Life's Lottery

Wealthy women in Glasgow are now living more than a decade longer than their poorer counterparts – and the gap is widening.

A new report from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health on health in Glasgow, shows the average life expectancy of affluent females is 85.2, while women living in the city's most deprived areas are only expected to reach 74.5. The gap has increased from 8.1 to 10.7 years over a 15-year period - a finding described as "unacceptable" by anti-poverty campaigners who argue life expectancy should not depend on wealth or the lottery of where you are born and live. The report shows that while life expectancy has increased for women from most socio-economic levels, those in affluent areas have seen a bigger increase, creating an 11-year gap between rich and poor neighbourhoods for the period 2008-2012. Four communities also saw a reduction in female life expectancy - Drumchapel, Maryhill Road Corridor, Croftfoot and Anniesland and Jordanhill and Whiteinch. Life expectancies across the city now range from a low of 73.1 years in Ruchill and Possilpark, to 84.3 years in affulent areas such as Kelvindale and Kelvinside.

The research also reveals that women in Glasgow are still more likely to die sooner than those in other Scottish cities, although the gap is narrowing. A girl born in Glasgow is likely to live for 78.7 years - 2.4 years less than girls in Scotland as a whole. For men, the gap in life expectancy in the city is wider than for women, with 13 years between the most and least deprived. This has remained relatively unchanged over the last 15 years.

Peter Kelly, director of the Poverty Alliance, said: "It is unacceptable in 21st century Glasgow that the life expectancy between the richest and poorest remains so wide, and is in fact continuing to grow for women. We know that women are more likely to be in poverty than men, and there are many reasons for this including lower wages and a higher dependency on the social security system. The negative impact of poverty on health is well documented, and this research shows that we are still not making the progress we need to in this area. People's life expectancy should not rely on their postcode."

Glasgow anti-poverty group WestGAP said they regularly see women from deprived communities working into later life despite ill-health and disabilities, with many also caring for relatives. Advice worker Sinead Dunn said: "It’s upsetting but not surprising to see the increase in the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor women in Glasgow. This is another example of the devastating effect that government policies are having on the poorest in Glasgow."

John Dickie, director of the Child Poverty Action Group, added: "There is a huge body of evidence that demonstrates that a decent income is vital for good health, yet the incomes of the poorest, and women in particular, are being squeezed even further as low wages and benefit cuts bite into family finance.

"It’s vital now that the health service and government at every level build on the positive work already underway to integrate income maximisation across public health services."

We have a Dream

“Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr.

Socialism is not some Utopian scheme. Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism in the world. Today there is social production but no social ownership. Socialism will bring social ownership of social production. With socialism, the working people will take over the economic forces developed by capitalism and operate them in the interests of society. Because the working people will control the great wealth they produce, they will be fundamentally able to determine their own futures. The end of exploitation of one person by another will be an unprecedented liberating and transforming force. Socialism will not mean government control. Today we often hear of government control of the railroads or post office as socialism. But under capitalism the state serves the interests of the ruling capitalist class. Government involvement in the economy is a form of state capitalism. When the government intervenes in the economy, it does so to help, not hurt, capitalism.

What, then, will socialism look like? The specific exact features of socialism will emerge as the struggle against capitalism develops and evolves but our vision of socialism can be generalised. There will be no basis for billionaires or paupers.

The means of production – the factories, mines, mills, workshops, offices, agricultural fields, transportation system, media and mass communications, medical facilities, retailers, etc., will be transformed into social property – common ownership. Private ownership of the main means of production will end. The economy will be geared not to the interest of profit, but to serving human needs. This will release the productive capacity of the economy from the limitations of profit maximisation. A great expansion of useful production and the wealth of society will become possible. Rational economic planning will replace the present anarchistic system. Coordination and planning of the broad outlines of production by administrative agencies will aim at building an economy that will be stable, benefit the people, and steadily advance. Because capitalism already has a developed and centralised economy, socialism’s main task will be to reorient this structure towards social needs. Redirecting the productive capacity to human needs will require a variety of economic methods and some experiment. There could be a combination of central planning and local coordination. Working people will assume administration of the economy, manage democratically through workers’ and community councils. The people will elect officials and delegates at all levels. There will be the right of recall and referendum. Various policies might be used, depending on what will be appropriate to changing conditions. But no matter what means are chosen, a socialist economy must uphold the basic principles of common ownership, production for the people’s needs, and the elimination of exploitation. The protection of the environment would be ensured.

Standing in the way of social progress and socialism is the capitalist class, composed of the owners and administrators of the huge multinational banks and corporations that control the economic life and whose power extends far beyond the boundaries of nation-states to control the destinies of millions of others around the globe. These capitalists are very wealthy and live off the exploited labor of others.

The working class is the class that is most systematically and brutally exploited by capitalism, and is the most revolutionary class. The working class is composed of all wage earners – mental and manual, urban and rural – whether in basic industry, manufacturing, service, farm, sales, domestic, clerical, public, or other jobs. The working class is composed of skilled and unskilled, employed and unemployed. Some workers may make more money than some in the petty bourgeoisie, but they are still members of the working class because they do not exploit the labor of others and must sell their labor power to survive. The vast majority of people belong to the working class. The working class produces the wealth appropriated by the capitalists and its basic interest lies in the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production. It will be the leading class in the socialist revolution. The working class is worldwide, composed of workers of many different nationalities. Their common identity is that they are all exploited by the capitalist class.

Although the promise of capitalism is that it is colour-blind and a system that provides equal opportunities for all to attain upward social mobility, the empirical reality across the globe has been anything but the promise. The market system has always taken advantage of race, gender, and ethnicity to divide the working class. What a better way to co-opt a segment of the disgruntled masses and keep them divided than to have such right-wing populists who point to working people of a different race, ethnicity and religion? Divisive tactics based on race, religion and ethnicity were commonly used by European colonialists to co-opt the native population and to keep it divided, whether in Africa, India or the rest of Asia, especially in the 19th and early 20th century. In short, the tactics of European imperialists remain alive and well in 21st century. Class solidarity is the only hope for blacks, Hispanics and all working people. Solidarity exists among the black and white capitalists but not necessarily among the black and white working class. 

We are calling for a new world civilisation

Want a world without poverty, war, hunger or suffering? Sounds incredible, doesn’t it, yet it could be possible, in just a matter of decades. The Socialist Party proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilisation. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our political and economic social system in which the age-old curses of war, poverty, hunger and unnecessary human suffering are viewed as totally unacceptable. Anything less will result in a continuation of the same catalog of problems inherent in today’s world.

The Socialist Party mission is to inspire change for the common good. Socialism prioritises the well-being of people and the planet. Socialism is based on the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. A new economic system is to be built, raising production to a higher level, ending all social oppression by dissolving the hostile classes into a community of free and equal producers striving not for sectional interests, but for the common good. Science and art is to be utilised, not for the few, but for the benefit of mankind as a whole. The socialist commonwealth liberates the individual from all economic, political and social oppression, will provide real liberty for the full and harmonious development of the personality, giving full scope for the growth of the creative faculties of the mind.

The world today is full of stark and bewildering contradictions. The greatest industrial and agricultural capacity in history cannot feed, clothe and provide a decent livelihood for millions. Countless others work away their lives to survive, while billionaires squander fortunes on mansions and fly around the world in private jets. The capitalist system has concentrated the ownership of the tremendous productive forces in the hands of a small group of big capitalists. Poverty and economic insecurity exist alongside extravagance. What is the reason for the potential of this society, and its stark reality? Why is there such a gap between what is and what could be? The answer cannot be found in "human nature" and simply that is the way things are. Capitalism, the social system under which we live, is responsible for the unfulfilled promise of society. A system of exploitation, violence, racism and war stifles our lives.

In capitalist society, the capitalists own the means of production and engage in production for the sole purpose of making profits and satisfying their private interests. Therefore, though there may be planned production in a few enterprises, competition is rife and lack of co-ordination prevails among the different enterprises and economic departments as a whole. Adjustment based on a unified plan is completely out of the question and anarchy in all social production is the order of the day. Cyclical economic crises which break out in capitalist society are the inevitable result of anarchy in production. They not only greatly undermine the social productive forces, but also are disastrous for people.

Capitalism thrives on the private control of society’s wealth and production – production involving the interconnected efforts of millions of working people. Workers are wage slaves who survive only by selling their labour power to the capitalists. Capitalists own the means of production and pay workers for their labour power. But the working class produces far more wealth than it receives in income. The difference is the source of capitalist profits. The rich have one basic goal in life: to make more and more profits, and they accomplish this by dominating the economics, politics, and cultural life of the world. The employing class will throw their workers out into the streets to starve, promote violent racism, and build a military arsenal that can destroy the world several times over – anything for profits! This is an irrational and unjust system. But the world does not have to be this way. If the working people, and not the ruling class, controlled the great resources of our society, we could better all our lives.

Our aim as democratic socialists is to build an independent movement for the achievement of socialism that awaits the building of a mass consciousness in factories and offices. The Socialist Party is presently primarily concerned with pointing out the defects of the capitalist system and advocating its replacement by the common ownership and democratic administration of the means of production and distribution. The success of creating the cooperative commonwealth will depend very largely upon the education and enlightenment of fellow workers. 

We can change our society, and eliminate capitalist exploitation and injustice, by overthrowing the capitalists. We can replace capitalism with a humane system – socialism. Socialism is a social system where social wealth is genuinely controlled by society and for the benefit of society; where the common good, not profits, becomes the chief concern; where the everyday working people become the rightful masters of society. Sounds radical, but a radical solution is what is needed to remove the miseries we all face in our daily lives. There is no other choice today but for the working people to organise to struggle and, one day, win socialism. Socialism will qualitatively improve the lives of the working people. Socialism will be built on the powerful productive capacities now suppressed by capitalism. Each person is faced with the choice of either enduring the suffering of unemployment, globalisation and war; or taking the path of struggle, joining with the millions of others who are dissatisfied and know that a better society is possible. Women and men, young and old, and people of all nationalities are realising we must unite and struggle to survive, to be able to work, eat and live as decent human beings. We could enjoy a society that is not preparing constantly for war and self-extinction. This is the hope that encourages us forward. The Socialist Party is dedicated to realising that day when the exploiters, racists and warmongers will be thrown from power forever, and a new world for the people can begin. Socialism is not some Utopian scheme. Men and women can and will bring about this historic transformation.  

Many of us elderly socialist campaigners may well not live to see socialism but we foresee it with confidence. We witness all the strains and stresses around the world that inevitably must result in this development. What we leave undone will be done by others. The things we did not see will be seen by others. When people say a socialist revolution is unlikely, be that as it may, socialism is vital to our long term survival as a species.

Capitalism must go

Workers have no country.

We have a world to win

Wipe the nationalist, xenophobic, slavers away from your mouth. Immigrant workers are not scabs. Every country now is part of an integrated global economy and class structure. It is the capitalist class's country and the capitalist class's world. Why should workers, who produce all the wealth in the world be denied the right to go where they please to engage in economic activity, or be restricted in their movements, while the parasite capitalist class can export their capital or exploit workers in wealth making opportunities for their self-enrichment, anywhere they damn well please without let or hindrance? Why should workers on benefits (reserve army of wage-enslaved labour for future exploitation by the capitalist class) have to jump through bureaucratic red-tape hoops, for the basic human need of a place to live, while the capitalist parasite class can have luxury homes all over the world? Why should the world’s workers, who produce all of the wealth, have to put up with inferior housing, while the parasite class live in mansions? Stuff the landlords. Immigration is hardly a factor in governments, Labour and Tory stopping building council houses and encouraging their sale, with no 'like for like' new builds.  Immigrants are not the cause of the housing crisis. They suffer the consequences just the same as we all do. The problem is capitalism's production for sale with private, corporate and state ownership of resources by the minority global and national capitalist parasite class. Food, housing, heating and clothing could be freely available as tap water used to be in a sane, democratic, production for use, free access, commonly owned post-capitalist society.

The idea that immigrants can only have a negative effect on wages and living standards is a common one. Nigel Harris in ‘The New Untouchables’ quotes research that argues that ‘modern econometrics cannot find a single shred of evidence that immigrants have an adverse impact on the earnings and job opportunities of natives of the United States’. And he gives the example of the Los Angeles economy which expanded in the 1970s, largely as the result of increased demand caused by legal and illegal immigration.

Likewise the increase in immigration in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s did not lead to increased unemployment – rather the massive explosion in unemployment levels in the 1970s and beyond was caused by the boom-bust cycle of the capitalist system itself. Secondly, immigrants and refugees are not a drain on the social security system – in fact, as Harris shows, they contribute far more to the ‘system’ than they receive in return. Whether you look at Caribbean immigrants who came to Britain in the 1960s, few of which drew retirement pensions, or whether you take Mexican migrants to California, where a 1980 study found that less than 5 percent received any assistance from welfare services, and in all sectors, except education, they paid far more than they received – a net balance sheet shows that the ‘host’ nation gains far more than it gives in return.

Furthermore, migration has another very favourable benefit for the ruling class in the ‘host’ country – namely that they don’t have to contribute to the cost of raising and educating the immigrant worker.

It is the system of capitalist production that produces unemployment, homelessness, destitution and crumbling health services, – not workers, be they ’indigenous’ or foreign. The bosses hope to keep the worst-off sections of workers fighting with each other over shrinking pieces of a small pie instead of uniting to fight for a decent life for all.

The rationale of immigration control is that such chauvinist legislation is founded on the nation state and the feverish competition in which that nation state is engaged. It splits and divides workers from their main objectives, and, in the long run, weakens their strength all over the world. It cannot be contemplated by a world socialist.

The only possible attitude of progressive workers, is opposition to immigration control. We have to reject all laws that divide the working class into legals and illegals. It is the height of treachery to our class and we would do well to remember that the working class stretches far beyond Britain’s borders. It is blatant racism, and opportunism to opt for a policy of blaming the immigrant for all British workers’ woes, even if this will strike a chord with the basest instincts of many workers.

Before anything constructive can be done, capitalism must go and, with it, the artificial division of the world into separate, competing states. This leads inevitably to war, when the capitalist parasitic class thieves fall out. (Business by other means). War and poverty are inevitable concomitants of capitalism. We need to abolish the out-moded and old-fashioned division of the world into nation states. Instead we need to cooperate on a world basis to meet our material needs and energy requirements.

A choice of extreme Tory cuts or less extreme Labour cuts. No, it is no choice. Capitalism must go. A plague on all parties who wish to retain capitalism. Socialism should be hostile to all the parties of capitalism, Red, Blue, Green, Tartan or whatever flag they drape over their wage-slavery administration exploitative activities. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It comes into the world oozing blood form every pore.

Only workers themselves can bring to fruition the post-capitalist revolution of free-access, delegated democracy, production for use, a price-free, wageless, moneyless, society. Business is not 'people friendly'. Real socialism will do away with the business of exploiting workers in return for a wage or salary and channeling profits to the few. Dissolve all government 'over' you and elect yourselves into common ownership and democratic control over all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

The socialist alternative to the profit system is:

• common ownership: no individuals or groups of individuals have property rights over the natural and industrial resources needed for production.

• democratic control: everybody has an equal say in the way things are run including work, not just the limited political democracy we have today.

• production for use: goods and services produced directly to meet people's needs, not for sale on a market or for profit.

• free access: all of us have access to what we require to satisfy our needs, not rationed as today by the size of our pay-cheque or state hand-out

The socialism we are espousing takes care that no elites can emerge, with a majority revolution. 

Firstly: Production for use creates a superabundance of necessities, so hoarding will be silly) when we all have the collective power and any democracy is delegatory, with recall-able delegates, when we need to use them, locally , regionally and globally. This, rather than representative democracy as presently where we surrender power to elected or unelected political elites. Secondly: Socialism is administration 'of resources' rather than, capitalist government, 'over people.

Capitalist bourgeois democracy is flawed in this regards as you seem to have figured, but perfectly adequate, to run top down administrations 'over' people, thus entrenching power, as all previous revolutions have been minority led ones to establish minority class dominance, although they used the majority to achieve their aims. There will be no government over people in the post-capitalist commonly owned world. This is an essential feature of minority ownership in capitalist class society. In a classless, commonly owned society, government ceases to exist as an oppressive necessity, loses this feature and becomes an administration of resources. People will organise wealth production and distribution themselves, locally, regionally and globally. In a real delegatory democracy rather than a representative government on behalf of a ruling elites. All wealth will spring, as it does presently, from labour. The difference will be as it is a production for use society, utilising the technological potential capacity of the present, to produce a superabundance of necessities, instead of rationing it, stifling production through the market necessity to profit for a few. There will be no means of exchange as markets cease to exist, when all wealth is owned in common. Don't follow leaders. Elect yourself instead to a democratic post-capitalist system of production for use and free access.

"From each according to their ability to each according to their needs".

Wee Matt

Eight years of CND (1966)

From the April 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

For CND the great days are over. Nowadays, almost the only sign that it ever existed is the annual Easter demonstration. And yet, in its day the campaign made a terrific impact on the British political scene. Its slogan and adopted symbol were universally recognised; it was half of an argument which split the mighty Labour Party from top to bottom and which consistently hogged the headlines and correspondence columns of the National Press.

CND was the marvel of a time notorious for its political apathy, but the wonder is not that it happened at all, rather why it took so long to materialise. From the moment Rutherford split the atom it became simply a question of time before the warlike, capitalist society would utilise this new source of energy for its own destructive ends.

Nevertheless, those thirteen years between Hiroshima and the formal launching of CND need some explaining. After 1945, most people felt that the Bomb would never be used again. The “aggressors” had been vanquished and anyway only the USA possessed the secret. The outbreak of the cold war plus Russia's entry into the Nuclear Club aroused fears which were aggravated by the Korean conflict and the development and subsequent testing of the vastly more powerful H-Bomb.

With the Lucky Dragon episode the volume of protest gathered force during the early 'fifties. Later on, literature and the cinema reflected this trend; Robert Jungk’s book Brighter Than A Thousand Suns, set many a mind working, while the film, Hiroshima Mon Amour, evoked horror by its display of grossly mutated children born of parents who were radiation victims.

Anti-nuclear groups sprang up everywhere and the Suez affair in 1956, helped swell the ranks. The same year, Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin’s Russia, followed by the brutal suppression of the Hungarian uprising, brought new recruits already well versed in the business of protest. Likewise, disgruntled “left-wingers” saw in the disarmers a lever with which to alter Labour’s defence policy. Add to these religious groups, Anarchists,etc., and we have the ingredients of what eventually emerged as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in February, 1958.

But the majority were not politically involved at all. Mostly, they came from what is wrongly called a “middle-class-background”—Teachers, Students, Clerks. They were not even social reformers, accepting the world more or less as it was, with one reservation—Nuclear weapons Many did not even oppose conventional weapons, considering these, at any rate, necessary to defend “our” country. Alex Comfort, a prominent Campaigner, summed up this attitude at the inaugural meeting when he said .. .

“If we are asked, as we will be, ‘What is your alternative? How else do you think this country should be defended?' We may indeed propose alternative policies. But we are bound to reply, ‘Whatever policy may be right, this one (Nuclear weapons) is wrong'.” This simplicity of aim was epitomised in the slogan which, today. CND is trying to forget—“Ban the Bomb.”

So CND was united by the slenderest of threads and even then only sometimes. The Communist Party, for instance, was prepared to march against the Bomb—provided it was British or American. When Russia resumed testing in 1961, CND held a protest demonstration in Glasgow culminating in an attempt to hand a petition to a visiting Russian Diplomat. The Communists were conspicuous by their absence.

And although the British Party’s Report of its 1963 Conference could say ... “We deplore the tendency of the peace movement to divide, to break up into rival groups on questions of tactics in the struggle,” it did not mention that the Japanese Party had just split the movement in Japan by refusing to condemn Russian tests as well as American.

It seemed to them that they must succeed, as even the famous—scientists, entertainers, clergymen—added to the clamour for Britain to unilaterally renounce nuclear weapons.

Indeed, the point was reached where CND could claim that a third of the population shared their view, but significantly this opinion was never tested at the Polls. The reason is not hard to find. Many of the campaign's supporters were committed to the various political Parties and it was to these, in the final analysis, that they owed their allegiance.

A Mr. Feltz discovered this when he considered standing as an official unilateralist at Barnet at the General Election. He subsequently stood down because he found . . . “CND supporters' loyalties greatly divided. After I had addressed them, I received a telephone call saying they had decided not to alienate themselves from the Labour Party.” (Guardian, 21/2/64). More recently, various CND'ers were engaged in a public squabble over whether or not to support the Labour candidate at the Hull North By-election.

This pre-occupation with the Labour Party provides the key to the Campaign’s efforts to win that Party over to its point of view. If 1960 was CND’s high-point then this was because of its “victory” at the Labour Conference that year, when a unilateralist resolution, backed by leaders of several of the largest Trade Unions, won a majority of votes.

Those CND supporters in the unions were illogical. They knew that, in this jungle-world of conflicting economic interests Nation and Nation, Employers and Employers, are engaged in an endless struggle. All very well Ted Hill of the Boilermakers prattling about Britain facing the world “armed only with moral dignity of purpose,” but he had no answer to his opponents’ invitation to try negotiating with the Employers on the same basis.

Predictably, Gaitskell and the majority of Labour MP’s, recognised a sure-fire vote-loser when they saw one, refused to accept the verdict and by organising a little more efficiently easily reversed the vote the following year. Many CND'ers, dismayed by this, turned to non-democratic action such as sabotage, and when this failed to produce results, dwindled away to the extent that a much-ballyhooed National demonstration at Faslane in 1964 could muster a mere seven hundred supporters.

To-day, CND simply does not know where it stands. The initial idea of unilateralism has been replaced by policies which are extremely vague; its one-time adherents are hiving-off to the futility of reformist politics or to frustrated inactivity.

Has CND achieved nothing, then? What about the Test Ban Treaty? Campaigners like to think that their activities influenced the great powers to agree to a cessation of testing, but the facts are that both sides stopped testing only because each saw it as being in its own interests to do so. Mr. MacNamara, the American Secretary of Defence, claimed that the Moscow Treaty meant that the USA . . . “can at least retard Soviet progress and prolong the duration of our technical superiority.’' The Russian Government denied this, insisting that it was they who stood to gain in a military sense from the Treaty (Guardian, 14/8/63).

Whatever happens, if one side feels it is losing on the deal, then the tests will be restarted notwithstanding the most solemn pledges.

Can we not even agree that whatever its faults, CND fulfilled a useful function by drawing attention to one of Capitalism’s horrors? But the Bomb was too big an issue to be ignored forever and for CND to claim all the credit for the growing awareness is to emulate the Rooster who imagined his crowing brought the Sun up every morning.

And could we not, by joining the March, have used the opportunity to gain recruits? Actually, we did gain new members without marching a single step; we did this by simply selling our literature and discussing. More important, we played no part in perpetuating an organisation which we knew to be wrong and would inevitably lead to disillusion on a grand scale.

Always, there are groups in protest against some aspect or other of this social system. CND’ers come into this category. They leave intact the very thing which spawned nuclear weapons—the private property basis of Capitalism—so their cause is hopeless.

Supposing the Bomb could be banned. If two Nations, possessing the necessary technical knowledge, should quarrel seriously enough over the things wars are really fought for— markets, sources of raw materials, strategic Bases, etc—and even supposing they commenced fighting with “conventional,” “moral” weapons, would not the losing side set its scientists to producing nuclear weapons in order to stave off defeat? If history is anything to go by, the side which was winning would use the Bomb and justify this by claiming it had brought hostilities to a speedier conclusion.

It would require several volumes to deal with every “solution” which CND’ers have dreamt-up over the years. From World Government or alignment with the “uncommited Nations” (some strange bedfellows in this lot), to “disengagement” and the farcical “Steps Towards Peace,” every straw has been clutched at.

Anyway, even if it were possible, Capitalism minus the Bomb would not solve the problem of war; a world based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production, alone, will do that. So, being after something fundamentally different, we have no alternative but to oppose CND.

One final point. We do not deny the sincerity of many campaigners; the energy and ingenuity they displayed in tackling a job they considered important provided further proof that once working men and women get on the right track Capitalism’s days are numbered.

Vic Vanni

Glasgow Br.

Upside-Down World

Capitalism is not serving the majority of humanity. Capitalism is an economic system which has as its goal the production of capital. This capital is then used to produce more capital, ad infinitum. Anyone who tells you that socialism can be just a cozier, nicer version of capitalism, must be considered suspect.

Capitalism divides the persons engaged in work - producing the goods and services upon which life depends - into two basic groups: employers and employees. In capitalism, the former buy the labor power of the latter. Employers hire employees in two distinct groups. One group (production workers, blue-collar workers etc.) is set to work with tools, equipment and work-spaces to transform raw materials into finished products, both goods and services. The other group (enablers, white-collar workers etc.) is set to work doing the necessary clerical, supervisory, security and managerial tasks that support the first group to produce those finished products. Employers make all key production decisions - what to produce, how and where - with little or no input from employees. Employers likewise make all the key decisions about what to do with the enterprise's profit or surplus. Employees again have little or no power over the disposition of the profits their work achieves.

Let’s say that you’re getting paid $15 an hour by a business owner in a stable, profitable firm. You’ve been working there five years, and you put in about sixty hours a week. No matter what your job is like — whether it’s easy or grueling, boring or exciting — one thing is certain: your labor is making more (probably a lot more) than $15 an hour for your boss. That persistent difference between what you produce and what you get back in return is exploitation — a key source of profits and wealth in capitalism. And, of course, with your paycheck you’re forced to buy all the things necessary for a good life — housing, health care, child care, a college education — which are also commodities, produced by other workers who are not fully remunerated for their efforts either.

Socialists want a world without private property. We don’t want a world without personal possessions— the things meant for individual consumption and enjoyment. Instead, socialists strive for a society without private property — the things that give the people who own them power over those who don’t. That’s the socialist vision: abolishing private ownership of the things we all need and use — factories, banks, offices, natural resources, utilities, communication and transportation infrastructure — and replacing it with social ownership, thereby undercutting the power of elites to hoard wealth and power. And that’s also the ethical appeal of socialism: a world where people don’t try to control others for personal gain, but instead cooperate so that everyone can flourish.

The power created by private property is expressed most clearly in the labor market, where business owners get to decide who deserves a job and who doesn’t, and are able to impose working conditions that, if given a fair alternative, ordinary people would otherwise reject. And even though workers do most of the actual work at a job, owners have unilateral say over how profits are divided up and don’t compensate employees for all the value they produce. Socialists call this exploitation. Exploitation is not unique to capitalism. It’s around in any class society, and simply means that some people are compelled to toil under the direction of, and for the benefit of, others. In a socialist society you and your fellow workers wouldn’t spend your day making others rich. You would keep much more of the value you produced. This could translate into more material comfort, or, alternatively, the possibility of deciding to work less with no loss in compensation so you could go to school or take up a hobby. That may sound like a pipe dream, but it’s entirely plausible. Workers at all levels of design, production, and delivery know how to make the things society needs — they do it every day. They can run their workplaces collectively, cutting out the middle-men who own private property. Indeed, democratic control over our workplaces and the other institutions that shape our communities is the key to ending exploitation.

Why be a wage-slave?

“See yonder poor, o'er – labour'd wight,

So abject, mean, and vile,

Who begs a brother of the earth

To give him leave to toil,

And see his lordly fellow-worm

The poor petition spurn,

Unmindful, tho’ a weeping wife

And helpless offspring mourn.”

Burns

The term wage-slaves refers to those who, lacking capital or means of production, have only their labour power to sell to make a living. This describes the vast majority of people in today’s capitalist societies whose sole means of subsistence is the sale of their capacity to work. Just as the feudal-era serf had no choice but to enslave him or herself and his or her family to the manor-house lord, the modern-day serf must indenture him or herself to employers to own a car or home or buy a college education. Unlike the slave and the serf, he or she is a "free" labourer and bound neither to an individual master nor to the soil. He or she is "free" to work or to be idle; "free" from the soil —"free" from the ownership of the means of production and from a secure livelihood; and often "free" from employment because of the competition for the job. The goal of socialists is the abolition of the wage system, which implies the end of capitalism. Profit-determined production will be replaced by one satisfying the actual needs and ambitions of the associated producers. The market economy will end and we will have a planned economy. Social existence and development will no longer be determined by the uncontrollable expansion and contraction of capital but by the collective conscious decisions of the producers in a classless society.

Dependence upon a job and the wages haunts the workers like their shadow. An invisible chain binds them to their machines. There is no escaping the struggle. The workers do and must struggle to keep up their wages and to better their standard of living. In this struggle the odds are always against them and on the side of the capitalists. The competition for jobs keeps wages down to a minimum. If, for a time, there is a brief industrial boom, it is always followed by a panic and unemployment. Every improvement, every invention that increases production, is a further threat. Many instinctive feel that it is getting the worse and ask, “What are we going to do about it?” Organisation is the greatest weapon that the workers have at their disposal. All that the workers have ever gained has been through the power of organisation. The organised power of the workers, of course, presupposes a certain amount of understanding. The power of numbers alone will not solve the mighty problem that confronts the workers. Organisation must be backed by the power of knowledge. Workers must become aware and conscious of the class struggle towards the conquest of political power and the taking possession of the industry and communications. They have to learn that the purely economic struggle has its limitations. And organise for the abolition of the system of wage labour. There is a working class and a capitalist class. There is a class war. Socialism is the expropriation of that capitalist class. You cannot get socialism by a dodge or by intrigues with the capitalist parties. All the capitalist spokesmen, policies of this, that and the other and appeal to the workers to make “sacrifices” to help in this but never touching rent, interest and profits. All these so-called remedies not only fail to touch the root or the evil — the burdens of capitalist disorganisation and parasitism but they can intensify the disease. The crisis is not a crisis of natural scarcity or shortage. Harvests are sufficient to feed all and production capable of providing for all. Millions of workers are willing and able to work who presently cannot. It would seem natural that the outcome should be great abundance for all but that is not the result to-day under capitalism. Why? Because capitalists cannot organise production for use.

Would-be reformers of capitalism including most on the Left urge that if only the capitalists would pay higher wages to the workers, enabling them to buy more of what they produce, there would be no crisis. The advocate the minimum wage, the living wage, the universal basic income. This is utopian nonsense, which ignores the inevitable laws of capitalism — the drive for profits, and the drive of competition. The drive of capitalism is always to increase its profits by every possible means, to increase its surplus, not to decrease it. Individual capitalists may talk of the “gospel of high wages” in the hope of securing a larger market for their goods. But the actual drive of capitalism as a whole is the opposite. The force of competition compels every capitalist to cheapen costs of production, to extract more output per worker for less return, to cut wages and just mostly talk to conceal the real process of capitalism at work -intensified output from the workers, with a diminishing share to the workers.

There is no future on the basis of capitalism. Unless we overthrow capitalism starvation await us if many of the scientific predictions on climate change prove to be even remotely true. Capitalism can find no solution. World collapse or workers’ revolution — this is no longer a debating issue of the future, it is a life and death issue; a fight for life that draws close. The future is in our hands. There is no going backwards, only going forward to the socialist future. The battle between the people’s needs and capitalism grows ever fiercer. It can only end in revolution. We have reached the dead-end of reformism and now the only path before us is revolution. There are voices crying out to know how a world can produce so much food that people starve, and so many manufactured goods that people go without. It is a question capitalism cannot answer. Capitalism has no solution. Only the working-class through socialism can bring the solution - to organise productive power to meet human needs. Only socialists can cut through the bonds of capitalist property rights and organise production for use, to bring common ownership and increase abundance and leisure for all. This is the aim of the Socialist Party to end the power of the capitalist class, to drive the capitalists from possession, and to organise social production. The means of production, the factories, mines, land, railways, docks, ships, becomes the property of society. The workers are free to organise production according to coordinated and connected plans. There is no longer the capitalist anarchy of production by competing businesses for an unknown market, with the consequent gluts and slumps. Instead, the workers are able to determine: We shall produce so much coal, so much iron, so much steel, so much agricultural machinery, so much textiles, cultivate so much land with such and such crops, etc. directed solely to supplying the needs of every man, woman and child. It is production for use, not for profit and every expansion of production means greater abundance and leisure for all.

Capitalism can only seek to prolong its life by casting its burdens upon the backs of workers by ever renewed attacks upon the working conditions and living standards. Various sections of capitalists fight to increase their own competitive power, to cheapen costs of production, to enlarge their own share of the market. But this cutting of costs, since capitalist rent, interest and profits are sacred, can only be carried out at the expense of the workers. Businesses all have the same task; to reduce the living standards of of workers and increase market share at home and abroad. Wages, employment conditions and working hours are attacked on every side with demands for cuts. Labour is intensified. Increased output demanded from every worker for less reward. Speed-up and rationalisation by redundancy or imposition of part-time working are the order of the day. The employers’ offensive extends to the unemployed, no less than the employed workers and it extends equally to all the social services in the Welfare State which are now treated as an unnecessary extravagance to be pared. Health, education and housing are now unaffordable. All these measures requires the weakening of the workers’ struggle. So we see such measures as the Trade Union Bill presently going through Parliament to make more and more strikes illegal; to increasing use of the police and the courts against the workers on strike.

This then is the alternatives before the working class – the continuance of capitalism that means hunger and want for more and more people. Capitalism already grudges the bare subsistence and seeks to reduce it even more. Or socialist revolution, leading to new life for all.

Why Fear Socialism?

The goal of the Socialist Party is the achievement of the co-operative commonwealth, a social system based on the elimination of all classes and class differences, a system without exploitation or oppression. Today, the whole world is now chained to the capitalist system. The aim of the socialist revolution is to overthrow the capitalist class for the creation of a classless and stateless society in which the guiding principle will be ‘From each according to ability, to each according to need’. The struggle to bring about the socialist transformation of the capitalist economy will not be easy but once the working class abolishes capitalist relations of production and replaces them by non-oppressive, non-exploitive ones then the alienation characteristic of capitalism will begin to disappear. People gain control of their productive activity and the products of their labour so their antagonistic estrangement from each other and their aversion to work are overcome. Productive activity will become once again a creative, fulfilling and truly human activity. The division between work and non-work will gradually disappear and people will freely choose what to produce rather than being constrained by immediate necessities. The human species will embark upon a completely new stage of its historical development free from the oppression and exploitation of class society. The state machine is no longer necessary, and the state withers away.

In a society where each grabs what he can at the expense of the rest, naturally, it is not surprising that in a system of society where the aim is to get rich by any means, crime of every kind should flourish. Faced by the corrupt example of capitalism generally many take to lives of open crime and try to seize at the point of a gun what the capitalist “banksters” steal through exploiting the workers, by a corner on the stock exchange, or by corrupting the government. The main difference between their operations is primarily one of dimension. The mafia is an altogether legitimate child of American capitalism, and it is no accident that they are an object of admiration. But there is no place for human sharks who prey upon the vulnerable. The abolition of capitalism destroy the basis of the crimes against property, but an evolving moral code and effective educational system, will greatly diminish the “crimes of passion.” Capitalism blames crime upon the individual, instead of upon the bad social conditions which produce it. Hence its treatment of crime is essentially one of punitive prison sentences. But the failure of its prisons, with their terrible sex-starvation, graft, over-crowding, idleness, inane discipline, ferociously long sentences and general brutality, is overwhelmingly demonstrated by the rapidly mounting numbers of recidivism. Capitalist prisons are actually schools of crime. The capitalists, as is their wont, seek to justify the destructive types by asserting that they are rooted firmly in human nature. Such appeals to “human nature,” however, must be taken cautiously. Changed social conditions develop different “human natures.”

A socialist revolution is the most profound of all revolutions in history. It initiates changes more rapid and far-reaching than any in the whole experience of mankind. Millions of workers, striking off their age-old chains of slavery, will construct a society of liberty and prosperity. Socialism will inaugurate a new era for the human race, the building of a new world. The world will become a place well worth living in, and what is the most important, its joys will not be the monopoly of a privileged ruling class but the heritage of all. Anti-technology is the absurdity of capitalism in despair. We should not fear automation but see it as an emancipator from the drudgery and poverty of the past. We will control the robots; not let it enslave us as it has done under capitalism. It would be the sheerest nonsense and quite impossible not to take advantage of every labour- and time-saving device. Socialist society will know how to develop the artistic and the creative impulses of the people which will not be shackled by poverty and slavery, where the arts and sciences will not be hamstrung by the profit-making motive, where the masses are not poisoned by anti-social codes of morals and ethics, and where every assistance of the free community is given to the maximum cultivation of the intellectual and artistic powers of the masses—there we need have no fear that society will be robotized by the new technology. Life in socialist society will be varied and interesting and individual will vie with one another, as never before, to build the useful and create the beautiful. Capitalism, based upon human exploitation, stands as the great barrier to social progress. Socialism releases the productive forces strong enough to provide plenty for all.  Socialism frees humanity from the stultifying effects of the struggle for mere basic existence and opens up before it new horizons of joys and tasks. The day is not so far distant when our children or grand-children will look back with horror upon capitalism and marvel how we tolerated it so long.

Socialist society will bring to an end ignorance, strife and misery and will organise the economics of the world upon a rational and planned basis, enhancing the systematic conservation the world’s natural resources and facilitating the beautification of the world, by liquidating congested slum cities and merging the joys and conveniences of country and urban life in town planning. Capitalism, with its wars, wage slavery and poverty undermines the health of the human race and destroys its well-being. Because of the idiocy of the system, its antiquated moral codes, its exploitation, capitalism has thwarted the evolution of the human species, retarded the very evolution of mankind itself in mind and body.  For many generations Utopians have dreamed of ideal societies, understanding humanity’s capacity for a higher social life than the existing dog-eat-dog so-called civilisation we have now. But they had little conception of what was necessary for social revolution. Their Utopias were mere speculations disconnected from actual life and so fell upon deaf ears. The socialist revolution is no longer an abstraction, a mere theory for the far–off future. Today, world socialism can be a reality. Socialism will carry humanity soaring to heights of achievement far beyond the dreams of even the most hopeful Utopians. Capitalists ridicule the idea of such a revolution makes a strong and stubborn resistance but the world capitalist system is subject to inherent weaknesses and is in decay. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot save it once the majority of people develop revolutionary consciousness and those toilers of the world are now organising to put a final end to their wage-slavery. 

Our message to fellow workers

Many people became frightened by the immensity of the task of achieving a socialist society. The thought of creating a whole new stage of history is a daunting one. There will no longer be the need for the state since the state will be replaced with common administration by all of society. Socialism eliminates the anarchy of capitalism and its crises, by collective ownership of the means of production and collective planning of the economy controlled by the working class. Society will be transformed and the community of workers established, a completely classless society. Technology will no longer be weapons in the hands of the capitalists to grind down the working class, and workers will no longer be a mere extension of the machine, as they are under capitalism. Instead technology will become tools in the hands of the working class to benefit all of society. This will unleash the stored-up knowledge of the working class and inspire people to make new breakthroughs.  Unemployment will end, because socialism will be able to make full use of the labour of everyone in society, while at the same time developing and introducing new scientific to expand output. As increased automation replaces workers, people will not be thrown into the streets, but shift to other jobs and the working hours will be reduced. Work itself will become a joy and enrichment of a person’s life, instead of a miserable means to sustain existence, as it is under capitalism. People will have a wide and diverse variety of organisations to remake and administer society. Imagine how it will feel when all mortgages and debts immediately disappear.

Socialism will bring about well-constructed housing for people. Under capitalism, it is more profitable to speculate in land, maintain slum housing and put capital into buildings for big business than to build decent housing for the masses. It is only because the rule of capital has so greatly distorted development, and brought such decay. Slums will be pulled down, and in their place new homes and other community facilities will be built. Homes will built near places of work, doing away with unnecessary commuting and with easy access to medical clinics, nurseries and schools. A socialist society will make available public laundries, cafeterias, nurseries and other facilities near the home and work. This will make it possible to greatly reduce the burden of household work, and free women–and men as well–to play a greater part in productive labor and the political role of the working class in ruling and revolutionising society. Health care will be freed from the nightmare of big business and the drug companies. Under socialism health care and hospitals will no longer be about cost-cutting but a means for the working class to prevent disease and to preserve the health of the people. Capitalist education prepares the great majority of youth only for existence as wage-slaves and perpetuating the capitalist system. Children are taught to compete against each other. Under capitalism education is geared to maintain the division of society into classes, the conditions of capitalist exploitation and the rule of the capitalists over the working class and masses of people. Education in socialist society will promote cooperation in place of competition, stressing the living link between theory and practice, between knowing and doing.

Capitalism promotes cynicism, despair, and the lie that the masses of people are at fault for all the problems of society–since these can hardly be covered up. It tries to demoralize people with the idea that they are the helpless pawn of mysterious and sinister forces. When it deals with the problems ordinary people face every day, it tries to paint them as purely “personal problems” not stemming from the nature of society itself, or at most as the fault of some “bad” people with “bad” ideas, not representing any class. In all its forms it aims at deflecting the anger of the people away from the ruling class back onto themselves–hate people of another nationality, or the other sex, hate yourself, hate people in general, hate anything but the ruling class itself. It glorifies parasites–whether bank president, gangster or pimp. Socialists shine a spotlight on the crimes of the ruling class and illuminates the real reason for the evils and the sufferings of the people in society – capitalist exploitation.

Socialists point the way to a brighter future. There is no such thing as “human nature”. In the slave system, it was considered “natural” for one group of people, the slave-owners, to own other people, the slaves. In capitalist society, this idea is regarded as criminal and absurd, because the bourgeoisie has no need for slaves as private property (at least not in its own country). But it has every need for wage-slaves, proletarians. So it presents as “natural” the kind of society where a small group, the capitalists, own the means of production and on that basis force the great majority of society to work to enrich them. The slave-owners and the capitalists have one fundamental thing in common–they are both exploiters, and they both regard it as the correct and perfect order of things for a small group of parasites to live off the majority of laboring people. They differ only in the form in which they exploit and therefore in their view of how society should be organised to ensure this exploitation. When humanity has advanced to socialism, society as a whole will consciously reject the idea that any one group should privately own the means of production. Then wage-slavery, based on the ownership of capital as private property, will be seen as just as criminal and absurd as ancient slavery, based on the ownership of other people as private property. The working class has no interest in promoting private gain at the expense of others and every interest in promoting cooperation. For only in this way can it emancipate itself and all humanity. Appropriating the means of production from the overthrown employing class is an act which will be accomplished almost immediately once the workers have won political power.

The Ways and the Means

The 19thC German socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht wrote of parliaments

“…Although the principle of representation cannot be altogether abandoned, it should however be reduced to a strictly indispensable minimum, in particular, the legislative and government functions should be exercised by committees and not by parliament, where, as every experienced person knows, debates are not serious deliberations but mere theatrical performances. Even today the major work of the Reichstag has to be done in committees.

Committees elected by the people for specified purposes, which can meet whenever common interests are involved, and which have to submit to plebiscite all laws before they come into force; the people possessing not only the right to reject, but also the right to introduce legislation; in addition, complete freedom of the press and of assembly, and a government which has no power to wield against the people – this is, in rough outline, my idea of the future mode of legislation and government – so long as it may still be possible to call it government at all.”

From the day of its foundation the Socialist Party of Great Britain has struggled consistently to utilise every opportunity provided by the parliamentary system in Britain to further the struggle for socialism, and to voice case for socialism. However, at the present time, the very electoral system itself, based upon the deposit system and the electoral machinery of the capitalist parties in each constituency, make it extremely difficult for a party to even put up a candidate. We need new ways of thinking and new ways of organising yet those who talk of ‘new ideas’ and ‘new methods of organising’ embrace ideas and methods easily as old as those they criticise. The class war is a war, with our class enemy continually trying to take advantage of weak points in our side, to encourage division and fragmentation. In order to preserve its power the dominant class is ready to make temporary concessions. It knows how to wait for the ebbing of the movement so as to take with one hand what it had to concede with the other. There are ways of clarifying ideas and developing organisation to coordinate struggle. We do not stand in awe of the “sacred writings,” defending “scripture” at all costs against experience. The struggle for socialism is within a human context not “holy writ”.

Every election is fought on one or two main issues, and on these alone but once the mandate has been given on that one or two questions politicians arrogates to themselves the right to rule and decide on every issue without the slightest reference to the wishes of the electorate. If a political leader chooses to act in a manner contrary to the wishes of his electors in a dozen other questions, the voters have no redress except to wait for another election to give them the opportunity to return some other gentleman under similar conditions and with similar opportunities of evil-doing. True democracy within capitalism is in short supply. This worn-out and corrupt system offers no promise of improvement and adaptation. There is no silver lining to the dark clouds of despair. This system offers only a perpetual struggle for slight relief within wage slavery. It is blind to the possibility of establishing an industrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery. Capitalism gives to the people the right to choose their master, a voice in the selection of their ruler. Yet the fundamental feature that goes unquestioned is the continued subjection to a ruling class once the choice of the personnel of the rulers is made. The freedom the socialist seeks is to change the choice of rulers which we have to-day into the choice of administrators of decisions voted upon directly by the people; and will also substitute for the choice of masters (capitalists) the appointment of reliable delegates under direct democratic control. That will mean true democracy – real social democracy.

A world movement must be founded on the class struggle, based upon the recognition of the irrepressible conflict between the capitalist class and the working class. All intelligent workers realize the capitalist system fails to supply the needs of the vast majority of the human race, and that it must be overthrown before the people can have freedom. It is time for the workers of the World to learn their own power and use it for their own benefit. Unorganized they are a helpless mob to be exploited by capitalists, betrayed by politicians, and bludgeoned by the police. Organized under the banner of socialism they become a coordinated force to press forward to the goal of freedom.

Our “party line” put forward is – ‘Spoil your ballot and organize for socialism. This is no plea for apathy or political somnolence. It is a slogan which requires a vigorous campaign to explain the full and correct political significance of such an act.

Instead of slavishly scapegoating fellow workers, we should get up off our knees, be making common cause with workers of all lands to remove this iniquitous system of capitalism. Capitalism and its inevitable concomitants of war, poverty, and planetary despoliation is well past its sell-by date. Time to establish a post-capitalist production for use, free access world for all of the world’s people. This is no Utopia either. It is an immediate and practical proposition and has been since the start of the 20th century never mind this one. It only requires a majority to opt for it and no force will stop it. Capitalisms usefulness is well past is sell by date hence the two world wars of last century as in ruling class, rivalry sought to assert territorial claims over each other’s markets, raw materials and trade routes. What is Utopian is the notion that capitalism can be reformed, tamed of its aggression and made more egalitarian.

We need new ways of thinking and new ways of organising yet those who talk of ‘new ideas’ and ‘new methods of organising’ embrace ideas and methods easily as old as those they criticise. The trouble with “revolutionary” vanguardists is that they, either, think in terms of some foreign country, or “activists” who never have had any actual connection with the labour movement and know nothing about working class. They try to shape the workers to fit their theories, instead of fitting their theories to the workers. The reason that the vanguardists hate the ballot box is because they know they are the minority and have not the patience to await the test of discussion and time. They don’t want the counting of noses, because they know the count will go against them, and because voting requires deliberation. They don’t want deliberation, they want action and hope to carry their case on a wave of excitement. Back of all this there always crops out the Leninist/Stalinist contempt of majority rule. They believe themselves to be the enlightened minority. Right now they would lead us into “mass action” and right into the capitalists’ hands.

“One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.” William Morris

The Time Is Now

You can’t compromise your way to your goal. Putting forth a vision for radical transformation of all we know is scary. We need people who are willing to stand together to build a movement for social change that unites people behind a vision of a world based on socialist principles. So we have a choice, we can stick with the known, what is comfortable, what seems to be pragmatic at this time or we can take a strong, bold stance for our highest values, goals and dreams. We have to unite, communicate, know our strengths and attack the repression and oppression that the state is imposing upon us. There’s just us. Just-us. Justice. It’s up to us to change everything. We have to change the system and we have to be radical about it. We have to have everyone we can, doing what they think best, giving everything they have.

Politicians and economists, more often than not echoing one another, speak of a new regime of higher wages, more consumption, and increased standards of living, which would result in the end of poverty. Their prophecies are always answered with a collapse of the good times are a-coming. The ballyhoo of prosperity ends in the most disastrous of recessions. The captains of industry and finance always appear bewildered by the onset of a depression, at no time do they really understand the movement of the economic forces they exploit. Their invocations to the new era of prosperity for all are quickly forgotten. Always, in one form or another, capitalism creates an ideology to disguise and justify its predatory character. It is a necessary device of class domination. But when the disguise disappears, as it must, and the hopeless reality is revealed, the economic crisis of capitalism will become a political crisis and an era of momentous social struggle and change.

Much of the ballyhoo about pending prosperity was invented by professionals who were mesmerized by the “easy money” of speculation. But the prosperity was unequally distributed, only meagerly shared by the workers. There was grinding poverty and terrible insecurity. The number of strikes decreased considerably, but the strikes that did occur were brutally suppressed. Not only that: even if prosperity had been as great as claimed, it was still woefully far behind prevailing potential of technological resources. For capitalism always restricts production and consumption, the possibilities of abundance and leisure potential in the productive forces of society. Social justice will never prevail until industrial despotism has been supplanted by global industrial democracy.

One decisive victory is all that’s needed for a new day is the reformist’s mantra. That new day, however, never ever comes as our rulers quickly learn of other ways to exploit workers. Occupy presented a danger to the entrenched oligopoly because Occupy wasn’t offering solutions like electing representatives or voting for Democrats. The overall consensus was that the system didn’t work and something new was needed. Anything can happen when enough people doubt the basic legitimacy of their government for the doors open to the possibility of real change. Despite its eventual reverses, the Occupy movement represented one of the most serious challenges to the state’s legitimacy in a long while. “Why don’t they offer any solutions?” lamented the establishment media, reflecting the fear of the elite that Occupy targeted the entire political system. If it is true that Sanders has moved the debate on economic justice and corporate control it is up to us to demand much more, such as a real democracy that allows all to have a say.

What many radicals are pursuing is not socialism. What have to show for it? Have there been reforms? In many cases, yes–even significant ones like large scale social welfare program. Has exploitation been ended, the enrichment of a few on the labor of the many? Hardly. Poverty? Scarcely. Is the economy planned to benefit the people? Have the creative powers of the masses been unleashed? Of course not. Reformists are content with class divisions, the dominance of the capitalists, a liberal-orientated government that does not challenge the existing structures.

There is no race but the human race. War, racism, sexism and all the other categories of inhumanity still practiced and profitable must end if we are to have a future as a truly human race. Scapegoating makes sense to the thoughtless or those responsible for maintaining a system that demands a social under-class in order to protect a wealthy over-class.

Human resourcefulness and natural resources are wasted by this system, which makes “profit” the only object in business. Ignorance and misery, with all concomitant evils, are perpetuated by this system, which makes human labor a commodity to be bought in the open market, and places no real value on human life. Science, technology and invention are diverted from their humane purposes and made instruments for the enslavement of men women and children. Labor, manual and mental, being the creator of all wealth and all civilization, it rightfully follows that those who perform all labor and create all wealth should enjoy the fruit of their efforts. But this is rendered impossible. The fruits of cooperative labor are appropriated by the owners of the means of production, by the owners of machines, mines, land, and the means of transportation.

The Socialist Party calls upon all citizens to unite under its banner  so that we may be ready to conquer capitalism by making use of our political liberty and by taking possession of the political power, so that we may put an end to the present barbarous struggle, by the abolition of capitalism, the restoration of the land, and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution, to the people as a collective body, and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production, industrial war, and social disorder — a commonwealth which, although it will not make every man equal physically or mentally, will give to every person the free exercise and the full benefit of his or her faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of civilization and ultimately inaugurate the universal brotherhood of mankind. The Socialist Party will help make democracy, “the rule of the people,” a truth by ending the economic subjugation of the overwhelmingly great majority of the people.

Break the Chains!

In 1920 919,000 American voters wanted Eugene Debs, who ran on a socialist ticket five times, to be president of the United States and the platform on which he ran demanded the ownership of the means of production be transferred from private to public control. Debs demanded the supreme power of the workers ‘as the one class that can and will bring permanent peace to the world.’ He declared that then ‘we shall transfer the title deeds of the railroads, the telegraph lines, the mines, mills and great industries to the people in their collective capacity; we shall take possession of all these social utilities in the name of the people. We shall then have industrial democracy. We shall be a free nation whose government is of and by and for the people.’ Debsian socialism struck a chord in the hearts of the people. Debs preached the Golden Rule, the basic law of social life – ‘Each for all, and all for each.’

If Debs was to rise from the grave would he feel pleased at the progress of his cause. Capital is still in the private hands of the ruling class. There is not yet socialism. He would see clearly that America, despite its great technological advances is spending more money on war and business subsidies than it spends on education, health and general social uplift. Debs would recognize as Noam Chomsky has, that Bernie Sanders is much like Teddy Roosevelt who sought to break the power and reform the trusts of in his own time. For Debs palliatives were not the solution. The only possible way to save the present-day world was to cut to the root of the problem and establish an industrial democracy. Half-measures as proposed by Sanders cannot meet the challenge. Tinkering with monetary and fiscal policy has proven bankrupt. Welfare policies will do little to correct the deep-seated structures of regional and social inequality. Legislative reforms, aimed at the most blatant abuses of corporate power, will falter, for the corporations will hold the government to ransom through their control of desperately needed investment. So much so that a reform-minded Sanders government will buckle under this pressure, and will pass legislation, cutting social services and suppressing the basic rights of workers. It is not speculation but a conclusion reached by reading actual history. Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to reform it. Why return to old policies that have proved wanting and believe they will now work. For socialists such as Debs, the needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of society. The system cannot function if common working men and women were to take matters in their own hands!

It must be apparent to every person that there exists a class war being waged by the capitalist classes to secure a greater share in the exploitation of labor. Aside from the false promises put forward by the capitalist class, put forward to mislead the workers, we must ever be on our guard against the crafty apologists of wrong, posing as the friends of labor. Class struggle mean no compromise and an unrelenting struggle against capitalism

The World Socialist Movement declares emphatically that it will work uncompromisingly for social revolution to establish industrial democracy by the mass action of the working class. It also declares that the international unity of the workers is imperative and, therefore, works to bring about that unity, regardless of all barriers, territorial or racial. Capitalism is world-wide. It pays little attention to national boundary lines. Capitalists often try to cover up their crimes with a cloak of patriotism, but the only patriotism they know is that of the dollar. Capital seeks the most profitable investment. If an American capitalist can invest more profitably by out-sourcing he will do so. Workers also must not confine themselves to geographical divisions or national boundary lines, but must follow the globalization of industry. The workers of all countries co-operate to carry on industry regardless of national boundary lines, and they must organize in the same way to confront the transnational corporations. The modern wage worker has neither property nor country. Ties of birth and sentiment which connect him with any particular country are slight and unimportant. It makes little difference to him what country he exists in. When the workers are educated to the real nature of the profit system they lose all respect for the masters and their property. They see the capitalists in their true colors as thieves and parasites, and their "sacred" property as plunder. They see state, church, press and university as tools of the exploiters and they look on these institutions with contempt. They understand the identity of interests of all wage workers and realize the truth of the I. W. W. slogan: "An injury to one is an injury to all."

What we want is not workers’ participation in their own exploitation, but social control over production, so that communities can impose their own priorities, their priorities for what to produce and how to produce - production for need, not for profit.

Educate the Educators

The education of the people, not the few alone, but the entire mass in the principles of industrial democracy is the task of the people themselves. The socialist’s is to set them thinking for themselves, and to hold ever before them the ideal based upon mutual interests. A capitalist world can never be a free world and a society based upon warring classes cannot stand secure. Such a world is full of strife and hatred and such a society can exist only by means of repression and domination.

The Left has often advocated state capitalism, sometimes misleadingly designated as “state socialism”. Whenever the state nationalized an industry, whenever the state imposed its control over industry, the Left naively accepted this as an abandonment of capitalism, as a symptom of the growing importance of socialism and the transformation of capitalism into Socialism. State capitalism emphasizes the fact of the state, of government, being an economic agency of the ruling class. State and capitalist industry, government and ruling class, become one and indivisible. State capitalism, accordingly, is not an abandonment of capitalism: it is a strengthening of capitalism. What came about was not socialism nor a step towards socialism but merely another expression of capitalist power and supremacy. Socialism is not state ownership or government management of industry, but the opposite: Socialism’s earliest act is to abolish the state. State capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism. State capitalism attempts to regulate and direct capital and labor. State regulation may, to some measure, prove onerous to the capitalist, but is accepted as the necessary condition for the progressive promotion of his interests, however, it proves much more onerous to the employee. Socialists rejects “co-operation” with the capitalist, in industry as in politics and the policy of trying to maintain industrial peace by coercion and cajolery. One means of cajolery is an arrangement by which the workers may “co-operate” with the employers in the consideration of matters affecting a particular industry or factory. It brings the workers under the sway of the capitalist in ways that weakens the independent action of our class by offering a sham democracy in the factories and offices. Industry is not transformed into a state function ruled through a ministerial department, but transformed into new administrative norms of the organized associations of producers. The Socialist Party rejects state ownership, rejects state capitalism as a “phase” of “socialism” that can “grow” into “socialism”.  This concept of transformation in practice doesn’t transform capitalism, it transforms the socialist movement into a caricature and a prop of Capitalism. The Socialist Party insist upon the social management through industrial democracy.

For sure, there is still some room for reform and betterment of conditions in the present social system, but this is of minor matter compared to the need for industrial and social reorganization. The real great change in history must be the socialization of the means of our daily life. Privately owned production for individual profit are no longer compatible with civilisation’s progress. With all its tremendous technology through invention and discovery this capitalist world of ours has not yet learned how to feed itself. There is no longer any excuse for hunger. All the materials and all the forces are at hand and easily available for the production of all things needed to provide food, clothing and shelter for every man, woman and child, thus putting an end to the poverty and misery which sicken humanity. But the technology must be released from private ownership and control, socialized, democratized, and set into operation for the common good of all instead of the private profit of the few. Common ownership and democratic control are inseparable. To the working class belongs the future.

There is no room for misunderstanding among us as to what our position means and requires. It requires a clean break with all the perversions and distortions of the real meaning of socialism and democracy and their relation to each other, and a return to the original formulations and definitions. Nothing short of this will do. Only a revolution that replaces the class rule of the capitalists by the class rule of the workers can really establish real social democracy. Socialists seeks to inaugurate a system of industrial democracy in place of capitalist autocracy and control. Like capitalism itself industrial democracy knows no boundaries, color, race, creed or sex. As capitalism knows only profit, industrial democracy knows only the exploitation by which profit is possible. Socialists organize to make exploitation an impossibility. Socialism is not about getting more wages, less hours and better conditions, but achieving social power. It means solving social problems and of making the workers themselves representative of a new society working for the good of all and the profit of none. The workers ensuring their own free development, their own liberation—is the liberation of all society, for the workers are society, in fact and numbers. The capitalists as a class, are a useless parasitic minority that can be dispensed with. Workers have no interests in common with capitalists and in fact, their material interests are in conflict. It is declared purpose of the Socialist Party to abolish the wage-system, and supplant it by a system of industrial co-operation in which the community shall have full control for its own benefit. The social revolution becomes a fact when people have acquired sufficient consciousness of their control over society to establish that control in practice. The capitalist state will weakened by socialist parliamentary criticism and action. The capitalist state will be undermined by the developing class power and struggles of workers’ movement by all the means of action at its disposal. But for parliamentarianism to be of value it must relate itself to other forms of struggle and abandon its policy of reformism.