Post-capitalist free-access socialist society

Universal Benefit Income is not something the Socialist Party can agree with as we challenge the whole concept of a monetary income, i.e. with people having to buy what they need. We favour a post-capitalist society of common ownership and democratic control, where people wouldn't have "incomes" but have free access to what they needed. There are also some reformists who argue that even under capitalism it is better to let people have some things free (e.g. health care, transport, phone calls) rather than give them money to buy these services. But a post-capitalist free access socialist society in effect means effectively that we will all own and control the means of production and distribution and can abolish wages and prices into the museums of antiquity.

Many proponents assume that if the government gives everybody, working or not, a regular income this is going to have no effect on wage levels? They seem to be assuming that this would be in addition to income from work whereas what is likely to happen is that it would exert a huge downward pressure on wages and that over time real wages would on average fall by the amount of the "basic" income. In other words, that it would be essentially a subsidy to employers. It would be "basic" in the sense of being a minimum income that employers would top up to the level people needed to be able to reproduce and maintain their particular working skill. Don't they understand how their much-vaunted law of supply and demand works? Reformists do come up with some crackpot ideas. Capitalism cannot be reformed to eliminate poverty, either absolute or relative. The poor are an essential component of capitalism and must be kept in relative or absolute poverty to compel them into waged slavery in order to produce wealth for the capitalist owners of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth. Why subsidise employers in their rationed exploitation of wage slaves when we could abolish wages and prices altogether and the real wealth creators and producers (all of us) own the world in common?

The Labour Party has never been a socialist party. The new society has to be made by ourselves and we can dissolve all governments 'over' us and elect ourselves to run a commonly owned world:

"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.” (1879 Marx and Engels).

There is no country can exist independently of the rest of the world. If you wish sustainability, we have to proceed from production for sale in an intensely profit oriented, competitive ,wasteful , minority-owned coercive waged slavery, war machined system, into a free access production for use, commonly owned one. A democratic world economy where we all own and share resources, based on the tenet of, "from each according to their ability to each according to their needs." Once we have a common ownership, production for use, money-free, post-capitalist free-access society and have abolished the wages and prices rationing system, we can all volunteer our contributions to the social pot.

The problem is actual and relative poverty are essential components of capitalism in order to keep the majority wage-slaving away in a production for sale economy for the profit of a minority social class. Capitalism has to be replaced by a production for use society which is owned by all and has free access to the wealth produced in conditions of real social equality.

A post-capitalist society will dissolve the governments 'over' us and elect the people, with delegated responsibility where necessary, over resources. Abolish wages and prices systems and end poverty at a stroke.  It is the poor who create wealth and not the other way around.

It is a naive belief that capitalism could be reformed in a way in which poverty could be eliminated. Poverty, absolute and relative are essential conditions of capitalism. It requires a working class which is relatively poorer than the owning class to induce it into waged slavery in order to create all of the world’s wealth for the owning parasite capitalist class. Poverty and war are essential concomitants of capitalism and will remain so, until it is replaced by a post-capitalist, production for use, moneyless, free access society, run by us all in conditions of real social and economic equality.

The market does not satisfy human needs. The market is not the answer. There is only one way to escape for workers from the detrimental effects of capitalism and that is for the economy to be run by the immediate producers themselves. Once in control of the process of production they would have no interest in wasting effort on producing goods that no one wants, on turning out goods of low quality, or resisting innovations that would make their work easier. The price mechanism does not let firms know what to produce in advance any more than the free associated producers are able to foresee all needs and all links in the production process. But they would be quite capable of working out what their main needs are likely to be, if only because they can calculate what is needed in the same way that capitalism does – by seeing what was needed in the past – and then adjust it according to their own democratically expressed preference. Supply can be made to correspond to demand.

Socialism is a system of planning and management in which the workers allocate resources and democratically determine priorities themselves. Such a system demands that the people themselves articulate their needs as producers, consumers and citizens, in other words, that they become the masters of their conditions of work and life, that they progressively liberate themselves from despotism and diktat of the market and its tyranny of the wallet.

Socialism will be a delegatory democracy of various diverse workers and community councils. The rule of bureaucracy or technocracy is irreconcilable with the conscious control and direction, through planned democratic association of self-managing producers. All wealth comes from the application of labour to raw materials. It was all still produced by the workers. Regardless of how production proceeds, by hand or brain, or in modernised facilities.

The question is that of ownership and control of wealth production, effectively at present it is for the enrichment of the minority owners of production and distribution mechanisms, as production is for sale to that end. With common ownership and production for use, then all wealth is available and production can be ratcheted up efficiently to satisfy human needs rather than choked off to satisfy market demand.

The capitalist class have been superfluous to the productive process since the start of the last century as educated workers generally run capitalism from top to bottom. They (the parasite class) are an unnecessary burden upon the productive process. The satisfaction of the capitalist need for profit ensures that they are engaged in competition with each other (even to the extent of war over raw materials etc.) and production is switched on and off, to satisfy profit requirements, rather than cooperatively engaged upon to satisfy human needs.

"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor" Voltaire

Wee Matt

The Glasgow Effect

A report by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, University of the West of Scotland, NHS Scotland and University College of London – claims to offer evidenced reasons for so-called 'Glasgow effect' - the phenomenon which sees more people die prematurely in Glasgow than can be accounted for by poverty alone, in comparison to the rest of the UK. The mortality rate is 15 percent higher in Glasgow across all social classes and ages, while premature mortality (dying under 65) is 30 percent higher, and much higher among the poorest in the city. The so-called 'Glasgow effect' means more people die from the cancer, heart disease, strokes as well as drugs, alcohol and suicide than do in other comparable cities.

Researchers, who spent years working on the project and examined 40 different theories, claim that radical urban planning in the 1960s and 70s, aimed at promoting economic growth, was a key factor which made Glaswegians vulnerable to the devastating effects of deprivation and bad housing. The report notes that Scottish Office documents – released under the 30 year rule – show that the creation of new towns, populated by Glasgow's skilled workforce and young families, which attracted investment, led to a situation where the city was left with "the old, the very poor and the almost unemployable". Another document admits to "skimming off the cream" of Glasgow to be rehoused in new towns such as Bishopbriggs, East Kilbride and Houston. However the policy continued to be rolled out regardless, a decision which fuelled the break-up of communities and a chronic lack of investment in housing or repairs in housing schemes such as Easterhouse, Drumchapel and Castlemilk.

As well as Westminster social engineering, the report finds that a range of other factors also made Glaswegians more vulnerable to the effects of poverty and deprivation when compared with data from Liverpool and Manchester, which in the earlier part of the 20th century had similar levels of mortality to Glasgow. The Scottish city started to fall behind considerably in later years. Researchers found that the historic effect of overcrowding was an important factor and highlighted the strategies of local government, which prioritised the regeneration of the city centre over investment in the cities housing schemes as having a significant impact on the health of Glaswegians. Data shows that Glasgow authorities spent far less on housing repairs, leaving people's homes poorly maintained and subject to damp.

David Walsh, of the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, said that their work proved that poor health had political causes and could not simply be attributed to individual lifestyle choices. He added: "The principal reasons for poor health in Glasgow are poverty and deprivation, and this shouldn’t be forgotten. However, even given its very high levels of deprivation, Glasgow has much, much worse health than it should have, and much worse than in comparably deprived cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Belfast – cities that been through the same processes of de-industrialisation. Until now this has been an unexplained phenomenon: but this new research is based on assessment of a huge amount of evidence and is not speculation-based." The Scottish Office documents were particularly revealing, he claimed. "The Scottish Office embarked on a series of policies that effectively wrote off the city - they designated it a ‘declining city’ and their plans focused on economic growth elsewhere," he added. "This was a policy that went on for decades despite an awareness that this was having a massively negative impact in socio-economic terms and therefore on health."

Co-author Chik Collins, of the University of the West of Scotland said that this made Glasgow more vulnerable to the policies introduced by the Conservative Government after 1979, leaving the city with weakened industry, loss of skilled labour and very large numbers of problematic council houses in peripheral estates and high rises. He claimed Glasgow city and regional council responses further impacted on health. "It was a Scottish variant of trickle-down economics that focussed on retail and tourism, ultimately at the expense of other parts of the community which did not benefit and which did not get the help they needed from elsewhere," he added. "Glasgow got a double-dose of neoliberalism – the UK Thatcherite version, and the more local version led by the Scottish Development Agency and the Council. The ‘excess mortality’ affects the best off as well as the worst off and so all socioeconomic groups in Glasgow have reason to feel some urgency about getting to the root of that problem."

Professor Tom Devine, historian at Edinburgh University, said: "This new report is by far the most thorough and convincing attempt to date to resolve the conundrum. As a historian it is satisfying to read that many of the new explanations lie in its historical analysis of the recent past. However, the conclusions are chilling. They reveal that to a considerable extent the key causes were in the realms of public policy, housing, overspill initiatives and urban regeneration. In other words, higher death rates could have been avoided if different decisions had been made by politicians and planners at the time. Indeed, a stark warning for the future."

Satwat Rehman, Director of One Parent Families Scotland said: "Families headed by a single parent make up a quarter of families in Glasgow and sadly children in single parent families are twice as likely to live in poverty as those in two parent families. To reverse this we firmly believe in the importance of progressive policies to tackle poverty, exclusion and reduce inequality.”

Cathy McCormack, an anti-poverty campaigner from Easterhouse, first made the link between poor housing and health as a young mother. "I brought my babies home from hospital and they were bouncing with health," she recalled. "And though they were breastfed they started to get sick all the time. The health visitor couldn't understand it." In those days, she said, she was told simply to wash the black mould off the walls, which she did on a regular basis, going to war with the various fungi that sprouted all over the damp bedrooms where the family slept. "We didn't understand the damaging effect of the spores and the way they colonise your lungs," she said.

The new report into the systemic and political causes affecting the health of Glaswegians have left her "heart-broken" she told the Sunday Herald and made her angry that she had to sacrifice so much to fight what she describes as "a war against the poor". In 2005 McCormack, who is now in her early sixties, was diagnosed with chronic lung disease and in January this year suffered a heart attack. "I just can't believe that people have been so demonised," she said. "It's hard enough being poor without being blamed for it. There has been a lot of emphasis on people's health being affected by smoking and drinking. But when you've been born into poverty and oppression you're immune system is rundown. Amongst all this talk about jogging and brown bread we need to remember that this issue is really about public health. That's what this report shows and it can be easy to forget."

When the revolution comes, we’ll be ready.

Too many workers have embraced the cul-de-sac of nationalism. Nobody is born as a patriot. When capitalism fails to deliver, when despondency and shattered hopes arise from the failed promises and expectations that litter the political landscape, is it little wonder that workers fall for the nationalists and the quick fix they offer? The real evil in this world is caused by the rival gangs of ruling class hoodlums who control all media outlets, and the ignorance of the masses who support them and the divisiveness of class, race, nationalism and religion. These are the factors preventing us from working together to repair our environmentally damaged planet. Nationalism is the political form of property consciousness. It asserts that a group of people cannot exist as such unless defined by their ownership of a particular quarter of the world – the relations between “peoples” are actually the relations between patches of land, rather than the people upon them. It was the predominate form of ideology for the rising capitalist class in the 19th century, a way of understanding the world in terms of conflicting properties, and is now a tool for conning the working class into believing that there is some communal interest between themselves and their capitalist masters in where the boundaries of their state are drawn. The nation and nationalism are not an eternal and essential characteristic of human beings as some would have it, but are solely a tool for pursuing the further interests of sections of the master class at given points in history. Nationalism is not their interest but their rulers'; submission is taught, not conceived. That its workers should be patriotic is vital to each national ruling class and this, fertilised by official lies, is exploited by all governments.

Workers have no country. Nationalism is based on the lie that workers have their own country. Workers who do not own or control Britain have no obligation to the bosses who do own and control it. Our sole interest is in co-operating with our fellow workers across the world who similarly have no country. Why should we die defending what is not ours and which we will never benefit from? On the contrary, our object is to obtain what is not now the possession of our class - the earth and its natural and industrial resources. The only war which needs to concern us is the class war between the parasites who possess and the workers who produce over the ownership and control of the Earth's resources. Nationalist conflicts has raged for years. What, in all honesty, have any of the victors gained? What is the “independence” they yearn after if it means being trapped within borders, prisons - inside of the bigger prison of capitalism? As long as workers are deceived into viewing the world from a 'national' perspective, they will fail to understand their condition in capitalism. The working class is deluded by nationalism. Such beliefs actively encourage people to co-operate with their 'national' exploiters operating within boundaries determined purely by historical accident. Nationalism conceals the real nature of capitalism, turns worker against worker and serves to impede working- class solidarity. The world's working class have no reason to be antagonistic to other workers but must unite against their common class enemy: the world's capitalist class. It underlines yet again the urgent need to work for a World without nations and nationalism, bosses and workers.

The view that all who live in the same country have a common interest against all those who live in other states is part of a political ideology that seeks to mobilise the producing class to line up behind the owning class in its contest with the owning classes of other countries. But the interest of the wage and salary working class in all countries is to reject all nationalism, to reject in fact the very idea of “foreigner”, and to recognise that they have a common interest with people in other countries in the same economic situation of being obliged to sell their mental and physical energies in order to get a living. That interest lies in working together to establish a world-wide society of common ownership, democratic control and production for use, not for profit. We advocate a World without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders, states or governments or armies. A World devoid of money or wages, exchange, buying or selling. The working class is international: so is its cause. Our cry is "Workers of all countries unite!"

The inexorable process of globalisation has increasingly made redundant the question of "national sovereignty". Many of the most important decisions are now made, not by politicians, but in the boardrooms of these multinationals. The proliferation of trading links between different states has effectively blurred the lines of demarcation between nominally separate national economies. It would be more realistic now to speak of there being a single global economy. Yet regional nationalists imagine they can buck the trend without even being against capitalism. The Socialist Party opposes all nationalism. Workers have no country. None to live for. None to die for. Workers should refuse to fight, for every drop of working-class blood spilt in battles within capitalism is wasted. 

The facts of working-class life are poverty, insecurity, unemployment, homelessness, slums, as well as disease.These miseries did not originate in "foreign" rule any more than they can be assuaged or eradicated by "home" rule. The French, English, German or Russian worker under his "own" government, lived with these problems in the same way as the Irish worker or the Indian worker, living under a "foreign" government. They did not arise out of the "evil" intentions, nor the blundering or stupidity of governments, "home" or "foreign". Workers have nothing to gain from the redrawing of the boundaries, but regional entrepreneurs and bureaucrats certainly do have a chance of making good if only they can persuade the electorate to back them. Capitalism knows no boundaries, money has no accent. As Socialists, we re-affirm that all peoples should seek their emancipation, not as members of nations or religions or ethnic groups, but as human beings, as members of the human race. They should unite to abolish the division of the world into so-called nation-states and to establish a World Cooperative Commonwealth of which we will all be free and equal members - citizens of the world, not subjects of nation-states.

Members of the working class should realise that nationalism is the tool of capitalism. The working class have no country—they have the choice of enduring the miseries of capitalism within the confines of national frontiers or enjoying freedom in a socialist world.

Socialism will be an association of free and equal producers

Although Marx did not leave us with a detailed description of a communist society his new mode of social production would in essence be an association of free and equal producers. It will not be the state which is director and administrator of production and distribution, but rather it will be the producers and consumers themselves to whom these functions would fall. Reformists have turned this theory completely upside down. The struggle for social reforms and the steady transformation of the various branches of industry into state or municipal enterprises meant for them a steady approach towards socialism. Social Democracy conceived of realising socialism through a continuous and gradual process of nationalisation.

Socialisation is the genuine authentic organisation of the economy. Undoubtedly the economy has to be organised; but not according to the old methods. The working class, in order to accomplish its purpose, must, first of all, secure entire political control of the state. But to the Socialist Party political power is only a means to an end. It is the instrument with which labour will achieve the complete, fundamental reconstruction of our entire industrial system. To-day all wealth, the land, the mines, the mills and the factories belong to a small group of capitalists. From them, the toilers receive a scanty wage in return for long hours of arduous labour, hardly enough for a decent livelihood. The enrichment of a small class of parasitic idlers is the purpose and end of present-day society. To give to modern society and to modern production a new impulse and a new purpose – that is the foremost duty of the revolutionary working class. To this end, all social wealth the land and all that it produces, the factories and the mills must be taken from their exploiting owners to become the common property of the entire people. Production is to be carried on for the sole purpose of securing to all a more humane existence, of providing for all plentiful food, clothing and other cultural means of subsistence. In the interest of general welfare, society will become more economical, more rational in the utilisation of its commodities, its means of production and its labour power. Waste such as we find to-day on every hand, will cease. In a Socialist society, where all work together for their own well-being, the health of the individual worker, and his or her joy in work must be conscientiously fostered and sustained. Short hours of labour not in excess of the normal human capacity must be established: recreation and rest periods must be introduced into the workday, so all may do their share, willingly and joyously.

Today the capitalist with his whip stands behind the worker, in person or in the form of a manager or overseer. Hunger drives the worker to the factory, into the business office. Everywhere the employer sees to it that no time is wasted, no material squandered, that good, efficient work is done. In socialism, the capitalist with his whip disappears. Here all workingmen and women are free and on an equal footing, working for benefit and enjoyment, tolerating no waste of social wealth, rendering honest and punctual service. To be sure, every workplace needs its technicians who understand its workings, who are able to supervise production so that everything runs smoothly. As far as economic functions are concerned, each factory will have its own factory council elected by the workers; this will have a part to play in the socialisation and subsequent management of the plant in accordance with suitable criteria. Workers must show that they can work without slave-drivers behind their back.

Socialism is the only salvation for humanity. The establishment of the socialist society is the mightiest task which has ever fallen to a class and to a revolution in the history of the world. This task requires a complete abolition of the state and a complete overthrow of the economic and social foundations of society. This cannot be decreed by any bureau, committee, or parliament. It can be begun and carried out only by the masses of people themselves. In all previous revolutions, a small minority of the people led the revolutionary struggle, gave it aim and direction, and used the mass only as an instrument to carry its interests, the interests of the minority, through to victory. The socialist revolution is the first which is in the interests of the great majority and can be brought to victory only by the great majority of the working people themselves. Workers must do more than stake out clearly the aims and direction of the revolution. It must also personally, by its own activity, bring socialism into life. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. The socialist revolution requires no terror for its aims; it hates and despises killing. It does not need these weapons because it does not combat individuals but institutions. It is not the desperate attempt of a minority to mould the world forcibly according to its ideal, but the action of the great majority of people. 

Ideas must be met with ideas

The heart of capitalism is accumulation. Capital is accumulated through the exploitation of workers. Workers sell their labour power in exchange for a wage. The difference between what they actually produce and what their wage is worth is ‘surplus value’ – the source of profits for capitalists. In assessing labour costs, just like machinery costs, the capitalist is only interested in replacement – so that there will be enough workers of sufficient ‘quality’ to continue production tomorrow. In many developing countries wages are below the poverty line because it doesn’t matter to the employer if his employees only last a few months unless they’re skilled and expensive to replace. There are plenty more labourers to be had in the provincial towns and rural villages. In the developed world, where there is a relatively limited labour force and a need for much higher productivity to maintain profits, wages have to be much higher. The wage paid to a worker has to be enough to keep him working ‘efficiently’ and to ensure that when he is worn out a replacement is ready. His wage has to cover his own needs, those of his children and those of his wife whose job it is to service and maintain this generation of workers and the next. Although increasingly it requires two wages to cover the costs of living and most wives are now workers in their own right.

 Also, the capitalist class use their theory of profit taking in the struggle against workers. Economists put forward the argument that Britain’s decline is related to “unproductive” activity like education and health those provisions for the reproduction of the work-force taking too great a share of national resources. This is then taken up by politicians to suggest that there is “too much waste which we can no longer afford”. The Tories or Labour can justify cutting “too much waste which we can no longer afford”. The Tories or Labour can justify cutting government expenditure on health and education in order to restore prosperity in the national interest. Education and health services are not waste but are part of the profit-producing sector of the economy. By cutting back on education and health, the government is adversely affecting the reproduction of labour power which will reduce the amount of surplus value produced.

 Capitalism says profitability should be the sole criteria by which we decide what gets built, what services are provided and who works. If there’s a profit to be made, let’s invest in it and produce it. Don’t do it, though, if there’s no profit to be made. Building our society solely on a capitalist quest for profit has placed us all in jeopardy. Mankind has followed the capitalism path for only a relatively short time yet we are now on the edge of the precipice. We have tens of thousands of years of history proving that we can organise our lives around values other than for profit. Even today, in the midst of the most capitalist-dominated period ever, most of our lives, outside of paid work, is based on love, caring, sharing, solidarity, respect and doing what’s best for our collective future. This is called family and community. If we can just come to the understanding that an economic and political system can also be based on these ‘community values’ we would have a path to building a viable alternative to the mess we are in.

There is one real capitalist system, advancing money in order to make more money - namely a profit over the money paid to the workforce and for the means of production. We start with money and we finish with money. Beneath the process of money making money, we can show that this happens through the exploitation of labour and the amount of exploitation or extra money made can be explained by the appropriation of surplus labour time (beyond that needed to keep workers alive and in production).

The basic fact of social life today is the ownership of the materials and instruments of production by a small class. The rest of us depend on this class for a living. To live we have to work for those who own. The places where we work are not ours, nor is what we produce. We are needed by the owners because we can work. The ability to work is, to all intents and purposes, our only asset. We cannot use this ourselves of course since we have no materials or instruments of production. But it is of use to those who do own the places of work. Without it their factories, farms, mines and mills cannot be operated. For selling our ability to work to these people we are paid a price, variously called a wage or salary.

Wages are thus a price—the price of human energy. While potatoes are sold by weight and petrol by volume human energy is sold by time. Houseroom too is sold by time. The buyer pays for the use of some rooms for, say, a week. The buyer of human energy likewise pays for its use for a certain time, perhaps an hour, week, month, year or an even longer period. We live, then, by selling our energies. Our standard of living depends on the size of our wage packet.

The goal of the Socialist Party is the expropriation of the capitalists and taking over by the working-class of the means of production and distribution. This is beginning the social organisation of production, and the end of the burdens of parasitism of private ownership. Industries will be organised and planned at every stage of production, so much energy, so much textiles, so much steel, etc. The output is calculated to meet the immediate needs of the population and for the means of production to extend the productive power in the future plus a margin held in reserve for any unforeseen shortfall. The necessary work to be done is spread out over the entire labour force, i.e., the whole able-bodied community, hours being shortened by the introduction of technology in place of the capitalist method of overworking. Necessary adaptations to new forms of work can be rapidly and easily effected. In agriculture and farming having been squeezed by both capitalism and landlordism, the removal of all the burdens of rent, mortgages, bank loans, as well as the obstacles of inadequate machinery, the hunting shooting and fishing game rights of the millionaire sporting estates, as well as the inappropriate and inefficient farming in unsuitable areas, along with the breaking down the old division of town and country, of rural and industrial workers, will rapidly build up agriculture anew. This is a question of meeting immediate needs; how far, in the final world organisation of production agricultural and industrial areas will be allocated on a world basis, or, as modern technical development appears to indicate, closely united and integrated throughout the world, is a question of the future.

What will be the immediate consequences of the change-over from the present capitalist society to a socialist society? It is clear that, economically, we shall have solved crises, we shall have ended unemployment, we shall have established production to meet the needs of all; politically, we shall have abolished the rule of class distinctions and privilege, and entered on the way to the first real democracy and freedom for all, the free and equal workers’ society. What will be the social consequences that the workers’ rule will immediately set itself to realise in order to bring the fruits of the revolution to all, in order to end the present reign of inequality — inequality in respect of every elementary human need of food and housing, conditions of health, education, etc., and bring the material conditions of real freedom and development to all? Let us begin with a little calculation to give a notion of what is possible, to show, that we are not speaking of some utopia, but only of what is immediately and practically realisable so soon as the workers are united to overthrow capitalism and enforce their will.

These, then, are the alternatives before the workers - the collapse of the whole existing structure leading to conditions of famine and slow extinction for masses of the population — or the socialist revolution, leading to new life for all. The capitalist propagandists try to frighten the workers from revolution by holding before them the spectre that revolution means “starvation,” that the workers depend on capitalism for their existence. The contrary is the truth - that the workers can by the method of social revolution rapidly reconstruct and extend production and win prosperity for all. It is the continuance of capitalism that means starvation. The workers, if they depend on capitalism, can only go down with it. Already millions are unemployed, are brought down to the barest subsistence basis. Semi-starvation conditions spread, Millions, and yet more millions will be “superfluous” before the process ends. Capitalism already grudges the bare subsistence basis, sees no way save to cut it down. Under the conditions of capitalism, the spectre of mass starvation draws ever closer as environmental destruction and climate change exacts its price and takes its toll.

There is no time to lose. What is the first need for to-day? A fighting spirit within the working-class. We are advancing to large struggles - the issue of class power, the issue of capitalism or socialism. We need to prepare new forms of struggle, to unite and organise against the capitalist attacks and to awaken and draw into the struggle ever more workers determined above all to overthrow capitalism.

Forward to Socialism! Forward to the Social Revolution!

This is what socialism is

Socialism is about removing the constraints that prevent working men and women, the actual producers of all wealth, from controlling the conditions of their own lives and work. Socialism is about how working men and women can create a truly free society in which all contribute according to their ability and receive according to their needs – a society free from exploitation, free from oppression, free from racism, from unemployment, from war, from poverty and inequality. Socialism is about freedom. Is this pie in the sky? Socialists show how it can be achieved by the collective efforts of working people themselves. Socialists argue that capitalism itself had created the force that could overthrow it and establish a classless society – the modern wage-worker. Socialism is the self-emancipation of the working class. There is no socialism without collective, democratic rule by the people who do the work and create the wealth. The claim that countries like the old Soviet Union were socialist is fraudulent.

The Great 2007 Recession should have been teaching people that something is basically wrong with the present system. History itself is driving home the utter senselessness of unemployment, hunger, and misery existing side by side with industrial and agricultural technological marvels ever built by mankind, productive capabilities adequate to fulfill every normal need of every person. Every day has been  demonstrating more clearly the incompetence of our political leaders to solve our problems. Many are beginning to realise that this incompetence is not due merely to the stupidity or corruption of individual CEOs of industry and politicians the government, but that the system itself cannot work properly any longer, whoever is in charge. Some are beginning to understand that the present system of society must itself be done away with and a new system substituted - that we must have not merely honest men, reforms, and new regulatory legislation, but a revolutionary change in the whole structure of society. Such people, however, have not always clearly formulated the exact nature of the required change and, even if they have done so, they do not know what group or party to support in order to help bring the change about. The failure of the revolutionary movement to develop effectively up to the present time is clear to everyone. The Socialist Party claims to know the nature of the revolutionary change that alone can save our society from continuing and increasing disintegration. We call upon all workers, upon all who are no longer willing to suffer needless injustice, who have decided not merely to complain at but to change society, we call upon all the forces determined to bring a new social order out of the ruins of the old, to unite and muster our banner.

The aim of all political parties is the achievement of state power. This must include working control of the apparatus of state: the armed forces, the bureaucracy, police, prisons, and courts. It must also acquire the support or confidence of the majority of the population. A truly democratic society necessarily presupposes the economic and social equality of all the individuals composing it. Capitalist society, in which a small minority owns and controls the means of production, means and must mean capitalist dictatorship. The political forms of capitalist society (monarchy, democracy, military dictatorship) are only the means by which, in a given historical situation, the actual dictatorship of the controlling minority expresses itself. Our apparent political freedom, then, our freedom to vote for "the candidate of our choice," affects in no important way the question of who actually controls society and the state. Whatever real democracy exists is restricted to the individual members of the controlling minority, among whom, in a capitalist society, the real issues of power are decided. The technique for maintaining this necessary minimum of consent and confidence is so complex and extends so intimately into every social detail that it cannot be adequately summarised. Certainly one of its chief supports is the belief that the government is the freely chosen representative of the whole of society, independent of any class or group conflicts and therefore able to be fair and impartial to carry out "the will of the people."

The Socialist Party is a political party, and this means that all of its activities must have a political orientation. Our party does not rest upon the mere demand for better living-more pay, shorter hours, higher relief, better working conditions. Our conception of political action directing the Party's activities differs radically from the traditional notion of "politics." The task of a revolutionary party is to change society. The political action that matters is the kind that brings large masses of people into motion. The Socialist Party, wherever and whenever it is possible participates in local and national elections. Our electoral activities give the Party opportunities to appear openly before the people of the country, to present its aims and goals, to expose the sham issues, to highlight the real issues that face us that must be solved. Any success in elections will put Party members in a strategic position to harass the capitalist control of the state, to show publicly the real nature of government policies, to uncover their hypocrisies and deceptions.

Our social system is outworn. Our society is out of tune with the enormous progress productive processes has made. Due to this discrepancy between our productive development and our social system, we starve while we have plenty, and unless the prevailing social system is totally overhauled we shall die as a people. Catastrophe will be avoided, and happiness of all will displace misery of the many millions if the need of a drastic change will be realised by the people and they will act from that realisation. The capitalist dictatorship cannot last forever against the resistance of a workers' democracy. Wage slavery must be abolished. The profit system must end. Our technology combined with our natural resources can be made the basis of a prosperous and sustainable life, if only the people will realise the extent of the evil that the dominant system does to them, and use their strength to do away with it. The battles of the past lacked a far-reaching social outlook. To-day we set out to unite in harmony and solidarity for humanity’s  revolutionary goal of a classless society and workers' democracy that labour in all countries has embraced.

A world socialist society is the only solution for the contradictions in present world-society, and even for the complete solution of the contradictions within a single nation. Only a socialist society can utilize rationally the natural resources and productive machinery of the earth in the interests of the peoples of the earth. A federated community of socialist “republics” can alone solve the conflict between the efficient development of productive forces and the restrictions of artificial national boundaries. A socialist society alone will be in a position to grant the rights of free cultural self-determination and self-development to all peoples and all individuals. Only world socialism will remove the causes of wars that under capitalism now seriously threaten to send mankind into barbarism or complete destruction.

It is well to remember that this socialization of the means of production injures only the small handful of financiers, landlords, and industrialists whose private control of the productive resources of the country is now and will continue to be the source of hunger, eviction, unemployment, and insecurity for the great bulk of the people. Indeed, not only have the majority at present no interest of ownership in the productive resources in the country; they are left with scarcely any private property even of a personal kind: their homes and small farms are mortgaged; much of their household appliances and cars are owned by corporations, through the installment system of buying on credit; their savings are controlled by banks which make profits on them; their insurance is manipulated by capitalist enterprises for the benefit of stockholders and directors. In fact, under modern conditions, socialisation of the means of production is the only way to protect and increase possessions of a personal nature. Common ownership by freeing production from subordination to the control of the capitalist elite in its own interests, and from the necessity of operating at a profit, will release the productive forces to serve the needs of men and women, and will enable production to be planned rationally in terms of actual social requirements. It will allow the utilization of every technical improvement. It will assure immediate and steadily increasing material advantages to every worker. And the leisure and educational opportunities which will accompany these material advantages, together with the removal of the deadweight of the perverted capitalist culture, will offer every individual the possibility for the fullest creative development.

This brief compass represents the chief objectives of the Socialist Party. The nature of the historical process makes detailed blueprints of the future co-operative society impossible. But it is a clear vision of the revolutionary goal. 

Socialism is about freedom.

In defence of socialism, the Socialist Party states socialism is not an authoritarian creed despite the fact that some mislabelled socialists are authoritarians. Socialism is a society without a government. It is a free society; a society without rulers and ruled, leaders and led, masters and slaves. The Socialist Party does not intend to lead workers towards a free and classless society because they are a part of that class themselves and adhere faithfully to the motto of the First International: The emancipation of the workers is an act of the workers themselves. If the people wait for a revolutionary vanguard to lead them to the classless society or the free society, they will neither be free nor classless. Imposing freedom is a contradiction in terms for imposed freedom is not freedom. There is enough evidence to support such a claim. One of the functions of the Socialist Party is to expose and fight false ideologies. To argue that a free society is impossible is historically incorrect. If people wish a free society then its materialisation could be realised. The social revolution is social precisely because it destroys all barriers preventing the realisation of the libertarian society. If today we rarely talk of the social revolution it is because we are not interested in it but in coups d’etat or party dictatorships.  In a community of slaves, you are free to be a slave.

We have all been told a lie. The lie says there is no alternative to capitalism. Millions live paycheque to paycheque, with minimal social safety nets, leading to insecurity, uncertainty and cynicism towards the future, and crippling anxiety. Politicians routinely show they do not care about the working class and the poor. People leave all the hard decisions to scientific experts and technocrats. We no longer exercise control over our basic needs, food and shelter. Corporations inundate us with false needs through advertising and manipulation of the media.

The potential for social change can be detected but whether a genuine movement can blossom remains to be seen. However, there is much to learn. The task of socialists is not to talk to each other, but to go out and persuade everybody else. Are you a socialist? The gap between the World’s rich and poor, the suffering and misery of millions from poverty, hunger and disease and war are not caused by accident or sent by god. On the contrary, they are connected. The poor are poor because the rich are rich, and vice versa. The explanation is exploitation. That is the control of the means of production by a small minority who organise the wealth they control to their own advantage, and to the disadvantage of the people who work for them. This exploitation explains the horrors we see around us. Capitalism, the rule of the rich minority, is the enemy. Socialism will abolish the landlord class, the capitalist class, and the working-class. That is revolution; that the working-class, by its actions, will one day abolish class distinctions.

The peoples of the world, through coordinated effort, will progress toward the complete classless socialist society, where all the various workers' organisations which have been instruments and tools of the class struggle, that is, the socialist parties, the trade unions, the workers councils, and general assemblies will lose their original functions. As the classes are abolished and class struggles consequently ended, all these instruments of class struggle will tend to coalesce into one united body. And that one united body will be the organised world society of the free and equal. The “International” shall really be the human race. The working class can be really united only when it becomes a class for itself, consciously fighting the exploiters as a class. In its struggle against the workers’ emancipation movement capitalism plays upon all the dark sentiments of ignorance, prejudice and superstition. This is seen in its endeavours to divide the workers and oppressed people along national, racial and religious lines. The struggle for the solidarity of labour is also a struggle for enlightenment upon these questions.

People everywhere are looking for a new way of life under which they can be free to guide their own destiny: to set and establish their own way of living, own conditions of work, and own forms of association with each other. The antidote to capitalism is socialism, a democratic system of society where the wealth is owned and controlled by the people who produce it. any movement towards freedom is a movement towards socialism.

What is socialism?

Political parties can be very “revolutionary” by promising things they cannot deliver. The Socialist Party does not make promises of what it will do for fellow-workers. The Socialist Party is concerned with the effective dissolution of the capitalist society and its replacement by a fundamentally different social system, based upon common ownership and control of economic activity, and guided by principles of co-operation, civic freedom, egalitarianism, and democratic arrangements far superior to the narrowly class-bound arrangements of capitalist democracy.

The present capitalist system depends on the collective labour of billions into what is in effect a global system of cooperation. Just look at the clothes you are wearing. They are made from cotton or wool from one part of the world, carried by ships made from steel from somewhere else, woven in a third place, stitched in a fourth, transported using oil from a fifth, and so on. A thousand individual acts of labour are combined in even the simplest item. On the other hand, the organisation of production is not based on cooperation, but on ruthless competition between rival businessmen who own the means that are necessary for production – the tools, the machines, the oil fields, the modern communications systems, the land. What motivates the capitalists is not the satisfaction of human need. It is the pressure to compete and keep ahead of the competition. The key to keeping ahead in competition is making a profit and then using the profit to invest in new means of keeping ahead. Sometimes these investments do indeed produce things of use for consumers. But they are just as likely to be directed towards building a new supermarket next door to an existing one owned by a rival, spending money on rebranding old drugs rather than researching new ones or invading countries to seize control of their resources. Such a system necessarily leads to repeated crises, since the drive for profit leads rival capitalists to rush to pour money into any venture that seems profitable, even though the result of them all doing so is to force up prices of raw materials and to produce goods that the world’s workers cannot afford to buy because their wages have been held down to boost profits.

The socialist alternative to such a state of affairs is simple. It is to replace decision making on the basis of competition between rival groups of capitalists by a genuine democracy where the majority of people democratically decide what the economic priorities should be and work together to plan how to achieve these. It is said that such planning cannot work because modern productive systems are too complex. Yet every major capitalist enterprise undertakes plans to fulfil its objectives. Corporations plan years in advance to guarantee the supplies of the thousands of products available in every big store. They organise elaborate and complex supply-chains. Those who do the planning, it should be added, are not the boardroom directors but rather they employ technical staff to do the job for them. In the same way, it is employees, not investors or the CEOS, who carry out scientific research, develop new production techniques and make all of the advances. If planning and innovation are possible under the present system, they are just as possible under a system based on meeting human need through democratic decision making, rather than competing in order to make profits to direct towards further competition. Indeed, under such a system, planning would be easier. The planning that takes place in any capitalist corporation at the moment is always distorted by the impact of the planning taking place in rival corporations.

To reshape society a socialist society would involve the mass of people in democratic debates to plan production to meet human need. What stands in the way of such an approach is not its lack of viability. It is that those who own and control the production of wealth today will do anything in their power to keep things that way. Only then can the new democratically controlled associations of producers that have at their disposal all the resources needed can society provide a better life for all of humanity.

The alternative to capitalism is socialism. Capitalism is obviously detestable but is not “socialism” detestable too? The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc plunged the common people into the most unspeakable poverty and deprivation. Wasn’t “socialism” a system of society which is even more unfair and unjust than capitalism? The people overthrew the “socialist” governments in favour of capitalism, so does that show that capitalism is preferable and it can be reformed a little to make it better? 1984 imagined a World where words were used by governments to mean their opposites. Socialism is entirely different from what it has been held up to be by the Soviet apparatchiks and nomenclature. We stand for real socialism as the only alternative to capitalism and it is still worth fighting for. The socialist alternative is realistic and such a perspective ought to appeal to the imagination of every genuine socialist.

World capitalism is skirting the edge of profound crises. Capitalism can no longer offer its minimal sops and reforms. People feel themselves powerless, lacking any credible alternative. Many workers resign themselves to the forlorn hope that there might be some sort of respite in the future. People are still searching for an alternative. The real solution to the looming disasters, the only real deterrent to the attack upon the working class by capitalism is the socialist revolution. 

No Equality

An article in the Toronto Metro News of April 18th focused on unequal pay between the genders in the retail sector in Ontario. Though 60% of Ontario's retail workforce is female, men outnumber them in management. Sixty-five percent of males are in full time jobs, compared to 57% of women.

The average retail wages per hour in Ontario in 2015 were -- managers in retail, food and accommodation: men $30.79; women $25.06. Salespeople and clerks: Men $15.51; women $13.10. Cashiers: men $12.34; women $11.84.

This will anger many people, both women and men, but it is pointless to fight for equality within capitalism, because its very nature causes it. Nor do the above facts mean the men earning more money don't live in poverty. Equality is a fine thing to desire and work for, but only in a society where all will stand equal in relation to the tools of production can it be produced. John Ayers.

Coping With The Miseries Of Life

Some Rabbis in Toronto recently held a public debate entitled "Putting God Second." The question was asked: "Why are the great monotheistic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam unable to fulfil their own self-professed goal of creating individuals infused with moral sensitivity and societies governed by the highest ethical standards."

The significance of this question is that finally religious leaders have concluded that religion has failed to solve the world's problems, and nor could it; as Marx said, it was "the opiate of the people."

Only when the majority grasp the central fact that superstition is a way of coping with the miseries of life and reject it can we really start to abolish the cause of all misery.

John Ayers.

Socialism or nothing changes

When feudalism was overthrown, and “free” capitalist society emerged, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation. The essential feature of capitalism, the very thing which makes the system one of exploitation and robbery of the wage workers by the ruling class of capitalists, is the private ownership.  For the workers, capitalism has meant widespread unemployment, accompanied by poverty and homelessness. At the same time, the exploitation of those in jobs has become more intense. Mass poverty escalates while multi-billion dollar fortunes are accumulated by the big capitalists and landlords.

Capitalism is a system of commodity production (that is, the production of goods for sale and not for direct use by the producer) which is distinguished by the fact that labour power itself becomes a commodity. The major means of production and exchange which make up the capital of society are owned privately by a small minority, the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) while the great majority of the population consists of proletarians or semi-proletarians. Because of their economic position, this majority can only exist by permanently or periodically selling their labour power to the capitalists and thus creating through their work the incomes of the upper classes. Thus, fundamentally, capitalism is a system of exploitation of the working class (the proletariat) by the capitalist class. As new technology brings about the greater productivity of labour and increased social wealth, it cannot get rid of the evils of capitalism or solve the problems of the working class. Rather, it intensifies them. Only socialism, which results from the class struggle of workers against capitalists, can solve them. Social production and the socialisation of labour are enhanced by the advance of technology, creating a material basis for the transformation of capitalism into socialism i.e. classless society. By replacing private ownership of the means of production by social ownership, by transforming the anarchy of production which is a feature of capitalism into planned proportional production organised for the well-being and many-sided development of all of society, the socialist revolution will end the division of society into classes and emancipate all of humanity from all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another.

If a worker becomes aware that society is suffering from the rotten, cancerous growth, do we continue with more wars; more unemployment; more totalitarianism? Or do we engage in social revolution and cut out the capitalist tumour. Capitalism produces its own grave-diggers, the wage workers are nearing the point where it is no longer possible to live, they see the limitations of the trade union struggle in the persistence of insecurity. More are growing aware that private ownership must go, social ownership must take its place, socialism. The Socialist Party has a basic starting point to its politics - that the working class is the potentially revolutionary class and as such is capable of overthrowing the capitalist system and establishing the socialism. It is an idea we have to defend every day against those who tell us that the working class are so imbued with the ideas of capitalism that they can always be diverted at the crucial point. This does not mean that workers are consciously seeking revolution – it means that the working class are objectively revolutionary. Our confidence springs not from romanticism but from Marxism as a scientific theory. We see the working class as an exploited class, driven by the realities of class society into conflict with their exploiters at the point of production. It means that at moments of history when all the conditions are present, the overwhelming power of the working class, as the producers of all wealth, can be harnessed to make a revolution.

The Socialist Party is Marxist. The Socialist Party is revolutionary. Our goal is the emancipation of the working class. We will not go just a part of the way – or even half of the way – we are going all of the way. The debate is about the road the working people must follow to free themselves from capitalist slavery. That is why the Socialist Party is still involved in this battle with the same energy and enthusiasm that we have put in 112 years ago when we began this socialist party of ours. A real socialist party is one where workers use their collective strength and power to transform society. The Socialist Party bases itself on the idea of a socialism which workers make for themselves. We want the working class to become conscious of itself and its power in society. Genuine revolutionaries understand that all political consciousness begins with the recognition of the fundamental class division: the working class versus the ruling capitalist class. Success in the class struggle demands working-class independence from all capitalist parties. The Socialist Party will use its electoral campaigns to encourage working-class struggle and promote socialist consciousness among workers. But we always tell our fellow workers the truth: serious social change has been achieved just by electing socialist delegates but also by opposing the ruling class in the workplaces and the communities.

It's not the size of the dog in the fight that wins, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

The Choice Before Us

Working people make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population. But in nearly every country they are the oppressed majority, labouring to support the luxury of a handful of exploiters Everywhere people are waking up to the reality that oppression and exploitation is a daily fact of their lives. The lies of the ruling class are being further exposed every day. The situation in health care, housing and welfare services is rapidly deteriorating. The unjust man-eating system of capitalism is set up with one thing in mind – to make the most profits possible for the handful of people who own the big banks and corporations. It is the system under which we, and our parents and grandparents before us, have done all the work. We mine the mines, build the buildings, the manufacture all the products: and then get just enough to live on – if we fight hard enough for it! On the other hand, the small capitalist class builds up huge fortunes off of our work. The Socialist Party stands for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system, and the establishment of a socialist system. Once it is no longer possible to make a profit from the general misery of people most social problems can be quickly solved. We must be mindful, at all times, to keep the forefront of all our activity: the need to raise the socialist consciousness of the working masses and convince them of the necessity for socialist revolution. Every political party defends the interest of one class or another in society. On all questions, in every battle, our Party defends the interests of the working class. The Socialist Party’s role is to educate. We explain the true nature of the system that oppresses workers and the need for socialist revolution. Our task is to bring class consciousness to the working class – the understanding of workers’ historic mission. As we carry out our political and economic education in the heart of the class battles against the capitalists, we strengthen and win ever more workers to our cause, a just cause. It is the cause of all those who are exploited and oppressed by capitalism. It is the cause of the liberation of all humanity.

A handful of capitalists control our country and make vast profits on the labour of the working people and the natural resources of the land. All the major means of production - the factories, forests, farms, fisheries and mines are in the hands of a few hundred capitalists. Capitalism is a system of exploitation. A handful of parasites lives off the backs of the workers. Every bit of the capitalists' vast wealth was stolen from the working people. The capitalists get rich from the fruit of our labour. At the end of the week, a worker collects their pay. The capitalists and their flunkeys claim this is a fair exchange. But it is highway robbery. In reality, workers get paid for only a small part of what they produce. The bosses get rich, not because they have "taken risks" or "worked harder," as they would have us believe. The more they keep wages down and get fewer workers to do more work, the more they can steal from us and the greater their profits. If the bosses think they can make more profit somewhere else, they just close their factories and throw the workers out on the street. Capitalism is a system of economic anarchy and crisis, plagued by periodic economic crises, such as recessions. Economic crises are aggravated by speculation, hoarding and other schemes of the bankers, financiers and industrialists. Each tries to profit in the short run, but their individual greed eventually throws the whole system into turmoil, leading the working class and people to suffer. Capitalism is an obstacle to the further advancement of the material well-being of society. It is unjust, wasteful, irrational and increasingly unproductive.

People live in misery so a small clique of very wealthy individuals can live in luxury. The idea that everyone can get rich under this system is a lie invented by the rich themselves. Under capitalism, the only way to get rich is to trample on someone else. There is only room for a few capitalists - at any time, the great majority must work and be robbed. This is why workers have only one choice: either submit to this wage slavery or fight it. This exploitative and oppressive system, where profit is master, has choked our entire society with economic crises, political reaction and social decay. The drive for profits holds thousands hostage to hunger and want; it has poisoned the very air that we breathe and water that we drink; it spawns cynicism and violence, drugs, crime and social devastation. Capitalist society callously mistreats people because everything is geared to the drive for profits. The elderly and the disabled are also treated unfairly. The elderly toil their entire lives, but after retirement, they lead lives of fear and worry. Capitalism has no regard for its senior citizens; once it has squeezed the working life out of the workers they are tossed away.

Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism in the World. Today the whole system of production is socially interdependent, but it is controlled by private hands. In place of private control of social production, there must be social ownership if society's problems are to be addressed. The problems of capitalism - exploitation, its anarchy of production, speculation and crisis, oppression of nationalities and women, and the whole system of injustice - arise from the self-interest of the tiny group of capitalists. Socialism will be won through the seizure of political power by the working class. Having overthrown the capitalist class, the working people will take over the economic forces developed by capitalism and operate them in the interests of society. Socialism will be a better society, one which will present unprecedented possibilities for the improvement of common peoples' lives. Because 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 a resounding liberating and transforming force. Socialism will not mean government control. Rational planning will replace anarchy. Coordination and planning of the broad outlines of production by public agencies will aim at building an economy that will be stable, benefit the people and steadily advance. Redirecting the productive capacity to human needs will require a variety of economic methods and experiments. Transforming the main productive enterprises from private to social ownership will allow workers to manage democratically their own workplaces through workers' councils and elected administrators, in place of the myriad of supervisors and consultants today. There would be a combination of central planning and local coordination. But no matter what means are chosen, a socialist economy must uphold the basic principles of social ownership, production for the people's needs, and the elimination of exploitation. With socialism, goods and services will be distributed on the basis of to each according to their needs, from each according to their ability.

Social Revolution NOT Social Reforms

In previous revolutions, the cry was “the king is dead, long live the king” when the lawyers and lackeys, the profiteers and opportunists, on the look out for personal advancement and positions of authority took political power and assumed political influence. Once in power, they feathered their own beds and offered their services to the industrial barons and financial lords. Many say times are changing and the old politics are being transformed or breaking up with new ones are taking their place. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Reformism regards socialism as a remote goal and nothing more, and actually repudiates the socialist revolution and advocates not class struggle, but class collaboration. Reformism is a policy of relying on gradual change and making things a little bit better, slowly. It develops out of faith in the fair-mindedness of the ruling class. Reforms are regarded as a partial realisation of socialism. Reformism is a belief in the possibility of major improvement in conditions under capitalism, and a rejection of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

Have the reforms the State was forced to make in the fields of union organisation, occupational health and safety, day care, abortion, etc., enabled the “vast majority of workers to participate directing in the exercise of power”? What has happened to the various experiences of self-management in the work-places? We would not try to imply that the accumulation of these reforms gave the working class more power, that it brought the working class closer to socialism. We do not think we will capture the state machinery by nibbling away at it gradually, bit by bit. Reformism is the illusion that a gradual dismantling of the power of Capital is possible. First of all, you nationalise 20 percent, then 30 percent, then 50 percent, then 60 percent of the capitalist property. In this way, the economic power of Capital is dissolved little by little. Reformism is therefore essentially gradualist. Eduard Bernstein defined it with his celebrated formula: “the movement is everything, the end is nothing”. In contrast, Daniel De Leon called the reformists the “labour lieutenants of Capital”. They seldom emerged from the ruling class but come from the working class organisations of the workers’ movement. Being powerless to change by themselves the course of evolution, people placed their hope again in these representatives who institutionalised class collaboration to increase their slice of the cake. This increase implies some sacrifices from the capitalists who appreciate the fact that the reformist leaders provide relative stability. But, always as good businessmen, the ruling class want to know what extent is the price that has to be paid to justify surrendering some of their profits and the ruling class is always divided on this subject. Reforms like the welfare state were the price to pay to avoid possible revolution. Now, many capitalists have decided that under changed circumstances it is the price they no longer wish to pay and believe that there are other ways to manage the system. The less of a threat to their existence then the less need to buy off the working class. The employers’ policy of austerity to restore profitability did not result in a return of militancy. No compromise, no concession, required, except perhaps on minimum or living wages.

Many times in history people lived in 'objectively' poor economic conditions, suffered hunger, disease, slavery, all kinds of indignity, but this did not lead to social mobilization of the kind that we have witnessed. This is because most of the time we accept our conditions of social existence or perhaps even see them as inevitable. We are not aware that our consent is necessary for the status quo to continue even when not in our interests. In other words, objective circumstances, however unjust, on their own cannot trigger collective social action. We don't think crises are necessarily an opportunity because things can go from bad to worse. For change to happen there needs to be an understanding our conditions as no longer tenable. Socialism is essentially about democratising power over decision making within society, both through the principle of common ownership and the principle of self-management. Socialism embodies participatory principles.

Every struggle of the working class, however, limited it may be, by increasing its self-confidence and education, undermines reformism. Capitalism can no longer afford reforms that improve the life of the mass of people, reformism as a powerful ideology within the workers’ movement is disappearing, although not as quickly as we would wish to see its demise. It is not an era of social reforms that we hope for, it is the great epoch of social revolution that we aspire towards!

Eugene V; Debs proclaimed:

“It’s better to vote for what you want, knowing that you have little chance of getting it than to vote for what you don’t want, knowing that you are sure to get it.”

Marx, class and socialism (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class and class struggle are central to an understanding of the case for socialism. Marx and Engels had been concerned to show the "class struggle as the primary motive force of history, and especially the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat as the great lever of modern social change" (Circular letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke and others).

Marx, however, undertook no systematic definition of class. While he certainly planned to do so. the unfinished chapter of Capital intended for the purpose ends after a few paragraphs with a note from Engels that the manuscript breaks off. The omission has certainly fuelled the confusion and ignorance surrounding the meaning of class and its relevance to the socialist case.

It would however be surprising if, in the whole of the writings of Marx and Engels, we were not able to understand what they meant. Indeed, the whole of their writings is about understanding the historic dynamic of class, the class struggle and the abolition of class society. Within the body of their writings there exist enough references for us to constitute what they meant by class. Marx did not, of course, invent class. His contribution was to articulate and conceptualise the existing historical reality. Class is not some figment or idea emanating from the mind of Marx.

In the unfinished chapter Marx prepared to answer his own question - what is a class? - and began by writing of three “great classes" in modern society. He identified these, firstly, on the basis of income: wage for labour, profit for the capitalists and rent for the landowners. But note here that income is the result of different property relationships, different relationships to the means of production. The word "great" was not intended to imply numerous, but the importance such groups had to the functioning of society in a particular manner. The working class is the most numerous but the capitalists constitute a tiny and parasitic minority. The greatness of the latter arose from the fact that they constitute the ruling class in modern society by virtue of their legal ownership and monopoly control of the means of production and distribution of wealth. This position allows a class to dominate not only in the economic sphere but, as Marx and Engels stated:

in every epoch the thoughts of the ruling class are the ruling thoughts; ie. the class that is the ruling material power of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual power. The class that has the means of material production in its control. controls at the same time the means of intellectual production (The German Ideology).

Capitalism has now succeeded in absorbing the landlord class, leaving society polarised between two classes: capitalists and workers.

Marx stresses the importance of production as the determinant of social class and differs fundamentally from the apologist sociologists who stress status differences. His reason is simple, for. since it is productive activity that creates history, then it follows that an understanding of humans' quest for subsistence, their production, holds the key to the understanding of historical change. In order to live, to satisfy basic needs, humans must work. And work is a fundamental aspect of human life.

There are generally two ways of organising work. One is where individuals or collectives of producers use their own means and objects of production and distribute their own products. The second is class society, where a particular class owns or controls the means and instruments of production and organises the work of the producing class with the intention of producing and expropriating surplus wealth. Inevitably there is a conflict of interest between producers and expropriators over the control of the means of production and the division of the products; between feudal lord and serf, between capitalist and worker. In class society there always exists class struggle.

In societies dominated by owning classes - in Europe, slavery, feudalism and capitalism - the slaveowner, lord or capitalist is not concerned with the production of wealth as such, but with the production of surplus wealth. Surplus wealth requires surplus labour, or exploitation. Marx put it thus:

The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer (Capital, Vol I. chapter 9. section 1).

and again:

Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the working time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working time in order to produce the means of production (Capital, Vol I. chapter 10. section 2).

He shows that the struggle between the exploiter class and the exploited class over the organisation of work, distribution of the social product, working conditions and the results of production is the living contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production.

Above all Marx is concerned to show that ownership is a social relationship; that it is not simply based on the individuals property holding but is a relationship between people, through objects. Marx posed the simple question of how people stood in relationship to other people, how some people managed to acquire vast amounts of wealth while the sole role of others was to engage in its production. The production of wealth was a relationship in which the great majority produced but did not own and a small group owned but did not produce. Such origins of class society lay rooted in historical development. Keys to understanding lay in the study of the past as a guide to the present and future. To say that society is based on class is to articulate the real life experience of people's social relationships with one another. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production through the legalised power vested in it by the state. The producers have no such property and are forced to sell mental and physical energies for wages or, what is the same thing, a salary.

When modern sociologists use the term class they omit this fundamental fact and fail to address the issue of the social relationship of production. People are classified in some hierarchical logic based on income, occupation. education, or some notion of status. For all that this tells us about human and property relationships, we might as well classify people by the size of their noses.

When scientific socialists speak of classes we are discussing property relationships and social activity. Marx asks first how income is obtained, but warns against commuting class differences into differences in "the size of purses".

The size of one's purse is a purely quantitative distinction whereby any two individuals of the same class may be incited against one another at will" (Moralizing Criticism and Critical Morality, 1847).

The language used by those sociologists who bolster the society of oppression is carefully chosen to avoid the real issue of the prevailing class struggle. They present us with a gradational picture of class society. Classes are described as "above" or "below" other classes. Little mention is given to the inherent antagonisms that are the inevitable result of class society.

Socialists rightly do not speak of "upper", "middle" and "lower middle" classes. Instead we use the language that best describes the social relationships that actually matter in society: we speak of capitalist and worker, feudal lord and serf, master and slave. Neither do we accept that class relations are based on forms of technology, the level of industrialisation or the technical division of labour. Members of the working class are not just blue collar workers, and neither are technical workers part of some lower middle class or "new petty bourgeoisie". For, as stated, class relations are socially determined by reference to the property relationship and are not defined by some notion of an occupational hierarchy. Class operates in the social relations of production and not in the realm of consumption. Owning a car or possessing a mortgage does not alter the fact that you are a member of the working class.

In the English preface to the Communist Manifesto Engels sums up the aim of the movement for socialism as “once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation. oppression, class distinction and class struggles". The role assigned to the World Socialist Movement is to assist in building a class-conscious working class the world over who understand the nature of class society and who will take, through majority action, the necessary steps to end oppression. With the abolition of minority ownership of production and distribution will come the abolition of class society.

Ewan Knox