The Socialist Party Agenda

 

Most people do not know much about the Socialist Party. Certainly, many people have heard the word “socialist" and imagine that it has something to do with the nationalised industries or dictatorships such as the former Soviet Union and China. It is understandable that many people regard “socialism" as just another political cliché, used to win votes for Labour politicians, but has very little meaning.

The Socialist Party stands solely for socialism because we do not think that the present social system — capitalism — can ever be made to work in the interests of the majority of people. This is not the fault of government policies, but of the present social system in which they are operating. Capitalism always puts the needs of the minority who own and control the factories, farms, offices, mines, media, and the means of wealth production and distribution, before those of the vast majority — we, the working class — who produce the wealth, but own little more than our ability to work, which we have to sell for wages or salaries.

It is a hard but undeniable fact that no political party — including the Socialist Party — can legislate to humanise capitalism or make it run in the interests of the wage slaves. That's why it’s time for you to stop giving your votes to politicians who stand for the profit system. None of them can solve unemployment, which has increased steadily under both Labour and Conservative governments, despite their proclaimed recipes for economic success. None of them will provide decent housing for everyone. None of them will end with hypothermia. None of them will prevent thirty million people from starving to death each year. None of them will end the threat of human annihilation as a result of war, because militarism is inevitable within a system based upon the market, trade and ferocious competition. Why waste your vote on parties that cannot make any of these urgently needed changes? Why go on in the hope that a miracle will happen and the insanity of the profit system will be put right?

So what's the socialist alternative? We say that the resources of society must be taken into the hands of the whole community — and by that, we don't mean the state, but all of us, organised together, consciously and democratically.

In a socialist society, we will produce for use, not profit. This means producing food to feed the world's population, not dumping it if it cannot be sold profitably. Producing for use means ending the colossal waste of resources on armies, armaments, trade, banking and insurance, and all the other social features which are only necessary within capitalism; it means devoting human energies and natural resources to producing the best of what people really need and want. By running society on the basis of common ownership, democratic control and production for use we can all have free access to all goods and services.

Two points must be made clear to you.

 We have made no promises; we have not asked for your support. Indeed, the Socialist Party does not want your support unless you are convinced that the case for socialism is a sensible one and is in your interest. Socialism can only be established when a majority of workers understand and want it, so there is no point in seeking support on any other basis.

Secondly, you will have noticed that what we are advocating is different — it has never been tried. Starmerites have nothing new to offer. The Labour Party, if elected, will continue its futile exercise of trying to reform capitalism. The Tories, if given a chance, will pursue their vicious policy of dancing to the tune of profitability while human needs are ignored. Thatcher’s “Victorian values”, Starmer’s “consensus politics" and Corbyn’s “Keynesian” reformism have all been tried — they’ve failed. This is the only organisation which is making a proposal to transform world society from the chaos and waste of the market into the co-operative democracy of production for use.

The socialist idea can be summarised. Do you agree with the following statements?

★    CAPITALISM puts profits for the few before the needs of the many.

★ LABOUR governments and proposals to reform the profit system cannot establish socialism.

★ SOCIALISM means a society of common ownership and democratic control where production is solely for use — not profit.

★ WHEN a majority of workers — including the quarter of the electorate who did not vote last time, the disillusioned members of the old parties and those who have turned to the nationalists — understand and want socialism, the new system can be established immediately.

If you think that the above statements are wrong, please take the trouble to tell us why. If you agree with us, then why not take the next step and contact the Socialist Party?

Where is our James Connolly (music)

 A song reminding us of the union organiser James Connolly and not the nationalist insurrectionist

Do-It-Yourself Socialsm

 

No politician can help you. They all say they are going to have to make you worse off because of the crisis.  In other words, to make you poorer to protect the wealth of the 1% who own the world.  It’s their system of making goods and services to sell for profit that led directly to the crisis.  So long as we have this production for profit, we’ll have periodic crises and politicians wringing their hands over them.

The only way out is to change the rules of the game:  to change the system by putting an end to minority ownership by replacing it with the democracy of common ownership by and for everybody. Enough resources, know-how and skills exist already to provide comfort for everyone.  It’s the profit system that prevents this. We need to do away with it and instead produce and access goods for needs.

At the moment so many people think that there’s no alternative that they are shrugging their shoulders and hoping for the best.  If a few of us stand up and say “we will not put up with this, we want something better” then the idea that resources should be owned in common and used to satisfy people’s needs can get on the agenda as the only genuine alternative to capitalism and austerity.

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.

The Socialist Party is a political party — we have an object which can only be achieved through political means. Political power is controlled, of course, through Parliament but local councils play an important part in applying many of the laws which are made in parliament and they can make by-laws. Councils, in other words, are part of the machinery of political power which the working class must take over to establish socialism.

The social change from capitalism to socialism can only be brought about by democratic means. The vote is not a mere scrap of paper. It can be the means to bring about this change when once a majority of the working class wants it. For, until a majority want socialism it is out of the question.

Everyone is familiar by now with what the other political parties promise — an answer to the housing problem, more roads, more hospitals, and better schooling. We also know the results of these promises.

The housing situation is as desperate as ever; housing shortages are forming faster than new houses are being built, there are thousands of homeless and many councils have closed their housing lists. One fact that no other party makes clear, however, is that housing is a problem which only affects the working class; it is part of their poverty. Rich people simply do not know what it is to plead for a home, nor to live in the inferior, shoe-boxes which are considered fit for most members of the working class.

The roads are becoming increasingly congested and motor car continues to encroach upon our environment.

Hospitals are still inadequate, many of them in ancient buildings run by overworked staff. No wonder the waiting list is so long, with so little hope of it ever being broken down. Here again, the rich person does not have the same problem; money can easily buy prompt and expert medical attention, in a private ward and with privileged treatment.

It is a similar story to education. Working-class children are taught enough for them to take their place in the factory or the office or in the laboratory. They often get their schooling in overcrowded classrooms under an overworked teacher. The children of the rich are educated in expensive private schools where they are given every chance to develop their abilities.

The other parties fail to solve these problems, not through any lack of sincerity. They are pledged to support capitalism, which has its own system of priorities. Roads and schools and houses and hospitals may be very desirable but capitalism produces primarily for profit, which means that human interests come a long way down the queue.

Socialism will end this. It will be a world of common ownership where human interests take first place, where wealth is made for people to enjoy it. It will be a world where goods and services will be in a common pool from which everyone will be able to draw freely to satisfy their needs without the intervention of money or any other means of exchange. Socialism will end the poverty which degrades people today and which restricts the majority to live in insecurity. It will end the economic rivalries which cause modern war. It will be a world with one people co-operating to run a society fit for human beings to live in.

Many blame working-class problems on the presence of immigrants and asylum seekers. In fact, there was a shortage of housing, hospitals and so on before the immigrants came; these social problems have their roots in capitalist society and exist all over the world, whether a country loses people as emigrants or accepts them as immigrants. The pseudo-scientific nonsense that some parties use to support their racist arguments has no evidence in their favour. Finally, racism is an insidious trap for the working class; the problems of capitalism are international and can be solved only by all workers, whatever their colour, co-operating to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism.

Socialism can be a reality if, and only if, you want it. The Socialist Party makes no promises; we do not offer ourselves as leaders; we do not claim to be able to do anything for you. Nor do we cadge for your vote. Let us be clear on this: Only when the working class understand what socialism is, will capitalism be abolished. So vote for the socialist candidates only if you understand and want socialism.

Still Looking for Freedom (music)

 

Socialism, the only true alternative

 

It would be hard to imagine any assortment of lunatics devising a scheme for organising the political and economic affairs of humankind that would be more absurd than the system of world capitalism, currently exposed in all its rottenness.

Outside its appalling boom-slump syndrome (which currently and conclusively demonstrates that it is beyond the control of its alleged experts, its politicians, the capitalists themselves and their agents) it gives us wars, world hunger, insecurity, alienation and the monumental waste which now threatens the entire biosphere.

Historically, capitalism, despite its inherent evils, played a progressive role in that it banished feudalism and made the means of production social. Today its lunacies are simply an embargo on the rational production of goods and services. Real wealth is produced, and can only be produced, by the application of human labour-power to nature-given resources. The claims to ownership of the latter by a relatively small class of money shufflers derive from the historic usurpation of those means.

We, the working class, the producers of all real wealth, now have the power in our numbers to democratically reject the spurious claims of ownership of our means of life. With political will we can create a world where goods and services will be used to provide the needs of humanity rather than accumulating even more wealth for an economically redundant class of parasites.

We’re unlike any other group here today out to reform capitalism, who beg governments to be just a little less horrid, who ask our masters to throw us a few more crumbs from the bread we bake. We are not into the politics of compromise and we certainly are not prepared to be satisfied with crumbs. We demand the whole bakery.

We are here today to urge you to stop belittling yourself and your class by making the same age-old demands of the master class. Demand what until now has been considered “the impossible”! Join us in campaigning for a system of society where there are no leaders, no classes, no states or governments, no borders, no force or coercion; a world where the earth’s natural and industrial resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled and where production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used for the benefit of all; a world of free access to the necessaries of life. Wouldn’t such a campaign movement not only address the real root of every campaign and protest currently ongoing?

The choice is yours – the struggle for world socialism and an end to our real problems or a lifetime attached to the ‘pick-your-cause’ brigade and the certainty you will be retracing your footsteps in years to come.

None of the political parties at present represented in Parliament desire the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life. Conservatives, Labour or Nationalists openly repudiate any such intention, while the left-wing by its support of, and endeavours to crawl into the Labour Party, shows its readiness to support capitalism in practice, contradictory though this may be to their theoretical claims.

Only by abolishing the cause of poverty and misery can the workers achieve health and happiness. The workers must give their attention to the abolition of this cause—the private ownership of the means of life.

The master class rule to-day because the workers have voted them into Parliament —the great law-making and force-raising portion of the political machinery. With this power in their hands the masters can dictate terms of living to the workers because, with the forces mentioned above at their disposal, they can not only keep the workers away from the means of production but also from any wealth already produced. The workers' lives are thus under the control of the capitalist class. In other words, the workers are slaves.

And slaves they will remain until they acquire—first the knowledge that they are slaves; then the will to attain freedom; and build up the organisation necessary to capture political power.

The only organisation capable of reaching that object is a socialist organisation. Until that organisation is sufficiently strong to put forward its delegates as candidates, it must continue its educational work of making socialists.

There is a Socialist organisation in this country—THE SOCIALIST PARTY—the only organisation that works for the emancipation of the workers. As a sufficient number of the working class is not yet desirous of establishing socialism to permit any candidates being put forward at this election, we call upon all those who wish for socialism to express their wish by going to the ballot-box and voting for socialism by writing it across the ballot paper. Among other things, this will help to advertise the number who wish to see socialism established.

STUDY SOCIALISM. BECOME SOCIALISTS. THEN ACHIEVE YOUR EMANCIPATION.

Danny Lambert on the BBC (video)

 

The Problem is Capitalism

 

The current industrial disputes will eventually come to an end . . . but the class struggle will go on. The Socialist Party believes in the urgent need for workers to join together, not simply for the defensive right of union recognition, but for the purpose of organising for social revolution—NOW. The need for class unity for socialism is the pressing task of the age. That, above all else, is our message to fellow workers. To abandon it would be to abandon our claim to be socialists. 

Under capitalism, everything is loaded against those who are forced to sell their labour-power. Marx argued the case for a future society without buying and selling, wage-labour or capital. That alone is the goal of the Socialist Party. We urge all fellow workers to involve themselves in the struggle for a world in which trade unions will be unnecessary because the buying and selling of useful things, including human energy, will be a thing of the past.

The problem is not the gig economy and zero-hours contracts ... it's wage slavery. Unions should fight for the best deal they can get. But let's not fool ourselves that the system of employment can ever be geared to our needs.

The problem is not austerity cuts... that’s just a turn of the screw. We have always been rationed by the size of our pay cheque and the poor have always been poor. It used to be Soup Kitchens; now it's Food Banks. Meanwhile the rich go on getting richer. We can't hope to end poverty and inequality until we get rid of the production of wealth for the exclusive profit of a few.

Capitalism is based on production being controlled by profit-seeking enterprises which, supported by governments, compete on the market to buy resources and sell products. This competitive pursuit of profits is the essence of capitalism. It’s what capitalism is all about and what prevents any effective action to deal with climate change.

Nobody can deny that global warming is taking place. Nor that, if it continues unchecked, it would have disastrous consequences – such as rising sea-levels and increased desertification – through its effects on the climates of the different parts of the world. There can only be an argument over what is causing it. Most scientists in the field take the view that it has mainly been caused by the increase in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere largely as a result of the burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas.

If this is the case, then one part of any solution has to be to cut back on burning these fuels. But this is not happening. In fact, on a world scale, their use is increasing. This is because this is currently the cheapest way of generating the energy to drive industry – and the logic of capitalism compels the profit-seeking enterprises that control production to use the cheapest methods. If they don’t, their competitors will.

What is the solution? 

First, the competitive struggle for profits as the basis for production must be ended. This requires that the Earth’s natural and industrial resources become the common heritage of all humanity. On this basis, and on this basis alone, can an effective programme to deal with the problem be drawn up and implemented, because production would then be geared to serving human interests and no longer to make a profit for competing enterprises.

There will be those who say that we haven’t the time to wait for the coming into being of this, in their view, unlikely or long-distant solution, and that we must therefore do something now. In this age of apathy and cynicism when any large-scale change is dismissed, this may seem a plausible argument but it begs the question. It assumes that a solution can be implemented within capitalism. But if it can’t (as socialists maintain), then concentrating on something now rather than on changing the basis of society and production will be a waste of valuable time while the situation gets worse.

The Socialist Party want to abolish capitalism and replace private ownership by common ownership.

The Socialist Party want a world in which the privilege of a few to monopolise wealth can be replaced by the production of goods and services solely to satisfy human needs.

The Socialist Party wants a world in which “Community,” “Co-operation” and ”Peace” can become realities not hollow slogans.

Opposition to war demands opposition to capitalism.

Opposition to capitalism demands working for the re-organisation of human society—for socialism.

 We can make a democratic revolution – but only based on a real understanding of how capitalism works against our interests, and how reforms of capitalism will always be offered in order to distract us. You just cannot challenge capitalism and reform it at the same time.

Protest rallies may make us feel like we are 'doing something', but it’s an illusion. The real battle is over ideas: the ideas in the heads of those who do all the work but get little reward. That's why the rich and powerful spend so much time trying to suppress and ridicule any idea of an alternative

The world is rich enough. We can have a world where free access to wealth replaces the market where useful work is to be enjoyed rather than endured, and where no individual can monopolise access to wealth. Armed with knowledge, humanity can finally start to demand the possible.

Welcome to Socialism (video)