Towards A New Freedom

 

Socialism has long been a necessity. Socialism is now more necessary because the only alternative under capitalism is the ecological destruction of our environment and civilisation returning to  barbarism for the entire population of our planet. Capitalism has provided the technology which are necessary for a socialist reorganisation of society, it long ago ceased to be able to provide for thebasic  needs of people. We want security. We want peace. We want decent homes.  We want comfort and prosperity. We want democracy and freedom. Despite its huge industries and abundant natural resources, capitalism is unable to provide us with these elementary wants. The insanity of this system of  capitalism is that it creates inequality, poverty and unemployment and all the crises of society because it produces too much.

Capitalists 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. Consequently, a  manufacturer produces as much as he thinks he can sell at a profit. So does his rival. The market becomes glutted, because there are more products produced than the customers can buy – not, of course, more than they need.

Socialism, and only socialism, will create a true global society, a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, without master and slave and, hence, a world without war. Socialism’s sole criterion would be the needs of the people.  Socialism will guarantee peace, security and freedom and prevent the destruction of mankind. Socialism will end the root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, transport, communications and land, which produce the necessities of life.

 With socialism, these instruments of 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.

By  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 coercion or to promote the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership. Socialism will in the elevation of society, to improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to heighten the cultural level of the whole world. A socialist world state will be the freest, most democratic society the world has ever known. A socialist world 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, creating abundance, increasing leisure and building opportunities for cultural advancement. Socialism will not concern itself with profits. The aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of labour, but the implementation  of technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress.

Today’s modern world contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism. All around us are elaborate  industrial enterprises containing machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed marvelousnew  technology to create a fruitful life of abundance. Socialism will place at the disposal of humanity the scientists and experts to help create an ever-improving life for mankind. Under capitalism, scientists and inventors are mere wage workers hiring out their skills to private R and D industry. The fruits of their intelligence under intellectual ownership laws become the exclusive property of the capitalists who profit from the research of these scientists. Thus, science has become subordinated to profits rather than to the common good of all mankind. Future society depends on changing this relation of science to society. Socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the community.

 Working people can travel the road of capitalism towards chaos, war, poverty and barbarism, or we can take the socialist path toward true freedom, peace and security, the way toward a society of plenty for all which would end the exploitation of man by man for all time.

Glasgow Eskimos (music)

 

No Way But The Socialist Way

 The only way humanity can survive is by ending capitalism. humanity cannot thrive by pursuing profit.

The world today is in the hands of billionaires-owners of the biggest corporations. They use their power to make themselves richer and richer—at our expense. They hire workers to make a profit out of their labour; their capitalist production is for profit, not for use and to get more profit they keep wages low and worsen conditions. Poverty and insecurity are making great inroads into the homes of working people. Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be gotten rid of. Socialism will mean the end of production for profit and instead work will carry on production for use. The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the working class will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation and extension of production. Advancing slogans like “Make the Rich Pay”  implies no intention to abolish capitalism.

Capitalism exists on the basis of unpaid labour. You as a worker produce commodities to be exchanged on the market. You produce not only enough to pay your own wage, but also an added value, a surplus value, over and above the cost of your maintenance. Surplus labour is your unpaid wage. In polite circles, it is called “profit. ” And that’s what capitalism is all about. The ruling class wants to preserve its privileges, its interests, its power, its wealth, and its dominion. And so it engages in divide and conquer.

Paradoxically, capitalist society has internationalised humanity’s life. It has forged material bonds between all peoples which establish an inevitable solidarity between them. Internationalism is not ideal, it is a historical reality. Capitalism causes the peoples’ interests, ideas, customs, and regimes to coalesce and co-mingle. Working people are not making good progress toward the solution of their problems because they see only isolated injustices and do not see the underlying cause. Too many people still believe that their government stands for peace and freedom.

Workers are all the people who don’t own their own means of production. Are you a producer of goods, or are you an appropriator of profits? Are you a worker employed by somebody else, or are you the owner who reaps surplus value from the labour of your workers? 

In order to replace capitalism with an egalitarian society we need a revolution. Capitalism, no matter how it plans and promises and prays, can never actually lift the worker from the bedrock of subsistence – although there is potentially plenty to provide an abundance for all.  Our world revolution aims not only at the abolition of privilege, and class, but ending national boundaries and the fusion of all peoples into one society.

Socialism is the sole solution to the question of poverty and the question of exploited labour.  The Socialist  Party holds that the exploitation of labour, with all of its consequences, will not disappear until the day the means of production – land, machinery, communications and transport will be transformed from private property into collective property.

Socialism is not production for profit. It is production for use. It is not production for private ownership and the private ownership of resources. It is common ownership of wealth. It is not inequality and misery and persecution and discrimination. It is not deprivation and destitution. It is equality and fairness.  It is freedom from poverty and want. It is freedom from hunger and war. It is freedom from oppression and squalor. Socialism is a celebration of life, not a cult of death.

How is a socialist movement to be built? This blog does not pretend to have a formula but does believe that certain steps can and should be taken. Defeatism must be replaced by confidence in victory. Raising the political consciousness of the largest possible number of fellow workers we could reach remains our main task today. To transform the SPGB from a propaganda group into a party of mass action and where workers shall learn to accept Marxism as their guide to action.

The Socialist Party looks to the working class to fashion and fights for its own solution—workers’ control, self-management and democratic planning.  We stand with the workers as they organise.  We must not entertain illusions for it is only the working class, who can forge an authentic socialist revolution. We are the people. We are the majority.  We are the working class. If we organise we will change this world.  The Socialist Party is the harbinger of a world movement for the future. The working class today stands at a crossroads of history. The workers cannot afford to be lulled into a false sense of security. The empty gesture of capitalism to save itself must be repudiated. The happiness of humanity is not in the past but rests in the future.

Strange Fruit (music video)

 

Capitalist Wage Slavery V Socialist Freedom

 “All I want is freedom for my country, happiness, peace and prosperity."

A refrain, with variations, that we have heard unceasingly over the centuries. The Socialist Party has not been duped by such sentiments of national independence 

Freedom: In capitalist society means the right of the vast majority to be propertyless wage workers producing wealth to be sold on a market with a view to profit.

My country: The countries of the world are owned by a privileged minority. The working class has problems and interests that are produced by capitalism and not by the existence of national barriers. 

Prosperity: All workers are poor, and some are destitute. A prosperous working class is a contradiction in terms. Capitalism is as incapable of producing a working class that is prosperous as it is of producing a government that is popular.

Peace: Even if the shooting stopped the class war would remain, that is the struggle which goes on all the time over the ownership of the wealth of society, whether it be in a so-called “United" Ireland, the “United" States, the “United" Kingdom, the “United” Arab Republic. Russia, Africa, in fact wherever capitalism is the predominating form of society.

 To appeal to any national group of capitalists for disarmament, to give up their only defence against their like-minded predatory neighbours and against the workers from whose robbery the privileged position of the capitalist class arises, is to ask them to commit suicide, and will naturally be given the amount of consideration such a proposal would deserve. Is it to be expected that our capitalist rulers, armed to the teeth to defend their private property, will scrap their armaments and voluntarily sacrifice their hold on the world's wealth merely in response to muddle-headed reformers?

Only when all the resources of the earth, natural and man-made, are owned in common by all the people of the world can they be used in a rational way – to provide an abundance of goods and services which people can take and use freely as and when they need to.

The Socialist Party has always contended that capitalism should be abolished because it mismanaged the means of production so that a very few – those who own the means of production – reaped great profits while the masses of the people were deprived of a secure standard of living. Also, we would often prove this assertion by demonstrating the tremendous capacities which modern technology has; how it could satisfy the needs of everyone if it were run for that purpose; and how capitalism, instead, ran the industrial machine for profits. 

Look, the Socialist Party would say, if only the people could run these industries themselves, they could produce enough to satisfy everyone’s needs.  It remains the great and tragic paradox of our age – poverty in the midst of plenty.  The primary interest of the capitalist, we have said, is profit. Capitalism is a wasteful and inefficient system. Socialism could plan better, and provide the people with all necessities. Socialism could take the vast resources which are available and use them for constructive purposes. In place of capitalism could arise a new society of peace and plenty. That is why socialism is the burning need of the hour. Capitalists are interested in production for profit, and socialists in production for use. Capitalism is based upon a constantly increasing exploitation of labour, in order to maintain its profit; workers constantly resist this exploitation. There is and can be no such thing as a “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” inasmuch as wages are the payment for only one part of the day’s work, the other part of which the worker is compelled to contribute to the employer in the form of surplus-value, or profit. Capital always seeks to increase its profits, which can be done only by exploiting labour; labour always seeks to resist exploitation, which can be done only at the expense of profits. These are fundamental economic facts. Under capitalism, nothing that all the capitalists or the whole government will ever do can succeed in wiping out these facts.

Talkin' Bout A Revolution (music)