Stand Together

"In actual history, it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, and force, play the great part." - Karl Marx

Arguments against socialist ideas and principles are taught in the classrooms or disseminated by the mass media, are nothing more than the mythological construction of, and obsession with, equating socialism to government authority. Mainstream education and journalists continue to falsely associate capitalism with freedom, private property with liberty, and socialism with dictatorship and theft. There simply is no substance because there has been literally no scholarship on these topics. It is done without any learning, any thought, any investigation, or any historical analysis. It is simply propaganda, designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to justify and maintain a system of exploitation, oppression, and mass inequality. Victims of the capitalist system are made to believe our victimization is not only justifiable but necessary – there is no alternative. This one-liner has been used ad nauseam by proponents of capitalism. It is, after all, a perfect sound bite for those who do not want to take the time to read and learn or to critically think. The notion of private property is lauded by right-wing theories of "libertarianism" as the basis of liberty and freedom. In reality, private property accomplishes the opposite and makes any semblance of human liberty obsolete and impossible. Legalistically, under capitalism and the state's enforcement of property law, the illegitimate ownership of land creates a scenario where land is monopolized by an extremely small and privileged group of people for the sole purpose of extracting wealth (essentially through force and coercion) from both natural and human resources. The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital.

Anti-socialist propaganda is based upon four basic presuppositions:

(1) that capitalism equals freedom; or, at the very least, is the only alternative,

(2) that capitalism naturally produces "winners" and "losers,"

(3) that capitalism is as meritocratic as possible, and thus everyone has an equal opportunity to become a "winner" or "loser," and your individual outcome is based solely on your "hard work" or lack thereof, and

(4) that "winners" have earned their wealth through their own exceptionalism, and thus deserve it; while, in contrast, "losers" have earned their impoverishment through their own shortcomings, and thus deserve it.

These ideas are ahistorical, they rely on a theory - that human beings, as we exist today, have just appeared in our current state, and that this state and was not shaped by history, as history does not exist. With this blank-slate approach, investigation is not necessary and inquiry is not necessary. Because finding the roots of these ills is a painstaking and overwhelming process that would rather be deemed unnecessary. For the world is as it is, the systems we live in are the best we can do, and emotion and instinct are all we need when reacting to the problems placed before us. In reality, there are historical causes and effects that have created modern conditions. Wealth, land, and power are accumulated in only one fundamental way: through the murdering, maiming, coercing, stealing, robbing, or exploiting of others. There simply is no other way to amass the obscene amounts of personal wealth as have been amassed on earth. Certainly not by hard work or abstinence. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer has been the case throughout history. It's no secret that capitalism has run amok over the past centuries

Capitalism is a system of property owners and property-less workers and respective governmental systems have always used their power to keep that division intact, literally for the sake of keeping wealth with wealth, and thus, power with the powerful. The founding fathers of the United States, as wealthy landowners and aristocrats, had no intentions of swaying from this model. When constructing a unique federal system in the colonies, John Jay captured the consensus thought of the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia, proclaiming that "those who own the country ought to govern it." And, in the influential Federalist Papers, James Madison echoed this sentiment, urging that a priority for any governmental system should be to "protect the minority of the opulent (the wealthy, land-owning slave-owners) against the majority (the workers, servants, and slaves)."

No new social class came to power through the door of the American Revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class. There was nothing egalitarian about this experiment. Roughly 10 percent of the American settlers, consisting of large landholders (the landed aristocracy) and merchants (the commercial aristocracy), owned nearly half the wealth of the entire country, and held as slaves one-seventh of the country's people. The founding fathers and settlers sought to create a political and governmental system that avoided handing any meaningful sense of power or influence to the people, while also establishing a rule of law capable of protecting the extreme unequal distribution of land and wealth. A general insecurity and fear of the masses, or "the mob," was a primary motivation in the birth of the nation. The makers of the constitution had direct economic interests in establishing a strong federal government: The manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the money-lenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slave owners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds.

Whether speaking of caste systems, nobility, aristocracy, feudalism, indentured servitude, chattel slavery, or capitalism, all modern socioeconomic systems have carried one common trait: they all amount to a minority using the majority (through exploitation or displacement) as a source of wealth, and thus have enforced and maintained this causal relationship by the threat and use of physical force and coercion in order to protect their minority interests. An economic system that relies on structural unemployment (a "reserve army of labour"), mass labor exploitation, the concentration of private property via the displacement of the majority, the forced extraction of natural resources, and constant production for the sake of conspicuous consumption needs a coercive, powerful, and forceful apparatus to protect and maintain it. The capitalist state serves this need,

In 1937, investigative journalist Ferdinand Lundberg obtained tax records and other historical documents in order to expose this perpetual chain of concentrated wealth. His findings, duly titled "America's 60 Families," concluded that:

"The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth. These families are the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States, functioning discreetly under a de jure democratic form of government behind which a de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments, has gradually taken form. This de facto government is actually the government of the United States - informal, invisible, shadowy. It is the government of money in a dollar democracy."

Nothing has changed. The unequal beginnings have remained consistent through history and have been maintained through a governmental system designed to protect them. From chattel slavery to wage slavery each epoch has continued seamlessly by constantly replacing and rebranding forms of human exploitation - peasant, servant, slave, tenant, labourer - as sources of concentrated wealth. Humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force. The world's problems are the result of capitalism. It is working exactly as it is supposed to work, intensifying as time goes on. Wealth and greed continue to rule the day and the wealthy are unapologetic.

62 individuals have been allowed to amass the same amount of wealth as 3.6 billion people combined. As of 2010, " the top 1% of US households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.1%."

“In virtue of this monstrous system, the children of the worker, on entering life, find no fields which they may till, no machine which they may tend, no mine in which they may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what they will produce to a master. They must sell their labour for a scant and uncertain wage." - Kropotkin in ‘The Conquest of Bread’

The basic mechanisms of capitalism is the relationship between capital and labor. No matter what argument one may make in support of capitalism, this fundamental relationship can never be denied. Everything from entrepreneurship to small, family-owned businesses to corporate conglomerates must rely on this foundational interaction inherent to this economic system. Whether branded as "crony-capitalism," "corporate-capitalism," "unfettered-capitalism" or any one of the many monikers used to distract from its inherent flaws and contradictions, proponents can't deny its lifeblood - its need to exploit labor. And they can't deny the fundamental way in which it exploits labor - by utilizing property as a social relationship. It is in this relationship where masses of human beings are commodified, essentially transformed into machines, and forced to work so they may create wealth for those who employ them. This fundamental aspect of capitalism is not debatable. It is explained by Marx in Capital, Volume One:

 "As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital."

The use of private property as a way to exploit others is unique to capitalism. For example, in contrast to feudalism, capitalists only allow workers access to their property during times when said workers are laboring to create wealth for said owners. In feudal times peasants were allowed to live on this land, and even use it as a means to sustain themselves and their families, as long as this personal activity was done after the lord's work had been completed. Now, with capitalism, workers "clock in," proceed to labor for a specified amount of time in exchange for a fraction of the wealth they create, "clock off," and then are left to find their own means of housing, food, clothing, and basic sustenance with only the wage they receive. This latter task has proven to be difficult for a majority of the world's population for the past number of centuries, even in so-called industrialized nations, which is why welfare states have become prominent as a means to facilitate the mass exploitation of the working class. Capitalists, and their governments learned long ago that workers must be able to survive, if only barely so that they may continue to labor and consume.

The unnatural and unequal distribution of power among humanity can be understood by simply imagining the start of any such society, where all would have equal footing, equal rights, equitable futures, and the basic will to satisfy needs (without taking that will away from others). However, if and when a member of that community decides to take more than they need, they immediately create a scenario where others will inevitably go without, be subjected to an exploitative social relationship, and/or rely on the illegitimate landowner for basic needs (in the form of some sort of exchange). Those who own property exploit those who do not. This is because those who do not own have to pay or sell their labor to those who do own in order to get access to the resources they need to live and work (such as workplaces, machinery, land, credit, housing, and products under patents).

And because of this inherently exploitative and dehumanizing labor process found under capitalism, the state has been needed to act on behalf of those who accumulate the illegitimate wealth from this process. Without the state, this unequal social arrangement - where the majority is essentially born into bondage - would not survive. In every system of class exploitation, a ruling class controls access to the means of production in order to extract tribute from labor. Capitalism is no exception.

Jean-Jacque Rousseau, in his 1755 ‘Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men,’ wrote:

"The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.' "

The wealthy few have stolen from the world; and have enslaved, impoverished, and indebted the rest of us (over 7 billion people) in the process. They have no right to their wealth. It belongs to us - it belongs to global society, not so we can all live extravagant luxury lifestyles, but rather so we can satisfy the most basic of human rights and needs - food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education - and thus carry on our lives as productive and creative human beings. Imposing new forms of taxation is a pathetic compromise. Reforms and regulations have tried and failed. Expecting representatives from the ruling class (who are directly employed and controlled by the owning class) with hopes of them voting away their own wealth has been proven to be a perpetual act in futility. The only just solution is to re-appropriate the stolen wealth; to end the capitalist system; to allow human beings the dignity and self-determination they deserve and to expropriate the expropriators once and for all. Righting centuries of wrongs is not "theft," it's social justice.

Adapted and abridged from an article by Colin Jenkins of the Hampton Institution. Full article can be found here.

Socialism will not fall from the skies.

Elections bring a renewed interest in politics. For at least a moment, it is a time to reflect on deep issues and concerns. However, beneath all of the political discussions lies an uncomfortable and overwhelming truth: Nearly all of our problems are rooted in the massively unequal ownership of land, wealth, and power. These problems are rooted in the majority of the planet's population being stripped of its ability to satisfy the most basic of human needs. This predicament is far from natural and is the product of centuries of political and economic policy carried out by a minuscule section of the world's people. If we are to ever establish a free and just society, mass expropriation of personal wealth and property will be a necessity. In other words, the few dozens of families who have amassed personal riches equal to half the world must be forced to surrender this wealth. This is a harsh and discomforting truth, indeed. But it is an undeniable truth. It is a truth that we must recognise. It is a truth that, despite being conditioned to resist, we must embrace if we are to construct a just world for all. After centuries upon centuries of being subjected to extreme hierarchical systems - from monarchies to feudalism to capitalism - we are on the precipice of making a final choice: economic justice through the mass expropriation of the capitalist class or continual wage-slavery.

Make no mistake, expropriation is not theft. It is not the confiscation of "hard-earned" money. It is not the stealing of private property. It is, rather, the restoration of massive amounts of land and wealth that have been built on the back of stolen natural resources, human enslavement, and coerced labor, and amassed over a number of centuries by a small privileged minority. This wealth, that has been falsely justified by a vast array of courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers, all of whom have been created to protect the interests of the ruling classes. Before we can take collective action, we must free our mental bondage (believing wealth and private property have been earned by those who monopolize it; and, thus, should be respected, revered, and even sought after), open our minds, study and understand history, and recognize this illegitimacy. With this understanding, we can move beyond the futile process of trying to reform systems that are rotted from the core and move forward on deconstructing this formidable autocracy and plutocracy.

Socialism is the system under which classes and exploitation are abolished for good and the differences between town and country and between manual and mental labour no longer exist. With socialism people are not forced to obey the division of labour as slaves, work no longer becomes a means of making a living, and the people will perform their social duties without any special coercive apparatus for the public good.  To eliminate the old society and build a brand-new social system is a great cause.

The basic cause of capitalist ills are the right to private property, the right to exploit, the right to rob, the right to cause crises, the right to compete, and cause wars by the lords of capital who herd people into factories and offices. Our choice is between two worlds, a world of exploitation, social injustice, chronic insecurity, economic crisis, and recurring wars ... and a world of proper economic planning, progressively increasing living standards, prosperity, and peace.

Socialism will not fall from the skies. Socialism can be realised only as the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. Every attempt to find another way, by supporting the capitalists, by conciliating them, by collaborating with them, in peace or in war, has led not toward the socialist goal but to defeat and disaster for the workers.

Socialists are not out to create a bloody insurrection. Socialists strive for the improvement of the conditions of the people. Our understanding of society teaches us that that improvement can only be attained by changing basic social relations, by a shift in ownership and control from the few to the many in an all-embracing socialisation - the elimination of the private ownership of the entire means of production - socialism. The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. And in the work of abolishing it, we all will co-operate together. We will work together so that we may enjoy together. Socialism, real socialism, is the only alternative to capitalism; and it is worth fighting for. If society is to change in a socialist direction and if capitalism is to be replaced by socialism, the source of that change must be the fight against the exploitative society by the exploited people themselves. Socialism is, and must always be a revolutionary idea. Unless it means the transfer of economic power from a small, greedy and irresponsible elite to the democratic control of the majority it means nothing. Socialism means nothing unless it means taking control of society from below. There has never been a time when real socialism is more relevant.

The Socialist Party is anxious that the interests of the workers as a class shall come before all other interests, either individual or sectional. The purpose of the Socialist Party is to gather these conscious workers together, to organise them, so that they can actively agitate and pursue the aim of achieving socialism. The object of the Socialist Party is the overthrow of capitalism, the emancipation of the workers from their oppressors and exploiters, and the establishment of the socialist commonwealth.

Being a footballer - it is just a job

Kevin Thomson played for Hibernian, Rangers, Middlesbrough and Dundee and has represented Scotland. He began his career with Hibernian before joining Rangers in 2007 for a £2m transfer fee. Middlesbrough signed Thomson for a fee of £2m in July 2010.

At 14-years of age, Thomson thought about jacking in football altogether after he earned a move to Coventry City. "Things didn't work out for me at Coventry," he recalls. "I felt I had a real chance to make it, but I hated it. It was such a hard environment for a young boy being away from home…When I came back up the road I'd lost my love for the game and felt being around my mates was more important. I had three or four months when I wasn't interested in football. I enjoyed the freedom of playing with my mates with no pressure," he says. "At that point, I wasn't interested in being a professional footballer."

Upon making his life-changing move to Rangers, Thomson was roundly derided by the Hibs faithful for selling his soul to the devil. However, while acknowledging their reasons for feeling betrayed, Thomson insists supporters need to understand that footballers are like everyone else in the sense that when money talks, you've got to listen. 

"Fans will only have read bits and pieces about what went on, so I understand why a lot of them dislike me. If I was a Hibs fan paying my money and a player signed for Rangers I would want them to fail as well, so I totally understand the fans' point of view. But I think all fans need to realise that in any walk of life if you can get ten times your salary elsewhere, then there's no way you'll stay where you are. The argument that a footballer shouldn't be influenced by money is just stupid. If you are offered better money and better opportunities elsewhere, why are you going to stay at a club just because you support them? I know there's a lot of Hibs fans that would say they'd play for Hibs for nothing, but let's not beat about the bush - for footballers it's a job first and foremost…If you've no desire to go from Hibs to a bigger club and then another bigger club, what's the point of playing football?”

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/kevin-thomson-i-ve-never-lost-my-love-for-hibs-1-1702268

We aim for a new society – The Socialist Commonwealth.

There are just two classes in this world. One owns tools it cannot use, and the other uses tools it does not own. The capitalists have the tools, which they cannot use. Working people have not the tools, without which they cannot live. Socialism comes because nothing else can come. The competitive system has become disastrous; it was useful, for it paved the way to the socialist commonwealth. The Socialist Party’s goal is to organise the large working mass in the whole world for the overthrow of capitalism, the emancipation of the toilers from oppression and exploitation and the establishment of the socialist commonwealth. It shall carry out a wide agitation and propaganda of the principles of social revolution for the purpose of overthrowing the capitalist system.

The Socialist Party stands for the socialist cooperative commonwealth. The only issue for the working class is the abolition of the wage system and to rescue themselves from their commodity status in modern society. Knowledge and experience have demonstrated that no reform under capitalism can be of any benefit to the working class as a whole. The revolutionary spirit seeks to make changes as great as can effectively be made, the reforming spirit seeks to make changes as little as can effectively be made. History is a chronicle of the slavery of the working class in many forms -chattel slavery, serfdom, wage-slavery. At various periods one group of exploiters has wrested the power from another—kings from priests, barons from kings, merchants from barons, plutocrats from them all; but always the workers have toiled, and always the product of their labour has been taken from them. Capitalism can no longer satisfy even their most elementary daily needs. Many attempts have been made by the workers to overthrow their exploiters, and to enjoy the fruits of their labour, in the words of John Ball, “without money and without price.” Today the workers are becoming conscious of their power and ability to win the world. When the working class heaves its giant shoulders like Atlas , the entire superstructure of Capitalism cracks and falls in ruins. Socialism is the hope of the whole working class. A classless socialist commonwealth cannot be attained without the overthrow of the rule of capitalism. To accomplish this aim is the mission of the working class.

Under state-capitalism the important industrial plants, the means of transport, and trading belong to the State. In the hands of the government, they are run on a profit basis. Thus enormous power is concentrated in the hands of the government. A powerful bureaucratic machine springs up ready to crush the individual citizen. The State is everybody’s employer, everybody’s landlord, everybody’s tradesman. The individual citizen finds himself completely at the mercy of the State. State capitalism, therefore, always develops strong tendencies towards dictatorship. Workers need to stand together against the worldwide system of oppression and exploitation that is capitalism.

Socialists often hear the comment that "Socialism is a good idea but it’s not practical." But today it’s becoming more apparent than ever that it is the present system — capitalism — that is impractical and unworkable. The quality of life is deteriorating. Reforms will not change the condition of working people. Working people are moving into action in defense of their rights and everywhere there is a searching for a solution to the problems confronting working people. We, in the Socialist Party, stands for a socialist society: where ownership and control of the means of production are taken out of the hands of the tiny minority of capitalists and placed in the hands of the majority — the workers. The capitalist system is run for the profits of the few, not the needs of the majority.

Working people can be educated to socialism, but they cannot be driven, lured, or bulldozed into it. The socialist conception of the world process is not cataclysmic. Socialists have come to build, not to destroy. For in this way alone shall the world be freed forever from war and oppression, from hunger and ignorance. Capitalism — the rule of business — must be abolished. The needs of working people can only be met by creating a planned economy, where ownership and control of production and distribution are taken from the tiny minority of capitalists and placed in the hands of the working people, to be run democratically. When the vast resources available to us are used to serve the needs of all instead of the profits of the few then the way will be opened for unparalleled growth in culture, freedom and the development of every individual. Such a society is worth fighting for. Capitalism has had its day and is doomed. Socialism is dawning.

The ruling class has no use for us because we know them, and they know we know them. We did not begin this class struggle, as others charge, but we are going to end it for others.

The problem is not Trident, it's capitalist wars

Anti-Trident demonstrations are taking place across Scotland ahead of a House of Commons vote on whether to renew Britain's nuclear deterrent. Thousands of people are attending 36 protests in cities and towns including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness and Dumfries. The Scottish Scrap Trident Coalition, which organised the rallies, said about 7,000 people had attended. A demonstration at the Mound in Edinburgh attracted about 500 peoplewhile there was a rally at Buchanan Street's steps in Glasgow. Smaller rallies also took place outside Scotland's cities, including Cromarty in the Highlands and the North Ayrshire town of Largs, where about 50 people attended.

Getting rid of Trident makes barely a dent in the global killing machine fuelled by capitalism's wars over our bosses' markets and resources. Long ago at the corner of Sauchiehall Street, stalwarts of the Socialist Party of Great Britain stood to greet a CND march with a huge banner and slogan which read: "This demonstration is useless—You must first destroy capitalism." Sad but true, nevertheless.

If you are opposed to war and all that it represents—as any right thinking person should be—you will advocate policies and take actions which will make war impossible, by removing its causes. That is, you will seek to transform society in the interests of human beings as a whole, without restriction to so-called race, nationality or gender, by establishing socialism in place of capitalism. To object to some weapons which might be used in wars, whilst implicitly tolerating others—is to accept the inevitability of war, and the social system which underpins it. Your efforts, because they oppose only certain kinds of war, and not war itself, serve, whether intentionally or otherwise, to make war more likely. It makes the likelihood of enlightenment and desirable change the more difficult. However concerned you may feel about the welfare of the human race, your actions betray the very constituency you claim to serve.  Campaigning against nuclear weapons is an irrelevance. Nuclear weapons are unlikely to be used in Syria, or Iraq, or South Sudan, or any of the other myriad "trouble spots" across the globe. Tens of millions of people have been killed since the end of World War II, and not a nuclear weapon fired in action. Are you unconcerned about such matters? By what contorted logic does "manner of death" come to mean more to you than "fact of death"?

We accept that the protestors were well motivated: that to use a cliché, "they care". But actions if they are to be effective require more, to be effective it must be appropriate. If you really care you will want to campaign for an absence of nuclear weapons and war—in a word, for socialism. What is needed is to go beyond a moral outcry and to attack the system which creates war. Good intentions will not solve the problem of war but there is a revolutionary alternative: "You must first destroy capitalism".

Corrupt Scotland

Off-the-shelf Scottish firms are being used for money-laundering and tax evasion in the former Soviet Union. Shell firms - advertised as "Scottish zero-tax offshore companies" - are being marketed across the European Union complete with official UK Government documentation that enables their owners to open bank accounts. Concerns have been growing for more than a year over controversial limited partnerships - a unique Scottish corporate structure used in the elaborate looting of $1bn from Moldovan banks in 2014. The use of an SLP and a bank account in an EU country allows former Soviet "investors" the ability to bypass so-called blacklisted tax havens. Several former USSR states have banned direct contact with offshore zones. However, an SLP enables them to deal indirectly with jurisdictions such as Belize and Panama. That is because SLPs while registered in Scotland are often owned by "members", or partners, in the Caribbean. So the SLP is used to provide a financial bridge between the former Soviet Union and tax havens by, nominally, provided a corporate based in the respectable European Union jurisdiction. That SLP then opens doors to a bank account in another EU jurisdiction. However, the SLP does not need to publish financial accounts if it does not business in Scotland, meaning it effectively enjoys the secrecy and tax advantages of its offshore parent companies.

At least a dozen agencies in Latvia, Ukraine and Russia are selling Scottish limited partnerships (SLPs) along with Certificates of Good Standing, essentially references from Britain's Companies House confirming that the SLPs are bona fide. Such papers are then used to secure bank accounts in, say, Riga, Latvia, or Nicosia, Cyprus. Russian-language adverts seen by The Herald show such certificates being offered for a price of 350 euros - on top of one-off payments of 1700 euros for an off-the-shelf SLP, typically registered in a virtual office or private flat somewhere in Scotland.

Green MSP Andy Wightman WHO has campaigned for reform of SLPs, said: "These revelations are further proof that Scottish Limited Partnerships are now the vehicle of choice for a growing number of criminal enterprises. The ease with which they can be registered and exploited for nefarious purposes such as money-laundering emphasises how urgently the Scottish and UK governments should be dealing with this issue."

Socialism - A sustainable co-operative commonwealth

To substitute common, for private, ownership of the means of production and abolishing the present system of production means substituting production for use for production for sale that is the economic development the Socialist Party urges. The Socialist Party’s objective is the social or co-operative production for the satisfaction of the wants of a commonwealth. Mankind has always been a social being, as far back as we can trace ourselves. Until the present system of production (production for sale) was developed, co-operative production for common use was the norm.

If the modern state nationalises certain industries, it does not do so for the purpose of restricting capitalist exploitation, but for the purpose of protecting the capitalist system and establishing it upon a firmer basis, or for the purpose of itself taking a hand in the exploitation of labour, increasing its own revenues. As an exploiter of labour, the state is superior to any private capitalist. Besides the economic power of the capitalists, it can bring to bear its political power.  The state has never carried on the nationalising of industries further than the interests of the ruling classes demand, nor will it ever go further than that. Nationalisation will never be carried so far as to injure the capitalists and landlords or to restrict their opportunities for exploiting the proletariat. The state will not cease to be a capitalist institution. The Socialist Party has set to call the working-class to conquer the political power to the end that and to establish a self-sustainable co-operative commonwealth.

The fact remains that none of the reformist parties has so well-marked and clear an aim as the Socialist Party. It may, indeed, be questioned whether the other political parties have any aims at all. They all hold to the existing order, although they all see that it is untenable and unendurable. Their manifestoes contain nothing except a few little piecemeal palliatives by which they hope and promise to make the untenable, tenable and the unendurable, endurable. The Socialist Party, on the contrary, does not build on hopes and promises, but upon the unalterable necessity of social progress. All other political parties live only in the present, from hand to mouth; the Socialist party is the only one which has a definite aim for the future, the only one with a consistent purpose. Those who oppose the Socialist Party declare that the co-operative commonwealth cannot be considered practicable and cannot be the object of the endeavors until the plan is presented to the world in a perfected form, and has been tested and found feasible. They start with the notion that “human nature” is unchangeable. Socialists are told that they must come out with their plan of a future socialist society; if they refuse, it is a sign that they themselves have not much confidence in it. The predictions and blueprints can at best show that the socialist commonwealth is not impossible and they are bound to be defective. They can never cover all the details and minutia of social life; they will always leave some loophole through which critics can object to.

The capitalist social system has run its course; its dissolution is now only a question of time. The substitution of a new social order for the existing one is no longer simply desirable, it has become inevitable. Socialism is not only to be possible, but to be the only thing possible. If indeed the socialist commonwealth were an impossibility, then mankind’s civilization will relapse into barbarism. As things stand today we must move forward into socialism. Working people live in such conditions that, increasingly, they realise that the only way out of their grave situation lies through socialism. Thus, increasingly favourable conditions are being created for bringing them into the active struggle for socialism.

The next form of human society is called socialism

Our goal is a socialist world, a new social order based on common ownership of our resources and industry, cooperation, production for use and genuine democracy. Only socialism can turn the boundless potential of the people and their resources to the creation of a world free from tyranny, greed, poverty and exploitation. Business corporations, of a scope and size unimaginable to previous generations, treat the entire planet as their domain. They are a law unto themselves, free to roam the globe in search of cheaper labour, more exploitable resources, more pliant governments and greater profits. These empires now hold the power of life and death over every region and industry across the planet. By their dictates, our resources are plundered. Workers are their pawns in a global game of mergers, lay-offs, and relocations. These conglomerates have robbed us of our wealth and of the very power to determine our own future. Incapable of turning their technology and organisation to the needs of people, world-wide suffering and hunger are the legacies of these profiteers. The capitalist system of production, under the rule of which we live, is the production of commodities for profit instead of for use for the private gain of those who own and control the tools and means of production and distribution. Out of this system of production and sale for profit springs all the evils of misery, want, and poverty that, as a deadly menace, now confronts civilisation. The socialist option is the only alternative. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society.

The Socialist Party is the party of the dispossessed and oppressed struggling to build a new world. Under capitalism, labour is a commodity. Workers are used as replaceable parts, extensions of machines—as long as they provide dividends. Employers use their power of ownership to devastate the lives of workers. Unions, despite courageous efforts, are unable to eliminate even the worst abuses of the employers’ power. The Socialist Party believes in the ability of working-people to own and manage their own productive institutions democratically. Human power and natural forces are wasted by this system, which makes “profit” the only object in business. Science and invention are diverted from their humane purposes and made instruments for the enslavement of men, women and children.

Humanity faces the danger of complete destruction. With the destruction of the environment and the consequences of climate change there has never come to socialism so plain an opportunity as that now being offered. We have reached the psychological moment when socialists may define the issues of life and death for the world. There is only one power which can save it – the power of the people. Civilisation hovers at the edge of an abyss. Socialism is the salvation. The only power that can save humanity from the peril of barbarism is the working class. It must free itself of all dependence on the possessing classes. It must cease all collaboration with the exploiters and embark on the road of class struggle, the road of socialist victory. The resources of the world must pass into the possession of working humanity. All other problems, the problems of nationality and of race and colour will be solved once society is freed from exploitation and class divisions. Every step taken will be in the direction of the co-operative commonwealth, since there is no difficulty whatever in creating wealth far in excess of our requirements, by the scientific organisation and application of the right labour of all to the satisfaction of our social needs. The motto, “From each according to ability, to each according to needs,” will cease to be an aspiration and become a reality. The problems of society will no longer be affected in any way by money values. Labour will be devoted to this or that by the desires of the community. Work that, after all possible amelioration, remains dangerous or difficult will be shared by all of the community who are fit, instead of being relegated to a class. The standard of life for each and all will be far higher than anything ever yet attained or suggested. The best possible conditions will be so obviously to the general benefit that the elevation of the level of society will be the aim of each individual as of the whole community.

On with the class war

The Socialist Party aims to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social system from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine economic equality will be possible. The aim of the Socialist Party is the establishment by democratic means of a cooperative commonwealth in which the supplying of human needs and enrichment of human life shall be the primary purpose of our society. the ownership of the world by a small propertied class is driving the people of this planet swiftly along the path to perdition. The hope of humanity and the path to progress lies in the revolt of the wage-earners against the propertied class, the seizure of political power from the propertied class, and the seizure of the land and the means of production from the propertied class. The capture of political and economic power constitute the social revolution. This great change means that the common people (the workers) will own the world in common, produce wealth in common, possess in common all wealth produced, and by common agreement distribute that wealth to the common advantage.

Capitalism fosters competition, strife, and bloodshed. In its path to mayhem hundreds of millions of helpless people are being crushed by a growing poverty. The present order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty, it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. In spite of great economic advancement, large sections of people do not benefit from the increased wealth produced. Great wealth and economic power continue to be concentrated in the hands of  relatively few capitalists and corporations. The gap between those at the bottom and those at the top of the economic ladder has grown. Thousands still live in want and insecurity. Slums and inadequate housing condemn many families to a cheerless life. Older citizens exist on pensions far too low for health and dignity. Many too young to qualify for pensions are rejected by industry as too old for employment and face the future without hope. Many in serious ill-health cannot afford the hospital and medical care they need. Educational institutions have been starved for funds and, even in days of prosperity, only a small proportion of young men and women who could benefit from technical and higher education can afford it.

The growing concentration of corporate wealth has resulted in a virtual economic dictatorship by a privileged few.  Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests, the majority are habitually sacrificed. When private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic depression, in which the common man's normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialized economy in which our natural resources and means of production and distribution are commonly owned, collectively controlled and operated by the people. The new social order at which we aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed out by a system of regimentation. What we seek is a proper collective organization of our economic resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every person.

The world’s productive capacity is not fully utilized. Its use is governed by the dictates of private economic power and by considerations of, private profit. Similarly, the scramble for profit has wasted and despoiled our rich resources of soil, water, forest, and minerals. This lack of social planning results in a waste of our human as well as our natural resources. Our human resources are wasted through social and economic conditions which stunt human growth. Industry can and should be so operated as to enable people to use fully their talents and skills. Such an economy will yield the maximum opportunities for individual development and the maximum of goods and services for the satisfaction of human needs. Unprecedented scientific and technological progress have brought us to the threshold of an industrial revolution. Opportunities for enriching the standard of life are greater than ever. However, unless a n careful study is given to the many problems which will arise and unless there is intelligent planning to meet them, the evils of the past will be multiplied in the future. The technological changes will produce even greater concentrations of wealth and power and will cause widespread distress through unemployment and the displacement of populations. Economic expansion accompanied by widespread suffering and injustice is not desirable. Our society must be built upon a relationship based on mutual respect where everyone will have a sense of worth and belonging.  

We do not believe in change by violence. This social and economic transformation can be brought about by political action and through elections. The Socialist Party aims at political power in order to put an end to this capitalist domination of our political life. It is a democratic movement. It appeals for support to all who believe that the time has come for a far-reaching reconstruction of our economic and political institutions and who are willing to work together. The hungry, oppressed and underprivileged of the world must know democracy not as a smug slogan but as a way of life which sees the world as one whole, and which recognizes the right of every person to the highest available standard of living. The Socialist Party will not rest content until every person on this planet is able to enjoy equality and freedom, a sense of human dignity, and an opportunity to live a rich and meaningful life as a citizen of a free and peaceful world. This is the cooperative commonwealth which the Socialist Party invites fellow workers to build.

The present structure of society, capitalism, based on the exploitation of the working class and the division of the spoils. Capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the ever-growing majority of people. It has necessitated the adoption of socialism, the common ownership of the means of production for the collective good and welfare. The Socialist Party declares its object to be the organization of the working class into a political party to conquer the public powers now controlled by capitalists and the abolition of wage slavery by the establishment of a system of cooperative industry, based upon the social or common ownership of the means of production and distribution, to be administered by society in the mutual interest of all its members, and the complete emancipation of the socially useful classes from the domination of capitalism. The Socialist Party is not a party of patchwork reform, nor a party of sham revolutionary phrases, but operating on a policy of education. We fight for nothing short socialism, because we believe that nothing short of that will save the workers. To us the fight for socialism is the life and soul of the working-class movement and help to bring to the surface the fundamental antagonism of the classes when the workers will be able to control production and distribution by socially owning the great agents of production. What our fellow workers have to learn is that the socialists are in the end the only practical men and women, because the only real practical work for the people is the transformation of capitalism into socialism. Let us cast doubts aside and proceed heartily than ever into the fight, knowing that not many years will have to pass before the world’s socialist movement will prevail.

The safety of society rests not in the hands of a few leaders or party heroes, but in the growing mass of workers becoming conscious of the need for a new society. The more quantitative change on our side, the more will become qualitative, it becomes. In other words, newer and clearer views will come with numbers, and the moment will come when the workers will challenge capitalism to the last fight and win through to the world society of a united human race, producing each for all and all for each. The workers are linking up all over the world, are preparing for the final clash of the class war.

On with the fight, comrades!

Many workers now understand that the capitalist system fails to provide for the needs of the vast majority of the human race and that it must be overthrown before the people can have freedom. But there is considerable difference of opinions as to the means by which this can be accomplished. Some advocate the ballot, or parliamentary action; some armed insurrection and some industrial action.

The advocates of armed insurrection’s reasoning is superficial. They deal with effects, not causes. The big capitalists who control industry are the real government, and the state is only a committee to represent their interests. Capitalism means a state of society in which production is carried on for profit. This necessitates control of industry by capitalists. The state is only an effect of capitalism. Overthrowing of the state would only mean a political revolution which could be of no lasting benefit to the workers. Overthrowing of capitalism would mean a social revolution, a complete change in the methods by which production and distribution are carried on. It would mean production for use instead of for profit. This can only be accomplished by the workers taking control of industry out of the hands of capitalists and running it for themselves.

Common Ownership Not Public Ownership

Common ownership not public ownership is the aim of the Socialist Party. Public ownership has a nice sound to it but it is simply another expression for nationalisation (or municipalisation) – state ownership. The goal is to bring about collective ownership of the means of production on behalf of the capitalist class instead of direct ownership by individual groups within that class as to-day. That is, organising the whole of production on a similar system to that of the Post Office once was and similar state-owned concerns. Even though nationalisation is sometimes called “public ownership”, it is not really ownership by “the public”, i.e. the community, i.e. all of us, but only ownership by the state, i.e. by the minority whose interests it serves. Nationalisation, as the experience of the nationalised industries since 1945 shows, is really state capitalism with the employees still needing trade unions to try to get better pay and working conditions from their employer.

There can be quite easily a gradual change from private to state property but there cannot be a gradual change from private to common ownership. The latter change is a fundamental change, in which one form excludes the other. In a modern state private and common ownership cannot exist side by side as the Bolsheviks found to their cost. It can only be all or nothing.  Nevertheless, many on the left are apostles of public ownership (although these days they are always careful to add the caveat under workers control). Nor is it unknown for the Tories to take businesses under the government’s wing for the work of repairing capitalism for the capitalists. Sections of the capitalist class teetering on the edge of bankruptcy are only too happy when government pull their chestnuts out of the fire for them. The post-war Labour government did nationalise coal, the railways, gas, water and electricity but mainly in order to ensure that the rest of private industry got these provided in a more efficient and subsidised way.

 No stone is left unturned to make efficient a lame duck and then return it good as new back to the private sector. People who are prepared to tolerate and support capitalist ownership (whether private or “public”) are full of plans. They have to be. The problems created by capitalism are so numerous that those engaged in its administration spend their time necessarily in endeavouring to solve them and in finding ways and means of reconciling the antagonistic interests involved. Socialists, on the other hand, recognise that the most fundamental antagonism of all, that between the workers and the capitalists as classes, can find no solution in any form of capitalist ownership. What can it matter to the workers whether they are exploited by a joint-stock company, a public utility corporation set up by a Labour government, or by a government department with the minister in charge? People also often overlook that the Miners’ Strike was a strike against an industry “owned” by the nation.

Businessmen at present prefer, or pretend, to believe along with members of the Labour Party, that socialism means the same thing as nationalisation. But nationalisation is a purely capitalist reform. Its chief object is to equalise the conditions of exploitation for capitalist competitors. The workers gain little by nationalisation. Their status is unchanged. The more capitalism is changed in detail the more it remains  basically the same—a system resting on the exploitation of the working class. The capitalists still control the means of wealth production and guarantee the profits to themselves. They still compel the workers to sell their energy for wages that barely cover the cost of living. The Left should remind themselves of the thousands of workers in the past, in the nationalised coal, steel and railway industries who had to go on strike in an attempt to protect their living standards, and indeed of the thousands of these workers who were eventually sacked, just as would have happened under private ownership. That is the way capitalism works, whether it is run privately or by the state.

Only common ownership of the means of living can abolish this conflict of interests and it is our undertaking to make this plain to fellow-workers. The reason for government nationalisation of certain industries in countries like Britain where capitalism is operated under what is referred to as a mixed economy, is not for the purpose of providing a better social service, as such, but to ensure that the surplus-value-producing machinery of the whole national capitalist class continues to exploit the working class with the maximum possible efficiency. Common ownership is unthinkable to the capitalist class, something utterly impracticable and unjustifiable. To a class that has been in possession for generations, the idea of common ownership is abhorrent. To-day they will not even admit the possibility of it. When they are forced to recognise it as an alternative to their own system, they will use all the forces at their disposal to thwart its advance.

The employers are full of promises of better things for those whom they exploit. They will, as Tolstoy said, do everything for the workers except get off their backs. The workers, therefore, must cast off the parasite-class for themselves. Nationalisation was a technocratic act, placing industries under the control of managers thought better capable of running them than their predecessors, though they were often the same persons.

Karl Marx used the word “association” to indicate the society he envisaged as replacing capitalism. And this term is useful in terms of emphasising how the members of that society will freely enter into production relations with each other to produce social wealth.

The greatest strength of the Socialist Party is our ideas and our thinking. The aim of the Socialist Party is to convince our fellow workers that the overall and permanent solutions to all the economic problems we endure require a revolution to overthrow capitalism. We treat the Labour Party with the disdain it deserves. Do not waste efforts over it, and, certainly, do not attempt to resurrect it as a “true” labour party. Do we really want to re-run the setback and disillusionment and betrayal of the last 100 years? Let it wither on the vine. Let its decline be terminal.

We have a future to gain. Workers must do for themselves: we are many, they are few. There are but two classes and class is everything. Without clarity about it, we do not know who we are or what we are doing. We are at war against the capitalist enemy. The ruling class only has apparent strength due largely to our apathy and passivity; our ignorance and lack of activity. The Socialist Party stands firmly on the bed-rock of the class struggle, and; declares, that so long as the means of production are in the hands of a numerically small class, the workers will be forced to sell their labour-power to them for a bare subsistence wage. In recognising that there never can be anything in common between the employing class and the working class, the Socialist Party strives to instil into the workers’ minds class solidarity on the economic and political fields. It is also the duty of socialists to teach the solidarity of the interests of the working class, regardless of the race that some section of the class happens to belong to. Let’s build a great socialist movement. 

Welfare isn't working

Hungry families are seeking help from Citizens Advice Bureau after being without food for several days, while others are unable to afford basics such as electricity or gas, a damning report into the state of poverty in Scotland has revealed. Citizens Advice Scotland warned that the state support network is failing vulnerable people, forcing them into extreme poverty.

Experts say that recent changes to the social security system, benefit rates not keeping pace with inflation, low pay, insecure work and rising costs of living have all contributed to people’s decreasing resilience to income shocks. John Finch, right, an advisor at the Citizens Advice Bureau in Leith, said he had witnessed a notable increase in people living in dire conditions before seeking help.

Susan McPhee, head of policy and public affairs at Citizens Advice Scotland, warned that the social security system is “simply not working” for vulnerable people.

The social security system is no longer providing an effective safety net for Scots in poverty and in many cases is actually causing people to become destitute. Huge numbers of inquiries at Citizen's Advice Bureaux from people in need of foodbanks and hardship payments prove the system is failing. Almost two thirds of clients surveyed said periods without income had forced them to cut down on gas and electricity use (63 per cent), and 71 per cent said they went without food. More than half (56 per cent) said money worries were affecting their physical health and 64 per cent said such worries affected their mental health.

Now’s the Day and Now’s the Hour

The Socialist Party seeks to inaugurate a system of industrial democracy in place of capitalist autocracy and control to replace our current system of self-destructive capitalism. Capitalism has outgrown its usefulness and must be supplanted by a system of greater stability. Capitalism knows only profit, socialism knows only the exploitation by which profit is possible. To gain control of production and distribution for the benefit of mankind instead of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party. Socialism is not getting more wages, lesser hours and better conditions but achieving social power. Socialism is the means to insure for workers their own free development and their own liberation. Socialism is non-bureaucratic. It is non-autocratic. It is an industrial democracy, by, for and of the workers, first, last and all the time.

State-capitalism (misleadingly designated as state-socialism) emphasises the fact of the state being an economic agency of the ruling class,  the government and ruling class, become one and indivisible. Socialism eliminates the state. Socialism rejects state-capitalism as a phase of socialism or a transition towards it. State-Capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism. State-capitalism accentuates and sharpens class divisions. State-capitalism regulates and directs capital and labour; it seeks to realise peace between the classes, of the abolition (or at least suspension,) of the class struggle. State-capitalism is fundamentally and necessarily undemocratic; it cannot be democratised, it must be abolished by revolution.

Naturally, the coming of a socialist society would call for the adoption of new methods of running industry. The point to be decided is: How shall the workers organize? This question is of supreme importance. If the workers allow themselves to be misled and tricked into organizing in a way that will not only fail to free them from wage-slavery or even to better their condition but will put them more thoroughly in the power of the industrial masters, much valuable time will be lost and discouragement and despair will result. What is needed is unity of thought and action. Far better no organization at all than a fake form which divides the workers against themselves and misleads them in the interests of the employers. Socialists will overthrow capitalism and establish in its place a system of industrial democracy. Capitalism is world-wide. It pays little attention to national boundary lines. The modern wage worker has neither property nor country. Ties of birth and sentiment which connect him or her with any particular country are slight and unimportant. It makes little difference to him or her what country he or she exists in. Socialist organisation must not confine themselves to geographical divisions or national boundary lines but must follow the world-embracing lines 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 control industry. 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 colours as thieves and parasites, and their "sacred" property as plunder. They see state and media as tools of the exploiters and they look on these institutions with contempt. They understand the identity of interests of all wage workers and realise the truth of the I. W. W. slogan: "An injury to one is an injury to all."

Socialism is merely an extension of the ideal of democracy into the economic field. At present, industry is ruled by the owners of the machinery of production and distribution, who have literally the power of life and death over the subjects. We know not what the people will do when they control the means by which they make their living, but we believe they will use them in their own interest and with a reasonable degree of intelligence. They can make it possible to banish want from the face of the Earth. They can make it possible for every family to have a home and to be immune from the fear of want for themselves and their children. They can make it possible for every child to have a good education, to be able to see the world, and to make its way without the least danger of losing out economically. They can make it possible for every woman to be free economically so that she may get along whether she marries or not. These are the ideas that the socialist cherishes.

The Socialist Party is democratic in principle. It tolerates no official autocracy within it. Officials are elected and all questions are decided by a referendum vote of all the membership. The Socialist Party is the result of the past experience of the labour movement. It has learned from the mistakes and failures of former parties. These are not mere visions but are things that may be brought into concrete form, whenever men and women shall have free access to the means with which things are produced and distributed.

Socialism — The Hope of the World

We in the Socialist Party are proud to declare that we are socialists. We represent the conception of socialism of the future. We seek a world in which the exploitation of man by man shall cease, the end of impoverishment and a world freed from the fear of war. We are never more optimistic, never more certain, never more determined to achieve the goal of socialism. When workers refuse to be divided they will be moving toward the overthrow of the whole system of social exploitation.

No member of the working class can be satisfied with his or her position in society. Their lives are made up of worry, anxiety, insecurity, and hardships. As long as the wages system continues there is the drudgery of monotonous work, the constant penny-pinching to make ends meet, and the continual necessity of learning to do without things. The tools and machinery and equipment necessary for the production of wealth must be made the common property of the workers, and must be controlled by them. To bring this about this is the object of the Socialist Party. The Socialist Part is not a political party in the sense that other parties are. It has no reform to advocate.

There exists the Labour Party, which is often considered a working-class party. The majority of its supporters are drawn from the workers, but this party fast lost any working-class spirit it ever possessed. It has never understood the capitalist system. The Labour Party thought that all that was necessary was to get into power and administer the various departments of the State. This party has been in power and no noticeable improvement has ever taken place in the condition of the workers. It has administered the various government ministries and departments very economically and efficiently in the interest of the capitalist class. This Labour Party has curtailed the right to strike. This Labour Party has fostered nationalism and race prejudice.  This Labour Party is not a working-class party and never has been. Wherever capitalism has felt weak to cope with the rising tide of the revolutionary movements of the workers, it has called to its service the politicians of the Labour Party, willing agents of the ruling class to help subdue these workers’ movements. They have earned their spurs, knighthoods and peerages in the business of betraying the best aspirations and interests of the working class. The Labour Party stand exposed as the enemies of the socialism of Marx.

Thus the Socialist Party finds itself pitted against the whole profit-making system.  We declare that there can be no compromise so long as the working class lives in want while the master class lives in luxury. We insist that there can be no peace until the workers organise as a class, take possession of the resources of the earth and the machinery of production and distribution and abolish the wage system. In other words, the workers in their collectivity must own and operate all the essential industrial and manufacturing resources. The Socialist Party reaffirms its allegiance to the principle of working-class solidarity the world over. The Socialist Party is unalterably opposed to the system of exploitation and class rule. The only struggle which would justify the workers in taking up arms is the great struggle of the working class of the world to free itself from economic oppression. In support of capitalism, we will not willingly give a single life or a single drop of blood; in support of the struggle of the workers for industrial democracy we pledge our all.

The end of poverty, war and disease will come with the establishment of common ownership and production for use and not for exchange and profit. The Socialist Party calls upon all the workers to join it in its struggle to reach this goal and thus bring into the world a new society in which peace, fraternity, and human brotherhood will be the dominant ideals. There is no time to waste, the need for abolishing capitalism is urgent.

Time to wake up.

The working class are the engine of social change. Basically if one has to work for a wage or salary in order to live, they are a part of the working class. (90-95%) If one owns or inherits, sufficient resources, investment, capital, means of producing wealth by exploiting others, they are members of the parasite capitalist class (5-10%). (We are not speaking of pensioners here.)

All wealth is created by the working class being exploited, by virtue of their necessity to work, in order to live, for a wage or salary (ration) to produce a surplus value over what they earn, which is then sold on the market to realise a profit for the parasite class. This is true whether they work by hand or by brain, in industry or in services supporting industry. Once the working class begin to see themselves as the engine for social change they will be able to usher in a new post-capitalist society of common ownership and democratic control, over the means of producing and distributing wealth, with production for use and free access for all.

The Labour Party is the liberal party. It was formed from them with some trade union support. It never was a socialist party, it stood and still stands for wage-slavery. The Labour Party is irrelevant, except as a capitalist party of business offering some piece-meal reforms. Who produces all the wealth, manages and runs capitalism from top to bottom? The working class that is who. The Labour Party doesn't have to become a party of the liberal left, it is and always has been so, under the misapprehension that capitalism can be reformed in some meaningful way. It was never a socialist party but a reformist one.

“The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England.” Tony Benn.

Corbyn/Sanders “Democratic Socialism” has never existed. You are describing reform capitalism with mixtures of state capitalism and regulated free capitalism. Those still retained waged slavery, production for sale etc. still essentially class societies with exploitation an essential component of it. Venezuela has damn all to do with socialism. It is a capitalism, with state capitalistic control of some industries and attempts to reform some of the hideous consequences of capitalism. No more socialist than Bismarck's Germany was.

Socialism/communism is a post-capitalist society which will not have any government over people but will be a commonly owned, democratic resource-based economy with decisions made locally, regionally and globally by the people themselves using recallable delegation where necessary in world bodies such as WHO. It has nothing to do with the Left wing state capitalist, Leninist nonsense of the former soviet blocs or the British state capitalist post-war nationalising reforms of capitalism, which serves as a useful straw man for capitalist politicians, to prevent workers engaging with the real case for socialism, a post -capitalist settlement of human affairs.

If you need a leader, strong or otherwise, you are a part of the problem.

" Rise, like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number!

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you:

Ye are many—they are few!" (Shelley)

We then can dissolve all governments over people and elect ourselves to administer resources in a resource based free access economy without social classes or parasitic elites. We have the World to win, a post-capitalist society to make. We can dispense with nation states and all government over people, when we have a commonly owned, production for use, free access, post-capitalist society organised upon the tenet of, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". Governments would wither away into an "administration of things", with recallable delegation where required.

Wee Matt

Come on, you champions

Today in France the final of the Euro Cup takes place involving players on salaries of hundreds of thousands a year and who are valued on the transfer market in the millions. Meanwhile, in Glasgow, the Homeless World Cup takes place where 48 men's and 16 women's teams involved. The aim of the competition is to inspire homeless people to change their lives, not to increase the coffers of bureaucrats and sponsors. 

Socialist Courier blog knows who we support. 

If homo sapiens are to survive.

Pollution is the result of the profit-motivated system we live in. And so long as that system is allowed to continue, pollution will continue.  The pollution of water, food and air is caused by the greed for profit. This could be abolished if the resources of the countries of the entire planet could be organised rationally to produce a healthy environment. It is not a technical problem as some may imagine. It is a class and political problem. While capitalism remains, the resources produced by the labour of the workers will be squandered on wasteful production methods. All the resources for a world of abundance, without pollution, disease and squalor, exist at the present time in skill, technique and science. They cannot be used for constructive purposes till the capitalist system of profit-making is overthrown. Grim reality teaches that the alternative posed by Marx of socialism or barbarism has been transformed into world socialism or annihilation. Today’s environmental problems spring from capitalism’s reckless pursuit of accumulation without regard for human welfare. The super-rich has one basic goal in life: to make more and more profits. With indifference to the quality of working class life including the environment, it might be expected that the most industrialised and profitable areas where most workers live suffer the worst pollution.

We can replace capitalism with a rational and 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. We can improve our lives and society, and we can eliminate exploitation and capitalist injustice, by overturning the capitalist system. The socialist revolution has become a historical necessity and possibility. There is no other choice today but for the working people to organise to struggle and win socialism. If the working people, and not the corporations, controlled the great resources of our society, we could improve all our lives. We could end industrial pollution and chemical dangers while still guaranteeing a decent standard of living for all. Whose is the fault that it isn’t done? The capitalist class, and all who uphold the capitalist class and their accursed social system.

The socialist revolution is the most profound of all revolutions in history. It will be perhaps the most far-reaching than any in the whole experience of mankind. The hundreds of millions of workers striking off their age-old chains of wage-slavery will construct a society of liberty and prosperity. Socialism will inaugurate a new era for the human species, the building of a new world. The overthrow of capitalism and the development of socialism will bring about the immediate or eventual solution of many great social problems. Some of these originate in capitalism, and others have plagued humanity for centuries. Among them are war, religious superstition, famine, pestilence, crime, poverty, unemployment, racism, and national chauvinism, the suppression of woman, and every form of slavery and exploitation of one class by another.

Capitalism, based upon human exploitation, stands as the great barrier to social progress. Capitalism has checked the evolution of the human race. Socialism by abolishing the capitalist system releases productive forces strong enough to provide plenty for all and it destroys the whole accompanying capitalist baggage of cultivated ignorance, strife and misery. Socialism frees humanity from the stultifying effects of the present struggle for existence and opens up before it new horizons of joys and tasks. Socialist society will carry through many profound measures such as these that will organise of the economics of the world upon a rational and planned basis, and will systematically conserve and increase of the world’s natural resources and the beautification of the world by a new and richer artistry, eliminating the crowded congested cities by the combination of the conveniences of country and urban life, and the solution of many other great problems and tasks now hardly even imagined.

The day is not so far distant when our grand-children will look back with horror upon capitalism and wonder why we tolerated it so long.

From our archives

Party News from the January and March 1952 issues of the Socialist Standard

The Organiser of Kelvingrove Branch sent the following news of Branch propaganda activity.

   “Since the middle of August, the Kelvingrove Branch has had a very successful series of outdoor meetings. Two members who previously had not shown any great ability as speakers, have, with a little change of technique, managed to hold outdoor meetings at which on only one occasion, has there been less than 100 of an audience and, on every other, the audience varied between 150 and 300. Collections and Literature sales have been good and a number of regular attenders are beginning to come around. But, best of all, the success we have had, has put new zest into the Branch as a whole. Our meetings started off with attendances of about 3 to 4 party members and quickly mounted until at the last two we could count 15 to 20 members.

To those members who have tried speaking and then given up when they did not meet with immediate success; we hope our achievement will act as encouragement to have another go. It helps a great deal if one is big enough to accept constructive criticism from fellow members and, of course, if a deaf ear can be turned to members and relatives who deplore your lack of ability.

  During the election period, with the help of three "Glasgow City" comrades, we managed to push about 2,000 Election Manifestos through an equivalent number of doors. We would have liked to have done the whole Kelvingrove constituency, but to succeed in such a venture, we would have needed more members or the Manifestoes at our disposal on an earlier date.

   By holding meetings, attending opposition party meetings and canvassing from door to door almost 20 doz. S.S. were sold, this being the total amount of S.S. ordered by City and Kelvingrove.

  Taking stock of the past couple of months’ activity, we feel pleased, and look forward to next year’s propaganda season with renewed vigour and vitality—our recent success has acted like a tonic.”

In a statement addressed to the Working Class, Kelvingrove branch states, “ You have probably bought the Socialist Standard for the first time. Much of it will seem new to you and some of its contents may need explaining when compared with what you thought was Socialism. Our canvassers will be at your door again sometime in the near future to sell you another copy of the Socialist Standard or perhaps a pamphlet. But in the meantime, why not come to our Branch meeting in St. Andrew’s Hails, Door G, Berkeley Street, and find out a little more about Socialism. There is not time to waste, the need for abolishing Capitalism is urgent. Kelvingrove Branch meets every fortnight on Mondays at the above hall. The following are the meeting dates for February: 4th, 18th, and March 3rd, 17th and 31st. Time 7.30 p.m.“ The Kelvingrove Branch are continuing with their efforts in bringing to the notice of the Kelvingrove constituency the need for Socialism. In the month of December the sales of the Socialist Standard, through canvassing, increased again to 14½ dozen copies; nearly two dozen copies of these were the November issue.

So far about one sixth of the constituency has been canvassed and the number of members engaged in the task is six. These members canvass on an average of two nights each week. As time goes on the Branch hope to encourage other members who are a little self-conscious at "going on the knocker,” to take part. In the summer it is hoped to extend the propaganda work by chalking the area with suitable slogans advertising the Socialist Standard. It is our aim to get the Party well known in the district and in time to have quite a few more members of the working class understanding Socialism and joining the Party, to work for the achievement of Socialism.