SOCIALISM: NOTHING LESS WILL DO

 

The world is dominated by a well organised gang of greedy capitalists which has become an object of fear to the eyes of many working people. Capitalism will always be unstable and dangerous to people’s well-being. Its very structure operates against workers’ interests, all the time.  The capitalist system is incapable of producing nothing but insecurity, poverty, war, and the repression of the will of the people. Capitalism remains essentially what it has been from birth: a system of exploitation of the many for the enrichment and aggrandisement of the few. Capitalist society is rushing headlong to barbarism. So long as the insane struggle for profit in this private property economy exists, and it must exist as long as capitalism exists, poverty and wars are forever the prospect of life. Chaos and environmental destruction are forever the reward of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of all countries. Time to no longer put up with it. Time to replace it with a class-free society.

The State is an instrument of coercion at the service of the dominant ruling class. The Socialist Party believes that advances of human society so far in the economy, science, technology and standards of civil life have already created the material conditions necessary to set up a free society without classes, exploitation and oppression, i.e. a world socialist community, and that the working class on taking political power must introduce it. Our vision of socialism is a society without classes. We aim at ending the present capitalist system to its very foundation. We intend to dismantle the machinery of bourgeois institutions which are accessories to the capitalist system. We strive to achieve a society that has neither rich nor poor, a society whose members can all secure their food, clothes and housing, the realisation of a free, equal, peaceful, righteous and fraternal community. Only a socialist society, a society without classes, without war, without competition, without unemployment, and poverty can properly harness the new technology.  A class society which lives by exploitation can only subordinate inventions and discoveries to the interest of private profit. 

The destruction of civilisation is a grim reality unless the social order of capitalism is abolished and replaced by socialism, the society of all the people. We agree with Marx and Engels that society is divided into social classes whose interests are irreconcilable. Working people are the overwhelming majority of the population and the ruling capitalist class is only a handful. We hold that capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars, and the degradation of the natural environment. They maintain political power over the media and the institutions of culture that create “public opinion”—the mass media, as well as all public and private educational institutions. In the final analysis, however, capitalists rule by military and police force and violence. To break the stranglehold of the capitalist minority have over all of society, workers need to break definitively with capitalist parties.

The economic system of capitalism is the main enemy of the working  people of the world. In order to end the oppression we must end the economic system which thrives on exploitation. 

 Socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and the removal of profit from the system of production, is the aim of the Socialist Party.

 

Our Road Towards Socialism

 Ending of the exploitation, cruelty and injustice caused by class society in all its various forms is the goal of the Socialist Party. Socialism alone can end the exploitation of man by man. The aim we have set ourselves can be realised only with your active participation. 

 

Socialism will be when the means of production—the factories, mines, land,  and transport—are taken away from the monopoly capitalists are transformed into social property. This means that they belong to and are worked by the whole of the people, that the fruits of production likewise become social property, used to advance the standard of life of the people.

No longer can the capitalists by virtue of the fact that they own the means of production, live off the labour of others. No longer are the workers compelled to sell their labour power to the capitalists in order to live. The workers are no longer property-less proletarians. They now collectively own the means of production and work them in their own interests and in the interests of society, an associated body of wealth-producers. Socialism is the transition of mankind from class to a fully class-free society. This means the greatest advance in human history of all time, an abundance of goods of all kinds is reached. Society can now advance where the watchword is, “From each according to ability, to each according to needs”. Production will be planned in the interests of a continually rising standard of living for the people and in harmony for a healthy environment.

 

What is the Labour Party? Every socialist is supposed to be in the Labour Party we are told. But what distinguishes it from a socialist party. First, by eliminating the ultimate socialist ideal, the co-operative commonwealth, and confining its propaganda to present-day problems; and, second, by eliminating “general” questions and confining itself specifically to the special problems to unite in its organization the entire proletariat, irrespective of “political” or “social” belief, on a programme of its own “immediate demands;” and to carry that platform through by the aid of “friendly” capitalists disposed towards the “reasonable” demands of working people and such bourgeois political parties as may need its aid in Parliament and are willing to pay its price in the way of “social legislation.”

It is of the very essence of the Labour Party that it must not be “revolutionary.” First, because its aim is not to overthrow the existing order, but to meet the needs of “labour” under the present system. Second, it would alienate the sympathies of the bourgeois reformers, and it would make it impossible for any bourgeois political party to grant any of its demands. Any “revolutionary” sentiment that it may develop must be curbed.

The projected society we visualise is a society that would be based on the common ownership of the means of production, the elimination of private profit in the means of production, the abolition of the wage system, and the abolition of the division of society into classes.

Because as classes are abolished, as exploitation is eliminated, as the conflict of class against class is eliminated, the very reason for the existence of a government in the strict sense of the term begins to diminish. Governments are primarily instruments of repression of one class against another. According to the doctrine of all the great Marxists, we visualise, as Engels expressed it, a gradual withering away of the government as a repressive force, as an armed force, and its replacement by purely administrative councils, whose duties will be to plan production, to supervise public works, and education, and things of this sort. The government, as Engels expressed it, tends to wither away and the government of men will be replaced by the administration of things. The “government” of a socialist society in reality will be an administrative body because we don’t anticipate the need for armies, jails, repressions, and consequently, that aspect of government dies out for want of function.

By social revolution, we mean a transformation, a political and economic transformation of society. We visualise the future society of mankind as a socialist world order which will have a comradely collaboration between different lands and peoples with the production of the necessities and luxuries of mankind according to universal global planning

We go after the system!

 

Times are changing. Old political parties are transforming. Working people are looking beyond capitalism. Confronted with the catastrophic destruction of the environment by the logic of the profit motive, many seek an alternative.  Capitalism creates a situation where large masses of the people are dissatisfied, embittered, emboldened by intolerable hardships. Capitalism itself prepares the conditions for its cataclysm. Capitalism has reduced mankind to chronic misery, poverty, insecurity, fear, carnage, insane luxury for the few, hunger and degradation for the many — a state that simply cannot continue if mankind is to progress. To save humanity, this putrid wound on its body must be removed. Defending their lives and their future they must inevitably come into conflict with the bosses. Defending their very lives they are driven to stand up against bosses. Fighting against the bosses they are defending not only their own class interests but the interests of mankind. Socialism has grown out of the disappointment of the workers with politics and parliament.

But their conception of socialism remains unclear.

Whenever the government nationalises an industry, whenever the state imposed its control over industry, many workers naively accept this as an abandonment of capitalism, as a symptom of the growing importance of socialism and the transformation of capitalism into socialism. Not so. What was being ended is not capitalism, per se, but so-called free-enterprise laissez faire capitalism. It is socialism nor an “installment” of socialism, but state capitalism.  Socialism is not state ownership or management of industry, but the opposite: Socialism abolishes the state and its parliamentary regime. Industry is not transformed into state organs, but function socially through new administrative norms of the organized producers. The development towards state-capitalism -- often propagated under the name socialism does not mean the liberation of the working class but greater servitude. Socialists rejects policy of state ownership, rejects the idea that state capitalism is a phase of socialism, and insists upon self- management through industrial democracy. It is the task of socialists to abolish private property in the means of production and to establish socialist production and distribution. In a class-free society there is nobody to suppress or repress. Men and women do not need the big stick of the State. They manage their affairs without the State. Mankind is free, forever. 

What the working people  strive for in its struggle, liberty and security, to be master of its own life, is only possible through control of the means of production. State capitalism is not control of the means of production by the workers, but control by the organs of the state.  Workers control of production means that the employees direct the enterprises and construct the higher and central organisations from below. Organised autonomy of the productive masses stands in sharp contrast to the organisation from above in state capitalism.  The slogan of "workers' control," does not mean to work in co-operation with employers and government ministers; it means class struggle, it means revolutionary action against state power. 

The diametrically opposed interests of capital and labour can never be reconciled. Socialism works in two directions: first, by undermining the existing institutions; secondly, by developing and educating the workers and cultivating their spirit of solidarity, to prepare them for a full, free life, when capitalism shall have been abolished. A free society can exist only through voluntary association and that will depend upon the development of the workers who will supplant the wage system with a new social arrangement, based on solidarity and economic well-being for all. 

Catastrophe Capitalism

 

Everywhere you look, people appear to be extremely obsessed with wealth and money. It has always been a problem getting our message across to others, that capitalism is not working, or better put that another way, has never worked in our interests ever, let me clarify that and make it less confused and more clearly comprehensible; it does not work in the interests of the majority in the world no matter what your background is or has been.

And because we have taught and allowed entire generations to think that becoming wealthy is one of the primary goals in life, it is creating a tremendous amount of envy, jealousy, frustration and anger among those that have not been able to become wealthy and done well in life, it could be that they don’t fully understand why; it could also mean that many start to turn on their own and find another way of chasing money to pay them bills, life is cruel and harsh for many under capitalism.     

 

In recent years, the level of bitterness and resentment that the rest of the nation has toward the very wealthy has risen to a new level.  It has now become more and completely apparent to many that the system is designed to funnel wealth to the very top of the food chain, and many of those at the bottom of the food chain are starting to become extremely upset about this.

People living in poverty pay around 10 per cent more than average for essential goods and services – a “poverty premium” which can push people on low incomes into crisis, a report has warned this week.

Low-income households are much more for their energy due to a lack of ability to take advantage of switching or finding cheaper tariffs. Budgets undeniably, are tight as millions of us are forced through austerity, some take an unprecedented cut in their standard of living, then struggling with low pay or having to take a pay cut just to keep a job, then there are the millions, the legions and multitudes reliant on the foodbank and the handout just to keep body and soul together and sustained physically and mentally strong, It’s definitely hard for many of us and has been for some considerable time now.

However, it’s good to know that for some the good times never ended and the champagne still flows and the party never came to an end. Most people have always known the trickle down effect is and always has been complete and utter bollocks. Bringing the problems of inequality to the attention of politicians who can't see past the next election or a future directorship is also pointless as they just don't care as long as they are part of the 1%.

 

 

Since the last financial crisis, almost all of the income gains have gone to the top one percent of all income earners, whilst on the other hand working families are feeling the pinch from flatlining wages which are completely out of line with the every spiraling costs of living.

None of us are perfect or as good as it is possible to be in the present system, we are after all the product of the environment we are born into and to some extent we may mimic that system in our own lives.

Capitalism has been changing the climate. The ‘climate crisis’ should now be spoken of as the climate catastrophe, because this is what it is for the majority of the people on earth. The droughts of prolonged periods of abnormally low rainfall, melting icecaps of once-permanent ice, tropical storms amongst the most powerful and destructive may become commonplace here in Britain, and of course the bizarre weather we have been experiencing is just the beginning.

The dominant economic system is the driving force of climate change.  It is based upon the exploitation of first coal and then oil, all of which contributes greenhouse gases to the environment, resulting in increasing global temperatures. The innermost logic of this economic system is the accumulation of capital.  Whatever serves profit thrives. Currently a large part of the capitalist machine is fueled by oil and coal. The vast majority of scientific investigation points directly to the burning of oil and coal as having already raised the temperature of the Earth, with the probability of raising it even by the end of this century. To do this would make life on earth unrecognisable, like something out of a science fiction movie. This may happen by the time today’s infants enter old age.

It seems that if the fundamental driving force of capitalism is the further accumulation of capital, it would make sense not to change the ecology so much that you severely reduce the number of producers and consumers, threaten food production, and endanger the future of humanity.  Without civilization, how can capitalism continue?  Right now, the most potent anti-civilisationforce on the planet is capitalism.

Capitalists confront us by driving the rate of destruction ever upward, while becoming increasingly irrational in seeking out the remaining oil, coal and gas supplies. The tar sands extraction process in Canada, ‘fracking’ to get at natural gas reserves (which is causing earthquakes), mountain-top removal in Appalachia, oil drilling off the coasts and efforts to do so in pristine parts of Alaska, all for a form of energy which is literally killing millions of people, is simple madness.

Perhaps members of the ruling class simply do not care about the future of civilisation, or what kind of future their children or grandchildren will have. Perhaps they think they will be dead before things get too bad. Perhaps today’s continued profit is more important than the future disintegration of society, and the end of civilisation as we know it. Perhaps they think they have enough money that the devastation that awaits will not really affect them. Or perhaps they just think they will adapt to a changing environment.

Regardless of the thinking of capitalists and the ruling class, and whatever debates they may be having about how to respond, we must confront the realities of the climate catastrophe and develop a movement to create a society that does not change the weather. It is really up to us, and what we do in the next decade. To not act is to allow millions of people, primarily poor people of color in impoverished nations, to suffer and die

The climate crisis offers damning evidence that capitalism is madness. The situation offers the opportunity for us to argue for the fundamental transformation of society as the only alternative to a barbarous future. Almost every aspect of modern life is contributing to the changing climate, from air transportation, to our reliance on cars, to how goods are produced and transported, how our food is grown, and how we light and heat our homes.  The common theme that runs through all these things, and what must be changed, is that they are all aspects of a capitalist economy and ideology.

Don't live in a political vacuum

 We have every reason to be fearful for the future of humanity. The war in Ukraine could easily escalate into a nuclear exchange. The environmental crisis could lead to irreversible tipping points. The possibility of another virus pandemic is always present.  Many countries are in the throes of economic meltdowns.  Capitalism cannot be trusted to run the world in the interests of humanity and governments serve the interests of profit first. No reform, nor attempt to improve the system, can do more than ameliorate its inconsistencies and contradictions. There can be no democracy in a complex system designed to justify inequality, a system in which the power of money carries the right to govern, in which the governed accept their own inferiority, lack of self-respect and sense of worth, a system in which crime, conflict, nationalism, racism, ethnic cleansing is inevitable.

Money has enabled the human species to develop the technology with which it dominates the earth, but it has become an excuse for ignoring the factors that impede its own social advance. Money has made work a bad name, with connotations of long hours, stress, tiredness, and monotonous, yet, even in this acquisitive society of ours, most of us do some sort of voluntary work, helping others is enjoyable provided that we do not feel that it is augmenting other people’s interests at our expense. In a money-free world, people's power available would be virtually limitless. There would be plenty for them to d our fellows, our environment, our towns and cities, our talents and potentialities. There would be enough to keep us occupied for generations. We assume that without money there would be anarchy, but it is the chaotic complexity of the money system and the governments required to maintain it that is anarchic.

The greatest benefit of all would be in the reduction or elimination of the anti-social emotions of greed, hatred, selfishness and aggression, which the money system makes inevitable and we would be able to treat ourselves and each other as the sort of human beings that we claim to be.

 Suppose we are ever to take control of this planet and run it in the real interests of its inhabitants. In that case, we must do so ourselves, without leaders and with a view to establishing a global system of society in which production is freed from the constraints of profit and in which each person will have free access to the benefits of civilisation.

 

The Socialist Party is in favour of democracy, and socialism will be a fully democratic society, but full democracy is not possible under capitalism. Supporters of capitalism who talk about "democracy" always mean only political democracy since economic democracy - where people would democratically run the places where they work - is out of the question under capitalism, based as it is on these workplaces being owned and controlled by and for the benefit of a privileged minority.

You can have the most democratic constitution imaginable but this won't make any difference to the fact that profits have to come before meeting needs under capitalism. The people's will to have their needs appropriately met is constantly frustrated by the economic laws of the capitalist system, which no political structure, however democratic, can control.

It is not imperfections in the political decision-making process that are the problem but the profit system and its economic laws. And the answer is not the democratic reform of capitalism's political structure but the replacement of capitalism with socialism.

As a society based on common instead of class ownership of the means of production, socialism will fulfil the first condition for genuine democracy. Because it will be a class-free society without a privileged wealthy class, everyone can have a genuinely equal say in the way things are run. A few will not be more equal than others, as they are under capitalism, because they own more wealth.

 Socialism will be a society where the laws of profit no longer operate since common ownership and democratic control will allow people to produce to meet their needs instead of for the profit of a few as today.