample demonstration of this. The Labour Party can govern; it can and must make promises which induce the electorate to give it support—but can it keep them?

The problem with the working class is the modesty of its demands. It could organise the economic and political life, not in the interests of the employers, the profiteers and the bureaucrats, but in its own simple interests of all the people, who want to oppress nobody, to exploit nobody, to war on no other people. It could organise production not for the profit of a handful of capitalists but for the use and enjoyment of all. It could build homes, instead of bombs to destroy homes; provide for the health and welfare of all, instead of for the destruction of nature. It could set such an example of democracy that no tyranny could withstand the uprising of its own slaves. For this, the working class needs nothing but an understanding of the task and the political power to perform the task. Up to now, however, the working class has been content to leave its fate in the hands of the leaders of the parties of capitalism.

Up to now, however, the working class, and especially the organised labour movement, has been content to leave its own fate and the fate of the nation in the hands of the twin parties of capitalism. We seek nothing more than to be part and parcel of its loyal socialist wing because it will be our party no less than the party of the working class as a whole. We are convinced that great and stirring days are ahead. We are convinced that the working class will soon start its mighty stride along the road of independent political action in its own name and under the red flag. We remain socialists – independent socialists. We are independent of capitalism, of all capitalist governments, of all capitalist politics. We are democrats, consistent and thoroughgoing democrats because we are consistent socialists. The working class, and we as part of it, need democracy, widening and deepening democracy.