Anti All Wars

 

The war in Ukraine arouses, as war often does, many deep emotions. It is an old, familiar theme for the propagandists — poor Belgium in 1914, poor  Poland in 1939 and now it is poor  Ukraine. But there is emotion on the other side as well. The war did not start out of nothing. Russia feared Western aggression. Always behind the scenes, the big power blocs are operating, supporting one side or the other with arms and military advice, with aid and loans, as part of a larger and more menacing clash of interests. Russia is clearly determined to exploit this situation, both for what it can get out of it and to cause the greatest possible embarrassment to the Western powers. Experience, and knowledge of capitalism, should have taught  working people.  The wars of capitalism are fought to settle the disputes of its ruling classes; no working-class interests are at stake in them. The problems of the Ukrainian workers are the same as those of workers all over the world, and they will not be solved in a war. Their interests are the same as those of the workers of Russia and of every other capitalist country—to unite for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of socialism. 

 

The cause of war today is the capitalist organisation of society, a society based on the private ownership of the means of life and on the production of goods and services to make a profit. Capitalism creates ruling groups who constantly struggle with each other for control of the wealth of the world. Governments represent the interest of these ruling groups. Their conflicts are economic ones: the competition for markets, the race for sources of raw material, and the mastery of strategic positions. Russia is no less involved in this sordid business than the U.S.A.

While it is important that workers oppose war, it is just as important that we recognise just why armed conflicts between states break out and in whose interests wars are waged. If you think about it you'll be hard-pressed to think of a single war that did not have its roots in the desire of small elites to make profits. All wars, even small-scale conflicts – and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is no exception – tend to be fought over mineral wealth, foreign markets and areas of influence, trade routes or the strategic points from which the same can be defended.

For the Socialist Party, the war in Ukraine has no rights or wrongs except the over-riding fact that capitalist wars are not waged for the benefit of the working class or impoverished peasants. In the opening phases, the Russian armies were everywhere victorious but now Ukrainianians counter-attacked and the outcome no matter which armies had won on the battlefield will solve no working-class problem and will bring socialism no nearer. As in previous wars, the Socialist Party takes the opportunity to proclaim its abhorrence of the sordid, callous and mercenary nature of the international capitalist class and its commitment to socialism.

Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and socialist fraternity and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of socialism.

War can solve no working-class problem. It cuts across the fundamental identity of interest of the workers of the world, setting sections of this class at enmity with each other in the interests of sections of the capitalist class. 

War elevates force into the position of arbiter in place of the common human desire for mutual peace and happiness. Its effect is wholly evil. It depraves all the participants by forcing them to concentrate on the best methods of producing misery and of annihilating each other. 

War elevates lying, cheating, disabling and murdering opponents into virtues, and confers distinctions upon those who practise these means most successfully.

Men and women have the vile methods of warfare impressed upon them so thoroughly that they lose a balanced outlook on life and are impregnated with the idea that force, with all its baseness, and not reason, is the final solution in all problems. 

Socialism is completely opposed to war and to what war represents. At the same time, it is the only solution to the conditions that breed war. It is a new form of society in which the people of the world will work harmoniously together for their mutual benefit, for there will be neither privilege nor property to cause enmity. 

No coercion will be needed in socialism because each will gain from co-operating harmoniously with his fellows. But it is a new social system that demands understanding of its implications from those who seek to establish it. 

With the establishment of socialism, war will disappear and humanity will emerge.

The only way forward is a revolutionary change to a completely different society:

· Worldwide common ownership of resources— not minority class ownership.

· Production to meet human needs — not for private profit.

· Free access to goods and services — not the rationing of a monetary system.

· A free, democratically-run, non-authoritarian system giving equal opportunity for all.

 

This can only be achieved by the conscious action of the majority of the working class. We urge you to join us in the fight to establish world socialism. To end war – and the need to demonstrate against each war as one war succeeds another (were you on the demos against the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and before that against the war in Kosovo?) – capitalism has to be ended and replaced by a global system where the resources of the Earth have become the common heritage of all Earthpeople. That way, competition and conflict between elites over resources can give way to co-operation between peoples in different parts of the globe to use the world's resources for the benefit of all its inhabitants.

If you lend your support to a political party or organisation that fails to question the real nature of capitalist society, how our world is organised for production and how power is distributed, then you are in effect supporting a system that bred this war – and will breed future wars. We urge you to think seriously and reconsider your position. Capitalism and war and uncertainty that comes with it, or world socialism and global peace and security? Protest endlessly against each new war as it arises or campaign for a new world of common ownership, democratic control, peace and human welfare.

Chomsky - Alternative to Capitalism (video)

 

Working for Socialism

 

WAGE SLAVERY

Today there is no socialism anywhere. Nowhere is there full freedom of expression.

We in The Socialist Party aim at building a world community — without frontiers, based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production where things will be produced for use. A world without war, world hunger or racialism. A world that has no need of money and has abolished rent, interest, profits, wages and prices. A world fit for human beings in which the way of life would be:

From each according to ability,
       to each according to needs

We think such a society can be brought into being only when it is technically possible for abundance to be produced (as it is now) and when a majority of the population understands the implications of such a socialist reorganisation, desire it and take the necessary democratic action to establish it

We insist that any attempt to make such a revolutionary change, except by organised democratic political action will never succeed. We are opposed to the efforts of anarchists, Leninists, Trotskyists, Maoists and other elitist groups which set out to disrupt the democratic process or to seize power following deliberate provocative actions aimed at manipulating masses of students and workers in the interests of the self-appointed ‘revolutionary' vanguards. Fortunately, although they do not share our revolutionary socialist view, most students and workers have sufficient political insight to reject the roles intended for them by these would-be leaders.

The Socialist Party says that this society can, and should, be changed. The means for producing wealth should belong to the whole community since this is the only arrangement that will allow them to be used to satisfy human needs. Production solely for use (without buying and selling) is only possible, given modern technology, on the basis of this common ownership and democratic control. Modern technology can provide plenty for all that will allow mankind to organise the production and distribution of wealth on the principle of: from each according to ability, to each according to need.

The Socialist Party is not preaching brotherly love as the solution to social problems (that is the doctrine of Christianity, one of the great props of class society throughout the ages). We advocate a change in the basis of society, a social revolution. One of the distinguishing features of homo sapiens is the ability to think abstractly, and to plan their actions without reference to their immediate circumstances. Insofar as man has instincts these are merely biological needs like food, drink and sex. But this tells us nothing about how these needs are met. That is a question of social organisation. But since human biology has hardly changed in millions of years while human society has, it is no good trying to try to explain society and social change by biology. Human nature (whatever it might be) is no barrier to socialism. Indeed socialism is, in the present circumstances, the only rational way to run society. For, with common ownership and production for use, man is in charge of his social environment and not, as under capitalism, at the mercy of economic forces.

What's the incentive to work in socialism? Many people’s attitude to work is shaped by capitalist values. They have automatically assumed that work must be unpleasant and that therefore people must have some monetary incentive to work. Work is merely the expenditure of energy. For human beings it is both a biological and a social necessity. Human beings must somehow use up the energy that eating food generates, and if no wealth is produced society will die out. So the real question is: How is work organised? Under what conditions is it done? Under capitalism, most work is employment, done in the service of other human beings. It is done under discipline, rather than as free cooperation. It is often dull, even dangerous and degrading. And, as a class society always “respects” those on top (who don't have to work), there is a stigma attached to working. It is a sign of social inferiority to have to work. The Socialist Party says that work can, and should, be made pleasant. Indeed, one of our strongest points against capitalism is that it forces most people to do boring work. But men and women can only control their working environment when they also control the means and instruments of work.

Freedom River (video)

 

A New Human Horizon

 

The market works. But just not for us. It works for the handful of people who own industry or land. Most of them are doing well and getting richer. For them, the present system works, through our hard work.

For us, the workers, it doesn’t. The real value of wages has shrunk. Housing is becoming more unaffordable for many, rents are rising and benefits are being cut. Unemployment is at staggering proportions, especially among young people.

The truth is being revealed across the world: that the system is run in the interests of those who own it. For governments, repaying debts to those who got wealthy from our work is more important than us receiving education or health care.

For us, the future won’t work so long as we depend on an economy based on the market with private or state ownership of the means of living.

In our workplaces we co-operate. We don’t charge our colleagues for our time: we work together. It’s just that we work together for our employers. If we owned the land and all the places of work ourselves, we could work together to make all the things we need, without buying and selling and without an employing class.

The alternative is voting for parties that support the market system: parties that inevitably have to accept the existence of poverty and unemployment.

While we build a movement to bring about a better future, it’s important that we use trade unions to defend ourselves and get the best deal we possibly can under the present system. We must ensure democratic control of trade unions, and not follow charlatans and adventurers to glorious defeat. We should rely on ourselves, not leaders.

If we want to transcend the defensive position forced upon us by the pressures of the profit system then a vision beyond capitalism has to be on the agenda.

That future we call socialism, a future where we would have common and democratic ownership of the resources of the world. A future that will work if the majority of us want it and are prepared to work for it using democratic struggle to create a world of common wealth.

The monster of war has raised its ugly head again, and once more the workers have been called upon to take up arms and risk their lives in their masters’ quarrels. The usual flimsy pretexts are broadcast.  The Western Powers claim to be concerned to defeat the pernicious intrigues of Russia.  It is an old oft-repeated story; littered with indecision, broken promises, duplicity and intrigues. So it will continue until those who do the work of the world realise that only when privilege in all forms, and class ownership of the means of living, have been abolished will it be possible for the people of the world to give in harmony.

The hypocritical blustering of the warmongers is matched by the feeble and contradictory protests of the alleged anti-war and peace committees. The rival slogans of “national sovereignty,” “international rights,” “restoring peace,” etc., only thinly disguised the sordid motives of the different ruling class groups. War is caused by commercial rivalries that are necessarily engendered by world capitalism. Each country builds up armed forces to maintain its position in the capitalist world, and no group which believes it has a vital interest at stake will be deterred from using its armed forces by United Nations resolutions. Capitalism is an exploiting system under which the workers—the mass of the population—produce the goods that are sold to provide the profit out of which the owners of the means of production and distribution accumulate their riches. Profit, the surplus left over after the expenses of production and distribution have been met, is the mainspring of the system. In order to obtain this profit goods have to be sold at home and abroad. This necessitates markets, trade routes and sources of supply. It is over these that capitalists quarrel and finally plunge into war. So it is today. All this points to the necessity of international working-class action to abolish the cause of war. Unfortunately, the workers are still at loggerheads internationally and are prey to all sorts of emotional upsurges that do not bring them any fundamental relief. They will only unite when they understand the cause of and remedy for war as well as for the other evils they suffer. Only when the workers do understand and unite against capitalism in all the countries of the world for the purpose of achieving socialism, the ownership in common of all that is in and on the earth will war vanish from the human horizon.

Post-Capitalist Society (video)

 

How to Organise

 

As members of the World Socialist Movement, we are glad to see the emergence of organisations attacking capitalism as a system rather than merely its particular evils. In Britain, we in the Socialist Party have stood since 1904 for the abolition of capitalism, and the establishment of socialism, i.e. the abolition of money, private property and the state. For most of that time, the working class agenda has been dominated by those who said that socialism was about running capitalism better, be it Russia, China, Cuba, Sweden, etc. Now that this presence is lifting we find that many thousands have arrived at the same conclusions as ourselves, but have organised along the lines of the anarchist tradition. Whilst its diversity has allowed revolutionary ideas to flourish (as well as several reactionary ones!) it has the opposite problem to the Left. They are monolithic, but anarchism is fragmented.

The Socialist Party wants to recreate the social relationships of early human society, which were co-operative and sharing and based on giving and taking rather than buying and selling. We say this can be done without having to renounce the advances in sanitation, medicine and comfort that modern science and technology have brought, including the ability to find ecologically-acceptable techniques of energy generation and industrial production. We want to restore the original common ownership of the Earth’s resources – for the Earth to become, as the Diggers put it, “a common Treasury for All” –  and the social relationships that went with it, while retaining both industrialism and globalism.

In teaching that we don’t need formal decision-making rules and structures, some anarchists are propagating a dangerous illusion, dangerous because it opens the door to groups of discontented people being manipulated by some self-appointed and non-accountable elite or vanguard. We insist that, on the contrary, “self-organisation” is only possible as democratic self-organisation, involving formal rules and structures, precisely to prevent the emergence of unaccountable elites.

We’re not talking about the sort of structures advocated and practised by Leninist organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), where the rules and structures are designed to enshrine control by a self-perpetuating elite (in the SWP, as in other Leninist organisations, supreme decision-making power rests in the hands of a central committee which is self-perpetuating in that it is elected as a slate—whose composition is chosen by the outgoing committee).

We are talking about structures that place decision-making power in the hands of the group as a whole, along the lines of the seven “principles of democratic structuring” listed by Jo Freeman in her essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness:

· Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic procedures.

· Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to all those who selected them.

· Distribution of authority among as many people as reasonably possible.

· Rotation of tasks among individuals.

· Allocation of tasks along rational criteria.

· Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible.

· Equal access to resources needed by the group.

This in fact is more or less the basis on which we, as a smallish revolutionary organisation, have always organised ourselves. It is also the basis on which we have always advocated that the mass movement to replace capitalism a stateless, moneyless society where goods are produced not to make profits but simply because people needed them” should organise itself—a democratic self-organised mass movement of people who want and understand such a society (we call it socialism, but which people can call what they like).

An anti-capitalist movement organised and co-ordinating its activities on this basis need have no fear, contrary to what all varieties of anarchists claim, of contesting elections to win control of political power from the supporters of capitalism who currently control it and who use it to maintain the economic power and privileges of the capitalist class.

In fact, the anarchists’ advocacy of either taking on the State head-on by “direct action” against it or by trying to ignore it and proceed as if it didn’t exist is foolish in the extreme. It increases the chances of violence. This is even more so when the anarchists concerned also reject the idea even of organising on a permanent basis with decision-making conferences, accountable delegates, voting, reporting back and, yes, binding decisions.

A supposedly spontaneous, unorganised anti-capitalist revolution such as advocated by various anarchist groups would only end in disaster out of which either the present rulers would succeed in reasserting their control or a new set of rulers would profit from the chaos to seize power. If we are going to get rid of capitalism the majority is going to have to organise itself to do so—in a permanent organisation with a democratic structure.

There's a Better World A Comin'

 

Thoughts on the New Year

 Once again, we reach the First of January. Once again, we are greeted with “A Happy and Prosperous New Year.” What are the prospects of a happy New Year for working people? When we wish each other a prosperous New Year! What a pious platitude. What have the workers to look forward to in 2023? Was 2022 a good year for us?

We can fully expect in the coming year for the wealthy to continue indulging themselves in luxuries while we toil and sweat to make that possible for them. The aim of the capitalists is to keep the workers submissive and willing wage slaves with flattery and promises.

 The workers of the world can control their destinies once they discard their delusions and shed the burden of the capitalists they have borne upon their backs.

We want a different way of life. We think this earth and its resources should be at the disposal of the whole of mankind. That it should be used to meet our needs and not wasted on a market economy. A new type of world based upon cooperation for the common good.

Why not reflect on what your New Year's resolution will be this year? Are you going to resolve to become a "better" person, which you have very little chance of keeping? Or are you going to make this the year you start to take control of your own life?

"I resolve that 2023 will be the year that I will organise democratically with my fellow workers to abolish capitalism and bring about a society in which we can all become happy and prosperous".

Socialism is Love (music)

 

The Socialist View

 

At this time of year, it is customary to cast a critical look over the political scene and take stock of the position in which the working class finds itself. The Socialist Party hold that capitalism cannot be fundamentally improved for the workers. We see no evidence at all to prove the unsoundness of our case. Only common ownership of the means of production can solve the workers' problems.  We resolve to raise aloft the banner of world socialism.

The great majority of the population has no property. They have no means of living except by working for others. They must seek out an employer master willing to hire them. The working class can offer only one thing—their ability to labour. They have nothing to sell except the energy in their bodies, brawn and brain.  Labour power is a commodity, the price of which is determined by its cost of production. All commodities are subject to this law. There may be temporary fluctuations in the price of a commodity due to variations in supply and demand, but these compensate one another in the long run, and a mean level can be traced through the ups and downs which is the actual cost of production. It is true that the workers' standard of living is not unalterably fixed. It is possible, in certain favourable circumstances, for the workers to win for themselves, through organised struggle, a higher standard of living. On the other hand, it is possible for the standard to be beaten down to lower levels.

What is wrong is capitalism: private or class ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution for profit. The workers do not live on profits; why, then, should they produce for profits? They should organise politically for control of the State machinery in order to establish a system of society based on production for use. The wants of the people would determine the nature and extent of all production instead of, as to-day, the profits of a ruling class.

When we talk about socialism we mean a worldwide sustainable society of common ownership, with no leaders, so by our global definition socialism has never existed before. Temporary or small-scale experiments have certainly occurred at different times in history, but we tend to question their usefulness in convincing anyone of the viability of socialism. If anything, the very fact that they didn’t last long can be trumpeted as proof that socialism is not viable. Of course, it’s not proof of any such thing, but neither is it proof that socialism could work long-term. Besides, not everyone finds such obscure historical debates either attractive or relatable. Perhaps what such attempts do show, however, is that the human desire for social equality, real democracy, free access and so on is very real and very strong, and the fact that people have acted on that desire in the past is a very good reason to think they will act on it again in the future, next time we hope with happier results. 

Marx always insisted (as we do) on the need for the working class to win control of state power before attempting to change the basis of society from class ownership to common ownership. He also saw elections as one possible way of doing this. For anarchists, political action in this sense is anathema. The state must not be captured, it must be confronted. Anti-capitalists should not contest elections, they should boycott them. Confronting the state — as some “anti-capitalists” tried — is a senseless policy, especially when it’s a question of a minority confronting a state-supported, even if only passively, by a majority. The state will always win in such confrontations since it has much more force at its disposal.

As to the time when there will be many, many more anti-capitalists (socialists), then boycotting elections — agreed there’s not much point in voting today, where all the candidates stand for the continuance of capitalism in one form or another — would also be senseless since this would be to leave state power in the hands of the pro-capitalists. Much more sensible would be to organise to take this power from them. That’s the difference between Marxian socialists and anarchists, a gap which could only be bridged by anarchists dropping their dogmatic opposition to elections and political action. Hopefully, they will.

The Good Fight (music)