The Socialist Alternative Vision

 

Capitalism thrives on exploitation. Its logic is that of profit. Its morality is that of self-interest. Socialism, on the other hand, stresses the cooperative rather than the selfish nature of human beings by eliminating the conditions that promote the self-centered thirst for property. The primary contradiction of any capitalist order is between the social character of production and the private appropriation of surplus. Socialism resolves this contradiction through the socialisation of the ownership of the means of production and the development of the productive forces so as to accomplish the eradication of both poverty and inequality. Without a vision of a better world and the organisation that goes with it, the movement of working people will likely go nowhere.

Since private ownership of property produces inequality and feeds on the exploitation of the majority, a socialist society must be based on common ownership of the means of productive property, the operation of which required collective labour power. Hence, under the regime of private ownership, it serves as a means for exploiting others. This concept extended to land and natural resources, the private appropriation of which deprive others of their means to life. Social ownership of the means of social production does not mean no personal possessions or having to share each other’s toothbrush. Personal property is respected, but not ownership of property that is used to exploit others. The goal of socialism is to enable everyone to have access to more personal property such as food, housing, clothing, books and leisure. But to accomplish this, the ownership and control by a few over the means of production must be eliminated. 

In such a society, production would be basically oriented to need, not to market demand. This can only be accomplished through rational social planning. A planned economy requires the identification of basic need that must be met, and an efficient distribution system. These can only be achieved through the effective participation of people in the determination of individual needs, In such a society, production would be basically oriented to need, not to market demand.

 This can only be accomplished through rational social planning. A planned economy requires the identification of basic need that must be met, and an efficient distribution system. These can only be achieved through the effective participation of people in the determination of needs. Democratic social planning is thus in complete contrast to the anarchy of capitalism where surplus is expropriated from those who produce by the social classes the own the means of production. Under capitalism, control is purely in the hands of the owners of the means of social production.

A socialist society can only be sustained through a stable and adequate resource base. Hence the conservation of natural resources and the maintenance of ecological balance must be integral principles of socialism. 

Socialism is aimed at the fullest development if each individual. Socialism having removed unacceptable inequalities, and having removed the greatest barriers to mutual respect and understanding ie private property in the means of production and the wage labour market, a society in which people are motivated for the common good will develop. Socialism, for Marx, is a society which serves the needs of humanity. No one will need to, nor be able to, sell their labour power. This is the minimum criterion for a socialist society, since selling one’s labour power makes it (and its products) into commodities with exchange value. People will nonetheless work, not out of a need to get pay in order to live but to keep society running smoothly.

The capitalist system is irreparable. The capitalist runs the factory to provide himself with profits. This leads to fiercer exploitation of the mass of workers on the one side; and a sharper aggravation of the capitalists’ own problems on the other, it leads to economic crashes, recessions and wars. Socialism is an entirely different system. The workers run the factories themselves. By doing so, they produce useful things instead of profits. They put an end to their own status as commodities. They are no longer bought and sold. And their aim is no longer to produce a surplus value above their own wages. Everything they produce now belongs to all the world. A society of human harmony, freedom, peace, that is socialism.  It will eliminate all the narrowness and conflict that now saps mankind’s potentialities. All will gain. 

Revolution (music)

 

Socialism - the Movement for World Unity

 

The Socialist Party is an organisation of men and women committed to building a cooperative commonwealth. Only within a socialist society can we take control over our own lives and bring an end to war, economic insecurity and inequality. Only within socialism can all people fully develop their potential and capabilities. We must bring about the end of the present economic and political system that is imposed upon our lives.

“War to the palaces, peace to the cottages” - The Chartists’ slogan.

The Socialist Party is for war. The class war. The war to end wage slavery, to end capitalism with its misery and degradation. The war to end ALL wars. And until that war is ended we do not want peace—because such peace will be the peace of the beggar and the slave. Workers still have the task in the main to see the capitalist as their class enemy, to organise as a class to defeat the employers. 

This system is inherently based on misery and exploitation. It profits a wealthy few at the expense of the vast majority of working people throughout the world.  It generates conflict. It keeps people divided and powerless. This system is controlled by a small number of extremely rich – a ruling class – who use all major institutions, including the government, to protect their interests and wealth to maintain their control over our lives. Capitalism has reduced the workers to destitution, to deprivation, to despair. Capitalism is discarding them out into the streets. 

 

 Capitalism is a social system characterised by a few great monopolies owning the means of production (factories, mines) and the great majority of the people working in those means of production and owning nothing but their capacity to labour which they are forced to sell. Capitalism brings misery to the people, unemployment, inflation, crises, and war. Our view is that the revolutionary road is the only answer. Socialism is where political and economic power is held and used to benefit not just a handful of people, but all people. Socialism is the social ownership of all natural resources and the application of all social forces in cooperation for the satisfaction of all material social needs. It is a system of universal cooperation for production for use.

 

 The Socialist Party, as always, scorns to hide its aims. Under capitalist society, it exists to fight against the exploitation of those who toil by hand and brain and to struggle to improve the working and living conditions of the toiling masses, to strengthen the working-class organisation and political understanding of the need of ending capitalism and establishing socialism. Those who have departed from these aims are the real betrayers of working-class principles. We are the inheritors of the true traditions of the Marxist pioneers. We represent the future. We represent the conception of socialism of the future. We believe that these purposes for which we stand should end impoverishment and win the earth from the fear of war. We seek a world in which the exploitation of man by man shall cease when the evolution of human society to new and higher forms shall become possible to all mankind when socialism and peace shall be enjoyed by all.

 

The attitude of the Socialist Party is clear and definite. It claims that the wealth of society is created by the workers. It claims that the workers, through their administrative councils, must own and control all the processes of wealth production. We carry this struggle on to the political field to challenge the power which the present ruling class wields through its domination of the State which it wins at the ballot box. By its victory at the ballot box, and its consequent political domination, the capitalists can suppress labour. We are convinced that the present political State, with most of its attendant institutions, must be swept away. The political State is not and cannot be a true democracy. It is elected because the wealthiest section of society can manipulate all facts through its power over the media.  The electorate is not asked to vote upon facts but only upon such topics as the media, representing capital, puts before the workers. It is the control of the State that gives to the capitalists in its struggle with labour. Its power. It is through its political strength that the capitalists can deprive us of every shred of civil liberty.  Working people to achieve a peaceful revolution must capture the powers of the State at the ballot box.

The Socialist Party is a revolutionary political organisation and therefore believes in revolutionary political action. It urges the workers to use their ballots to capture political power—not to play at politicians or pose as statesmen, but to use their votes to uproot the political State and to hand to our fellow workers the ability to build administrative councils. To think that Parliament can be used as the means of permanently improving the conditions of working folk by passing a series of acts is to believe in parliamentarism. The Socialist Party is not a parliamentary party. It believes in entering Parliament only as a means of sweeping away all antiquated institutions which stand in the way of achieving socialism.

It is the capitalist system which produces misery and disaster. It is up to you to transform the enormous forces utilised by capitalism for destruction into prosperity for all peoples and all human beings. Organise under the banner of the world socialist revolution with confidence. The dawn of socialism is rising on mankind’s horizon. Turn toward it resolutely, ending forever all misery, dictatorship and war. 

EMPTY CHAIRS AND EMPTY TABLES (music)

Lest we forget the comrades that have gone before 

Give the World a Future

  We all suffer under capitalism. The capitalist class benefits from the misery of countless numbers of people. This exploitative and oppressive system, where profit is the master, has strangled our entire social system. Exploitation, injustice, racism, national chauvinism and war – these are the face of capitalism today. Whose is the fault? The capitalist class, and all who uphold the capitalist class and their accursed social system. Thus while the rich proceed with their schemes for the aggrandisement of their class, the working class are betrayed by the politicians who spend their time in political intrigues for personal profit. Capitalism has no sympathy for your deprivations and misery. Capitalism, in fact, requires it. The situation cries out for change, for a new, more rational social system – socialism. Our message is clear. Working people have the power in their hands to forge a new socialist society and they alone are capable of running society in the interests of the great majority. End capitalism and class exploitation. Away with palliatives of any sort, and on with the revolution.

 Capitalism is a system based on the private property of the means of production from which profit is made through the exploitation of labour. “Prosperity” under capitalism can only mean that private industry is making enough profit. The capitalist system is incapable of maintaining systematic improvements in the standards of living of the world’s working masses and preserving democratic rights (where they exist at all). Capitalist society is now a reactionary social system.  The workers must answer with the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Only the working class can take humanity out of the chaos of capitalism, by making the world socialist revolution.

Workers don’t need a crystal ball to see their future. The employing class and their state, in their never-ending greed for higher profits, are willing to make misery for working people. The working class, if it were united,  could if it wished turn this planet into a storehouse of plenty for all. The problem is that people accept capitalism and its logic and therefore see no alternative to the current misleaders who defend that system at all costs. The answer to poverty is not a welfare state and better social services but a new society which will have real solutions for all our problems, a new society based on human needs, not profits. Using all the resources of society for the benefit of all would ensure the advancement of living standards for everybody.  

Faith that capitalism can be reformed is prevalent. Reformists would provide the workers with new masters instead of the old ones, good humane masters instead of the bad, rapacious masters of today. The workers would have no control or direction over the means of production. Above them stands the commanding state bureaucracy of managers.

Reformists show little sense of the realities of capitalism with many believing that the growth of the welfare state will turn into a mixed or socialistic state as time goes on. A brazen attempt to save the profits of Big Business by reducing its taxes and cutting down the already meagre social programmes is being made by many governments. As revolutionaries who are loyal to our class, we support every effort on the part of workers to better their situation. However, we want to use the opportunities to explain the need for a socialist revolution. The real freedom of the workers consists of their control over the means of production. The essence of the future free world community is not that the working masses get enough food, but they direct their work themselves, collectively. The real fight for liberation has yet to begin.

Socialism, and socialism alone, explain this and the many other contradictions in capitalist society. The abolition of the capitalist system and the wage slavery upon which it is based will put an end to the misery of the millions and nothing else can do it. The socialist movement has this end for its aim. Wage slaves, male and female, the victims of the capitalist system, must be aroused to the consciousness of their class interests and their class power, industrial and political. Great as the task is, it must be accomplished, and by the working class itself. Little help will come from without. All hope and all of the powers necessary to realise it lies within it. The slumbering masses must be stirred, the apathetic and indifferent must be awoken, to be educated, the contented must be roused to discontent, and all must have their eyes opened and be made to see and feel the pressing need of a united working class for the overthrow of the present exploiting the brutal system.

The Red Flag (music)