Join us in the cause of human liberation

Willing and able to work, with a family to feed and house -- but jobless? Such is the tragic plight of millions of today in a land of plenty. Why? What is wrong? Workers need a clear and candid answer to this question.

The cause of unemployment is inherent in the capitalist system of society. It is a notorious fact that tens of millions have basic needs that are unsatisfied. But under capitalism things are not produced to satisfy human needs; they are produced to be sold at a profit. When the capitalists cannot sell what the workers have produced assembly-lines are shut down, factories close, and unemployment spreads.

Every worker knows it takes only a few weeks or months of unemployment to wipe out any "gains" from years of employment. Homes, cars, and furniture are being repossessed at a rising tempo. Even highly touted "fringe" benefits -- pensions, insurance, hospitalization -- are down the drain.

All this is the inevitable consequence of capitalism -- of a system in which the capitalists, a numerically small class, own the factories, mines, railroads, and land, etc., in short, all the means of social production, while the overwhelming majority, the working class, owns nothing except its labour power.

Recurring recessions are the inevitable result of a central contradiction in the capitalist system. The capitalists can't stop an economic crisis any more than they can stop earthquakes or hurricanes. Their so-called "built-in stabilizers" are wholly inadequate for coping with the central contradiction in their system. Defenders of capitalism say automation makes jobs. But as production is concentrated in highly automated plants, the cruel and devastating effects of automation on workers' jobs become apparent. That is the grim reality of capitalism. And all that the capitalists and their politicians can do about it is to let the unemployed vegetate on the ever-reducing welfare or relief. Capitalist handouts, whatever their form, are degrading. The jobless worker stands in line for long hours to demean himself before some bureaucrat or do-gooder charity worker in order to qualify for food-stamps or food-bank parcel. He feels his degradation keenly. If he exhausts his unemployment compensation and goes on welfare or relief, the humiliation to which he is subjected is many times worse. His private affairs are pried into. He and his family are regimented in a kind of purgatory of poverty that erodes his self-respect. Reforms cannot solve the problem.

We have everything it takes to make our planet a veritable paradise. All that stands in the way is (a) the outmoded system of private ownership of industry and (b) the workers' failure to see themselves for what they are under this system -- namely, wage slaves, enslaved as a class to the capitalists as a class.

To end the curse of unemployment we must eliminate the cause of unemployment. We must replace private ownership of the industries with social ownership (i.e., the industries must be owned by all the people collectively). And we must replace production for sale and profit with a system of production for use. Then instead of kicking workers out of jobs, automation will shorten the working day, working week and work-year. Technological progress will no longer be something for us workers to fear, but an unqualified blessing that will ensure abundance and leisure for all.

BUILD A NEW SOCIETY

It is the aim of the Socialist Party to create a society in which wars will be but bad memories, a society in which poverty will have disappeared, in which freedom will have been made secure, and in which democracy will have become the prevailing order of society for all. The ideas of socialism, as advocated by the Socialist Party, are embodied with the hopes and dreams of the ages, a society of peace and abundance. We of the Socialist Party believe that socialism can be attained peacefully.

In a socialist society, there will be no private ownership of the land and the industries. When we say this, we are not talking about personal possessions; your house, or your clothes, or your car, or any of your personal belongings. What we are talking about are the factories, the mills, the mines, transport - in short, the instruments used in the production and distribution of goods. We say that these means of production and distribution must belong to society as a whole. In a socialist society, there will be no wage system where the workers receive in wages only a fraction of the value of the goods they produce. Instead, with socialism, we shall receive the full social value of our labour. We shall produce for use, rather than for sale with a view to profit for private capitalists. We shall produce the things we want and need rather than the things for which a market exists in which the goods we produce are sold for the profit of the private owners. Socialist society shall have a complete democracy - - an industrial and social democracy. There will be full democratic administration inside the socialist cooperative commonwealth. Contrast such a society with our system today. Today, ownership and control of industry rest in the hands of a numerically small class (the capitalist class) who contribute nothing to production. The rest of us (the working class) own nothing but our ability to work, whether it be physical or mental, or both. And we, the useful producers, who constitute the vast majority, produce everything. But we are permitted to work only so long as a market exists for the goods we produce. When there is no profitable market for our products, plants close down, and we suffer want in the midst of plenty.

The evil of the system of capitalism has long since outlived its usefulness. We have shown that a parasitic class, which contributes nothing to human welfare exists in luxury based on the exploitation of another class that, producing everything worth-while, yet exists in mortal fear of misery.

In socialism we shall own in common the factories and means of production, we shall have full and free access to the means of wealth production and distribution, we shall receive the full social value of our labor there will be no unwanted surplus, we shall collectively produce the things we want and need for full and happy lives. We will benefit from all to find new technologies, new means of production, improved means of distribution. Society as a whole will have a vital interest in providing opportunity to each individual to find the work for which he or she is best suited and happiest. There will be the fullest freedom and opportunity. It is within the power of the working class to establish such a society as soon as they recognize the need for it and organize to establish it. The Socialist Party points the way. By supporting the Socialist Party at the ballot box you will say that you demand the end of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.

And, we repeat, there will be a complete and full democracy. Democracy that will truly be based on the broadest lines. Democracy in which the final and only power will be the great mass of our people, the useful producers, which in Socialist society will mean everybody. No more will society be split into two contending classes. Instead, we shall all be useful producers, collectively owning the means of production and distribution, collectively concerned with producing the most with the least expenditure of human labor, and collectively jealous of the rights of the individual to a full, free and untrammeled life of happiness and accomplishment.

How can we get such a society? The answer is easy. It is within the power of the working class to establish such a society as soon as they recognise the need for it and organise to establish it. The  Socialist Party points the way. By supporting it at the ballot box you will say that you demand the end of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. This is the civilised way of revolution. 

The Exploitation of Wage-Slaves

The capitalist class, as a class, robs the working class, as a class. The individual capitalist exploiter does not pocket the whole loot taken from the workers. Out of the wealth, the workers produce come rent, interest, fees for insurance, advertising, taxes etc.  When workers read of the net profits of corporations, small or large, they should always bear in mind that these represent only a fraction of the total plunder.

The exploitation of wage-labor is the story of a robbery so colossal that it defies measurement. The robbery is confined neither by time nor space. It is continuous, unremitting. It proceeds wherever society is divided into classes, wherever one class owns the instruments of production to which another class, owning no tools of its own, must have access in order to live. There is nothing illegal about this robbery. It is considered the normal "way of life." But it is robbery nonetheless. For the capitalist class uses its ownership and control of the factories the same way that a highwayman used his gun -- to extract a tribute from its victims. When the serf of feudal times was forced to yield part of what he produced to the feudal baron, he knew he was being robbed. But capitalist robbery is more subtle. The worker may perform but one-minute operation in the production of a commodity requiring thousands of operations. Nevertheless, his labour has created new value equal to his day's wages in the first hour or two on the job and this new value -- together with the value added by his fellow workers -- is embodied in the finished product.

Marx gave a name to the part of the working day in which the worker reproduces his wages. He called it necessary labour time. During the rest of the working day the worker produces values for which he is not paid, or -- let us call a spade a spade -- values of which he is robbed! This part of the working day Marx called surplus labour time. For purposes of simplification, take the case of a worker who sells his labour power -- to be expended in eight hours -- for the price of $100. The first two hours of his working day are necessary labour time. In these two hours, he produces as much as the boss pays him for eight hours of labour. During the remaining six hours -- surplus labor time -- he produces three times as much or $300 worth of new values. In the science of political economy we call the wealth that the worker produces, but of which he is robbed of surplus value.

What in the degree of robbery, or exploitation? It varies as conditions vary in the different countries. In a country where more advanced techniques and methods of production are applied (such as the United States), the degree of exploitation is greater than it is in less advanced countries. At first sight, this may seem contradictory. Why, you may ask, should workers who are more productive receive less proportionately of what they produce than workers who are not so productive? The answer is simply that wages are not determined by what the worker produces. Leaving aside their temporary rise and fall due to fluctuations of supply and demand in the labour market, wages are determined by what it costs the worker to live and raise a new crop of wage slaves to take his place when he dies or is thrown on the scrap heap.

Everyone is familiar with the expression a "living wage." Our grandfathers got a "living wage"; our fathers got a "living wage": and. normally, we get a "living wage." Thus, in terms of food, clothing, shelter, etc., we receive substantially what our grandfathers did. Yet we produce vastly more than our grandfathers and considerably more than our fathers. Why, then, haven't we advanced beyond the "living wage" concept? The answer is that we cannot advance beyond this concept, no matter how much our productivity increases, as long as capitalism lasts. And the reason is that, under capitalism, labour power is a commodity, an article of merchandise, whose price is governed by the same economic laws that govern the price of any other commodity. Price may fluctuate according to the supply of a commodity and the demand for it in the market. Just as a pendulum swings back and forth, but is always drawn toward the center by gravitation, prices may go up or down -- but always it oscillates around its value in accord with the economic law of value. In other words, price, in the long run, coincides with value. And the value of any commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time required to produce it. In the case of the commodity labor power, this means that its value is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time required to produce the food, clothing, shelter, etc., needed to keep the worker in working condition. He or she gets a 'living wage."

The more highly developed a nation is industrially, the less labour time is required to produce the workers' necessities. Hence, instead of the workers' share of their product increasing proportionately as their productivity rises, it is the other way around. As new methods and techniques -- such as automation -- are introduced, the articles workers consume are cheapened and wages fall accordingly. Thus the workers' relative wages (what they receive in relation to what they produce) tend to fall as productivity rises. In other words, as labor productivity rises, the necessary labor time grows shorter, thus lengthening that part of the working day when the worker produces surplus value.

For purposes of simplification, we have used a single worker as an example. Actually, exploitation "is not the act of any individual capitalist, or set of capitalists, perpetrated upon any individual worker or set of worker. Exploitation is a class act -- the act of the whole capitalist class-perpetrated upon a class -- the whole working class. Apologists for capitalism sometimes try to refute socialist charges of high-degree exploitation by pointing to the net profits of corporations. But socialists have never contended that the corporations pocket all the surplus value their workers produce. On the contrary, socialists point out that before a capitalist can count his net profits he must pay off the landlord, tax collector, banker, advertising capitalist, insurance company, and all the other parasites on parasites. By the time taxes, interest, rent, etc., are deducted, net profits of the immediate capitalist exploiter may be only a fraction of the surplus value of which workers are robbed. But this in no way disputes the fact that the working class is robbed by the capitalist class of wealth so vast that it defies measurement.

DISPOSING OF THE LOOT

Now, let us examine this thievery from another angle. We measure surplus value in dollars. But the workers do not produce dollars, they produce commodities -- and a commodity, Marx tells us, is an article that will satisfy some human want and that is produced for sale. Hence, before the capitalists can enjoy their plunder, they must first find buyers for it. If they don't get rid of their commodity loot, it accumulates in the warehouses and production stagnates. In wartime the solution is simple. In wartime the surplus steel goes into tanks, ships and guns. the surplus textiles into uniforms, tents and bandages, the surplus lumber into training camps, barracks and caskets, and so on down the line of commodities. But between capitalist wars -- in the intervening periods of "peace" -- the capitalists do not have this ready outlet for their wares. In peacetime, they must find other means of disposing of their loot. How do they do it? First of all, it is self-evident that the workers do not consume more than they can buy with their wages. And, as we have shown, this is just a fraction of what they produce. What happens to the remainder of labor's vast product?

A part is consumed by the capitalists in prodigal living. Some capitalists -- the plutocracy -- live in opulence surpassing that of kings, and often maintain not one palace, but many. In every city, the capitalists form a community of super-consumers. They are the patrons of the night clubs, the purchasers of costly luxuries, the members of expensive clubs. Yet, despite their prodigality, the capitalists can use up in personal consumption only a fraction of the immense wealth created by labor and appropriated by their exploiters.

Another part of this wealth -- a much larger part -- is used up in running a huge, bureaucratic, capitalist political State. The cost of running the political State -- including city, county, state and federal governments.

Capitalist rulers have no ears for the voice of sanity. Socialism would put an end to capitalist robbery of the working class. By raising the worker out of his commodity status to that of a free human being with a voice and vote in the administration of industry, by guaranteeing to every producer the full social value of the product, in abort, by replacing capitalist anarchy and exploitation with socialist cooperation and harmony, the world could be made into a veritable paradise of peace and plenty.

Perish under capitalism or survive with socialism

We have reached the fork in the road where mankind must choose between continue down the path of an outworn and outmoded social order or taking the direction of a new social system. The workers’ movement is not short of anti-austerity, anti-cuts reformist campaigns – far from it. What it is short of, and has been for too long, is any serious attempt to link together anti-capitalist activists in order to build an effective socialist organisation for future struggles.

 Are we going to keep the system of private ownership? Shall we attempt to preserve a social system that has proved its incapacity to solve the problem of poverty in the midst of plenty? Do you favour prolonging the existence of a society in which a few own all the means of wealth-production, in which labour-saving technology, instead of lessening drudgery or lightening labor's toil, throws workers out of their jobs onto the industrial scrapheap? Must mankind pass through still another vicious cycle of recession, and crisis?

Or shall we do the common-sense thing, make the means of production our collective property, abolish the exploitation of the many by the few, and use our productive genius to create leisure and abundance for all?

Capitalism has deteriorated to the point where it threatens the existence of civilization and of mankind. The system faces problems it cannot possibly solve. Most serious of these is the rapidly escalating threat of environmental destruction by global warming and climate change but neither should we forget the continual threat of nuclear war and the possibility of  massive, permanent unemployment as a result of automation. All these are symptomatic of a doomed system that is taking us toward social catastrophe. In such a grave situation, the Socialist Party's views deserve close attention. For the Socialist Party when founded in 1904 recognized that capitalism was outliving its usefulness to the majority, the workers. And during the ensuing decades, the SPGB has been proving that this obsolete system breeds ever multiplying evils -- above all, the twin evils of war over resources and economic slumps.

Capitalism is an economic system in which goods are produced to be sold at a profit. The goods are produced by the working class in industries owned by a small class of capitalist parasites. The capitalist owners of industry become the owners of the products. The workers get for their creative efforts a wage (or salary), an amount just sufficient to maintain themselves and their families. It is the relation of this amount to the value of the workers' output that is at the bottom of capitalism's depressions and wars. For the fact is their capitalist exploiters have always paid the workers only a fraction of the value of their products. Worse still, this fraction keeps growing smaller as technological improvements step up labor's productivity while, at the same time, steadily wiping out jobs. The Socialist Party says this: Depressions and wars are inevitable effects of capitalism, therefore they can never be eliminated as long as the system survives. Only when our economic life has been entirely rebuilt on a new foundation can lasting peace and economic well-being for all be achieved.

Production for private profit must be replaced by production for the common good. Instead of letting a tiny useless class appropriate the lion's share of our collective product, the workers who create it must retain its full social value. Likewise, the existing despotic capitalist control of the national economy must yield to a democratic management of the industries by the workers who run them. And, of course, to permit the foregoing fundamental changes, the industries, and natural resources must become the common property of all the people. In short, we must establish a new society -- a socialist society. Don't get any wrong impression. We mean genuine Marxian Socialism and emphatically not the monstrous counterfeits with which the Russian and Chinese workers have been deceived.

If you agree with the Socialist Party that society must be reconstructed, then there are certain things we must mutually understand. The first is that we can expect no help whatsoever from the beneficiaries of capitalism. Here and there a capitalist may see the handwriting on the wall and join with the workers, but as a class, the capitalists, like the slave-owning and feudal classes before them, will strive to prolong their poverty-ridden, war-breeding system. The workers of hand and brain must build this new world and emancipate themselves through their own class-conscious efforts. The second thing we must understand is this: Though the workers are in the overwhelming majority, and have tremendous potential power, they can apply their collective strength to the task at hand only through organisation to effect their emancipation. This means the working class availing itself fully of the right of political agitation and the ballot. This is the peaceful method. It permits the forces of progress to proclaim their purpose openly and mobilize themselves for political victory and the conquest of the capitalist political State. The function of “government” in socialism is that of administering social production for the benefit of all. There can be no bureaucrats or technocrats in socialism. This will be a living, vibrant democracy in which all power is in the only safe, place for power to be - with the people. There can be no peace or economic security without socialism! Nor can we solve our other tragic problems until we get rid of this capitalist cancer! Put your full influence behind the only movement that can transform this world into a model of peace, abundance, freedom and social sanity.

The Ineos Rat - Jim Ratcliffe

Billionaire Ineos Grangemouth boss, Jim Ratcliffe  wants to axe the morning tea break for his workers in Scotland in a bid to save money - as he leads a 'life of luxury'.

One worker said: “Ratcliffe enjoys a life of luxury. We hear he spends a lot of time on his yacht in the south of France. Yet he’s trying to deny his workers a simple tea break. I’m sure he gets 10 minutes for a cup of tea in the morning.”

Managers at the petrochemical plant want rid of the 10am tea break for 1,200 staff because they claim it leads to “high levels of unproductive time” in the mornings. They say it’s not being scrapped, but “rescheduled” to the end of the shift, and workers will get an extra half hour’s pay per day as compensation.

Another worker said: “We get to work early and do hard, physical work in all conditions. By 10am, we’re often in dire need of a break. Some guys use the time for a cup of tea. Others have a bite to eat. With winter coming, it will be a time when we can simply heat up after working in the freezing cold.”

In 2013 in a dispute over the suspension of a shop steward, he closed the plant and vowed to walk away for good unless workers accepted major cuts to their pensions and conditions. Staff with families to feed gave in to Ratcliffe’s demands and the plant reopened. 

More recently, Ratcliffe has been an enthusiastic backer of fracking in Scotland, which is currently banned by the SNP Government. He is shipping huge cargos of fracked shale gas from America to be processed at Grangemouth, with the first shipment arriving last month.

Socialism and socialist principles

What is the difference between the Socialist Party and all the rest of the political parties that call themselves socialist or communist? That or similar questions occur again and again. They arise because of the confusion engendered in the minds of a great many people by the claims and pretensions other organisations who contend that they are representatives of "socialism". For this reason, it is important that, once again, we restate in definite terms what the Socialist Party stands for, and at the same time pointing out the anti-socialist character of such self-styled socialist or workers parties.

Let us define socialism. First, with socialism, there will be no private ownership in the necessaries of life, i.e., the industries and the system of communication and distribution, as well as the social services. Second, there will be no political State and, accordingly, there will be no state ownership or bureaucratic control of these necessaries of life. Third, there will be no wage system, hence, no exploitation. In place of private ownership, we shall have common ownership of the means of production and distribution. In short, socialism is a social system under which all the instruments of production, distribution, education, health, etc., are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people, through industrial representatives who will be directly and at all times responsible to the people.  

These other parties that call themselves socialist have for decades advocated a hodgepodge of nationalisation, municipal ownership, cooperatives, etc., all of which (apart from being a denial of socialism) would make necessary the retention of the political state. In their effort to be "all things to all men," they also defend the private ownership of small businesses. They pay only lip service to "social ownership" and "industrial democracy" and "production for use," in the very next breath they promise to increase wages for the workers, increase unemployment insurance and expand social security, etc. -- all of which implies a continuation of capitalism! These parties are reformist seeking political power by making meaningless promises in the name of "Socialism," while the Socialist Party is a revolutionary political party whose aim is, and always has been, the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. They opportunistically trading on socialist sentiment whenever the opportunity presents itself. They speak and write in a jargon liberally sprinkled with socialist terms and phrases. They condemn capitalism at times in almost hysterical terms and then propose a series of reforms. Time and again, they have all shown themselves capable of coldly and brazenly sacrificing the interests of the workers, and even of collaborating openly with and defending the capitalist exploiters in supposed national liberation movements or united fronts. At no time did they represent the true interests of the working class, nor did they ever enable the workers to establish a socialist society. And, accordingly, they were and are the exact opposite of the Socialist Party.

The Socialist Party, founded in 1904, is the only organisation in the United Kingdom that stands uncompromisingly for the abolition of capitalism. We deny that there is any possibility of real or lasting improvement for the vast majority, the working class, within the framework of the capitalist system. On the contrary, the Socialist Party warns that the longer capitalism lasts, the worse becomes the condition of the workers as a class, and the more difficult will become the transition from capitalism to socialism. And this despite the persistent efforts of the liberals and reformers, whether they pretend to be socialists or not. The Socialist Party has learned through the hard school of experience that reforms lead away from socialism and progress. We call for the unification of the workers on the political field under the banner of the Socialist Party to demand, via the ballot box, the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class. Every clear-thinking worker should support the Socialist Party for a socialist reconstruction of society. Do not be deceived by those who lack sound socialist principles.  

The Middle Class Doesn't Exist.

For the last three years, Ontario's Legal Aid Staff Lawyers, have been attempting to unionize, claiming it would help them negotiate fair working conditions to better serve their clients.

Legal Aid Ontario (L.A.O.), a provincial Government agency, has refused to recognize their union and now, employer and employee, are locked in a legal battle that could turn out to be lengthy and expensive.

The lawyers, many of whom work out of courthouses, often representing people who can't afford counsel, have launched a constitutional challenge with L.A.O.'s refusal to bargain with their chosen representative, The Society of Energy Professionals.

The case is set to be heard in Superior Court on December 5th.

Obviously, this is just another worker-boss dispute, but it clearly shows that professional people are workers too, which includes dentists, accountants, and doctors, including, those who are self-employed.

If there can be any doubt, all they would have to do would be to quit work and see how quickly they would need money.

Some may consider the above as middle-class, but it doesn't exist chum, you're either a worker or a capitalist. 

John. Ayers.

"Do It Yourself"

In the political and economic world we are expected never to "do it ourselves" but instead we are advised to "let leaders do it." Professional politicians are paid to do our thinking for us. The Socialist Party almost alone have warned of the dangers of dependence on "leaders." For 112 years we have explained that since the working class is intelligent enough to plan, design build and operate the wondrous marvels of technology industries throughout the world, it is also intelligent enough to share and administer those same productive forces through self-management democracy of socialism. Socialism means the social ownership and democratic management of all the machinery of production and distribution, as well as the natural resources and land. The working class today creates all wealth for the private owners of industry in return for a fraction of that wealth, called wages. With socialism, the same producers will create the wealth for all of society to enjoy. With those now unemployed, or senselessly occupied, put to useful endeavour, and with all the ingenious labour-saving inventions put to use, the hours of the working day will be shortened tremendously. Automation will cease to be a threat to job security, it will bring the blessing of greater abundance and more leisure time to enjoy that abundance. Instead of workers being divided into hostile groups competing for jobs that will pay enough to keep a family until next payday, we will work in harmony, cooperating to produce most efficiently the best possible products, since we will all directly benefit from each improvement in quality and quantity of the goods and services we have made available. Socialism is not a paternalistic society in which the good things are handed down to you. It is a society of economic equality, which is to say, equality of economic opportunity. You will have full voice and vote in the industrial democracy.  What a relief from strain and worry self-directed socialism will bring.  Increased leisure and general well-being made possible for all of us to lead decent lives. All will enjoy better health. The modern scourge of mental illness will be largely eliminated in a society freed from the causes of anxieties and tensions that now plague mankind.  The leisure which our shorter hours of work will give us will mean a great enrichment of our lives. Travel, the development of cultural appreciation, the best of entertainment -- all these will be ours.

Best of all, we will know the full pleasure of family life, without the cares which frustrate our happiness today. It is obvious that it is capitalism which is the home-breaker, with fathers and mothers both working to make ends meet, and children left without proper family guidance. Marriage will cease to be a property relationship in the sane social order of Socialism. Mutual love and understanding will be the fundamental principle upon which the family of the future will build.

At this point, you might be thinking, "Sounds like a heaven on earth. But we have to contend with human nature” Would you be opposed to helping create a "heaven on earth"? Do you really prefer voting for politicians who are pledged to maintain the present social system which is the exact opposite of that "heaven on earth" we have described? Is it your nature to desire peace or war? Are other humans different from you? Is it your nature to prefer the insecurity of employment and the exploitation under capitalism, or does your whole being yearn for economic freedom and security for yourself and your family? Are you proud of the fear-instilling and intimidating measures to curtail freedom of thought, or does your whole nature rebel at capitalism's encroachment upon your liberties? The Socialist Party maintains that the best in human nature will only be brought out by the best in social and economic conditions.

The Socialist Party calls upon this majority to vote for the change from private ownership and the political State to common ownership. You can "Do It Yourselves" at the ballot box. You are now carrying on all production in industry. You have only to take over and continue the operation of these same industries, producing for the use of all instead of the profit of the few. Having thus carried out your decision registered at the ballot box, you can then form new structure and networks to administer the new world you have created for yourselves.  This is the only way socialism may be attained - by "Doing It Yourselves."

The many work to enrich the few

Tinkering with the capitalist system can never alter its fundamentally anti-social character. The relationships and values involved in a humane life demand that we abolish this system and bring into being one that reflects the interests of the people. The new system will be one that brings about the end of exploitation.

What's wrong with working part-time? Nothing, if you're making enough to live on. But, as everyone knows, part-time jobs don't pay enough to pay all the bills, nor as a rule, do they include necessary health insurance and other benefits. Most so-called part-time workers are actually full-time workers, holding down two or three part-time jobs in order to make ends meet. Millions of workers with legitimate full-time jobs also need another, part-time job because the full-time job pays too little. Americans work more hours per year than workers in many other industrialised countries. When workers are working harder for less, profits soar. The stock market rockets to new highs. The only thing that could upset this gravy train, it seems, is if wages should go up!  Surely folk can see that something is clearly wrong if economic health depends on its people doing poorly. Yet this senseless contradiction is the "normal" condition in our capitalist economic system, where the many work to enrich a few who don't do my productive work. Trying to get around this conflict of interest between capital and labour economists describe the trickle-down theory with the argument that if companies making more money will then pay their workers more - a theory proven to be false.  It's not a question of whether the CEOs are "greedy" or not. It's a simple matter of the law of the market: the law of supply and demand. Supply and demand determines the price of labour just as it determines the price of any other commodity. Yes, in this system labor is a commodity, bought and sold on the labor market. But today the labor market is not confined to national boundaries. You have to look at the global supply of labor because now it's possible for companies to move (out-source)  their operations overseas, especially to developing countries where dispossessed rural peasants stream to the cities looking for employment. So when wages started escalating it only hastened the exodus of capital, lowering the domestic demand for labor and driving its price down once again. And once the economy slipped into recession unemployment climbed and wages tumbled.

The fact that labour under capitalism is a commodity, ruled by the law of supply and demand, explains another puzzling contradiction: how people can get poorer by working harder and producing more wealth. Although workers produce all the economic wealth in the form of goods and services, they own none of it. The product is owned by their employers, be they small businessmen or multinational corporations. What the workers get from their product is what they can buy back from the owners, using the wages they are paid by the owners for the use of their labor. Since the workers are not working for themselves, they may increase their output by 10, 20 or 50 per cent and still not see a penny of the increase. What the worker receives for her work is something quite different from the product of her work, and that something is determined by the supply of and demand for her in the labor market. The output of goods and services has increased enormously as workers have worked longer hours and improved technologies have increased their output per hour. But since that time workers have received less in real terms for each hour of their work. The value of that added output has gone instead to capital, with the result that the owners of capital have increased their share of the national wealth and national income while the non-owners, the workers, have seen their share decrease.

Now imagine for a moment that instead of what actually happened we had had a different economic system. In this different system labour, instead of being a commodity bought by capital, was itself the owner of the machinery and facilities of production and distribution. As owner, labor would be working for itself, and so would own its own product. In one year so many goods and services would have been produced, which would have been distributed among their owners, which would include all the workers who contributed labour toward their production. This would be all the useful and necessary labor, including that of women and men working at home caring for children and doing all the other domestic labor required to maintain a household. The following year the population may have increased a bit so there would be more people of working age to help in production. Also, there may have been new technologies introduced which would have reduced the amount of labor needed to produce the same number of goods and services. What would have happened? The people might have decided to continue to work the same number of hours as before, which would mean more goods and services were produced and people had more things. Or the people might have decided they didn't need more things and instead wanted more free time away from work. The workday then would have been reduced for all, while their consumption of goods and services remained the same. In a system of labor ownership, where basic economic decisions are made democratically by the people through a workplace-based government, every advance in technology directly benefits all the people by either increasing the goods and services for consumption or shortening the workweek. With the rapid advances now going on in computer technologies, it's not hard to imagine producing everything we need with a few hours of work per person per week.

In the capitalist system, where goods are produced to sell for a profit, production has to keep growing whether we need the stuff or not. In a labor-owned system, once we have enough of whatever well quit making it, conserving resources in the process. When the current incentive for waste and obsolescence - in order to keep selling more - is removed, the overall level of production could actually fall, greatly easing the stress on the environment as well as on us.

If all this sounds too good to be true it's only because what we have now is too crazy to be true. But, sadly, it is true, and as a result, we've become accustomed to accept the irrational as normal, or at least unavoidable. But it eventually reaches the point where irrational contradictions become intolerable and must, one way or another, be resolved. While no one can set a date when people will finally rebel against the economic and social madness, the operations of the capitalist system itself guarantee the time will come. Of course, there's no guarantee that when the time comes it will be socialism that is adopted by the majority and put into effect. All kinds of crackpots and quacks will be in the field to lead the people in every direction except towards the economic reconstruction of society.

It will require an intense political struggle to win the day for socialism. This is a struggle that can be carried out only by a highly organised and dedicated political movement, the movement the Socialist Party is today working to create.

'Introduction to Socialism' (Edinburgh)

Wednesday, October 26, 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Venue: ACE

17 West Montgomery Place,

Edinburgh EH7 5HA

WHAT IS SOCIALISM

Socialism would be too idealistic or utopian if it depended on people following an ideal that was contrary to their material interest. But that is not the case with socialism. Socialism is grounded in material realities. It is rooted in the reality that it is now objectively and physically possible for society to meet the basic human needs and wants of all the people. It is rooted in the reality that capitalism stands as an obstacle to society realising its full potential to meet the needs and wants of all. It is rooted in the reality that the working class, which are those who do productive work, mental or physical, are denied their material needs and wants under the present system. Thus the modern working class has both a motive and the potential power to replace the present system with socialism.

All that's missing is for workers to recognise their true interests as a class, understand the socialist goal, and begin organising as a class to establish it. Socialism is realistic and a pragmatic alternative. We, the workers, already collectively occupy the industries every day and operate them from top to bottom. The only thing we don't do is own them, control them, and determine the product distribution. Properly organised, we can rectify that, and build an economic system that will truly serve the social interest and it is essential for human survival and continued social progress. To build socialism, workers must organise politically and economically.

Socialism can only be established by a class-conscious, organised majority of the working class. It can only be built by workers who understand the need to prevent any individual or group from gaining the power to control production or distribution. Socialism would be governed by active organisations of workers, educated by the class struggle and determined to keep economic power in the only safe place for it to reside in the collective hands of all. Control of society's economic resources would be in the collective hands of the working class. All persons elected to serve in the factory committees, the workers' councils and the commune assemblies administering social life and the economy as a whole, would be responsible only for performing designated administrative tasks. They would have no bureaucratic power to dictate production or distribution goals toward their own individual enrichment. Voting would determine the general goals of social production, based on their own needs and wants. Socialism's elected and recallable administrators would carry out the task of determining which facilities are to produce how much in order to meet the socially determined production goals. They would have no opportunity to become bureaucratic rulers even if they wanted to. And once a society of security and abundance for all is established, the motivation to even want to be become a bureaucrat is eliminated.

People clearly have the capability of being cooperative as well as competitive, supportive and helpful as well as antagonistic, egalitarian as well as selfish. We can and do choose to employ one quality or the other, depending on how our material circumstances and interests affect us, and how we perceive our own self-interest. It is also part of our human nature to think, to evaluate our circumstances and change our behaviour when we conclude that doing so is in our self-interest. Accordingly, socialism is not contrary to human “nature”. For the vast majority of the people who belong to the working class today, it does no good to be greedy, competitive or power-hungry; capitalism rewards them with hardship. Sooner or later, a majority of workers can and will come to the understanding that their own self-interest demands the creation of a new social system based on social ownership of the industries and cooperative production for the common good. Once a socialist society is established, the material and other rewards of that system will continue to reinforce cooperative behaviour and nullify selfishness, greed and the desire for power over others.

A democratically-controlled economic system.

Working people must set their sights on the real goal, liberation from wage slavery. The genuine socialist movement must educate its fellow-workers to the need of reaching this goal if they are to achieve the economic security and well-being they seek. Capitalism has substituted the motive of private profit in place of public duty. Capitalism is a system of social advancement based on individual merit and ability is the message that an army of media and academic errand boys are constantly trying to drill into our heads. That message is everywhere. You can hardly escape from it. There is just one problem with this picture. An examination of how capitalism actually works - who does the work, who gains the wealth and how that wealth is accumulated - reveals a reverse reality. Capitalism as it actually exists functions more like an inverse meritocracy, a system of social advancement based on the exploitation of the members of society who actually perform the work, and who therefore create all value. As they say, if hard work creates millionaires then every African peasant woman would be worth a fortune. The idea that personal wealth is capitalism's reward for producing economic value for society is an imaginative fairy tale. In fact, great personal wealth is either the reward for being born to wealthy parents, or for being the most single-minded and ruthless acquirers of other people's money, diminishing rather than uplifting the social good in the process. By the same logic those with the smallest incomes must be making the least contribution to society. But even a casual look at the facts shows the opposite is true. Food production is one endeavor no society can do without. But the people who do the work of producing food for consumption - farm-workers, slaughterhouse workers, cannery and processing workers, restaurant workers - mostly receive below average wages.

But the real chasm of inequality isn't between food-industry workers and higher-paid workers of other industries. It's between the productive workers of each industry and the major owners of each industry, the big stockholders who contribute no useful labor to production or distribution. Nor is it a matter of lower-wage workers being more or less important than higher-paid workers. All the necessary jobs have to be done in order for the workplace, the industry, the economy to function. For example, if the doctors in a hospital don't have the combined support of nurses, nursing assistants, various specialized technicians, clerical staff and custodial workers, they can't practice their advanced skills in healing patients. Take any group out of the mix and the hospital couldn't function. On the other hand, remove the hospital managers and medical insurance CEOs from the mix and the healthcare system would function much better! Administered instead as a democratic workplace community, with decisions made in an associated manner by all the workers of the workplace, what should be the top priority of a healthcare institution - patient care - would be the top priority.

Under capitalism those who do all the work are only allowed access to the workplaces and the chance to earn a living on condition that they fork over most of the value they add during the production process to the people who own the workplace. Thus, a person who adds $30 each hour to the product or service he or she works on may only be paid $10 for each hour she works. The rest goes to capital: the owner of the workplace, his banker, insurance company, marketing consultant, etc. To maintain this state of affairs the capitalist class uses its great wealth to control the electoral process and screens out any political candidates who might interfere too much with the very undemocratic running of the nation's workplaces. Whatever the political government does, it is forbidden to really interfere in the economic relationship between workers and owners, or to do anything, however sorely needed by the vast majority of the population, against the basic interests of the owning capitalists.

Defenders of capitalism are left to their fallback position: "Any other system just wouldn't work because people are different and you can't make them equal."

First, this confuses two separate concepts: difference and equality.

Equality in its social sense does not mean sameness. Obviously, people are not the same. Whether by nature or nurture, or probably a combination of both, people have different potentials for different areas of physical and intellectual activity. Changing the economic system won't change that. What it will do is insure that every individual has the opportunity to develop whatever potential talents and capabilities they do have. As it is today, despite all the blather about "you can be whatever you choose to be," most people fall into a career out of economic necessity rather than choice, and then get stuck there out of continuing economic necessity. Capitalism in reality blunts individuality rather than promotes it. Workers have to mold themselves to the needs of the system, which are determined by what is profitable in the marketplace, rather than themselves determining what their own needs are and how best to satisfy them. Equality means having the equal opportunity to develop your own abilities, without having the "right" to advance at the expense of others. It means having the equal opportunity to influence the decisions and outcomes of the economy and society, the equality in government that can come about only in a democratically-controlled economic system.

But today, as a result of economic inequality, government is controlled by an elite of big wealth-holders. Their corruption of politics is now so blatant that hardly anyone else believes their voice counts anymore. And they're right - it doesn't. The liberals and reformers who think they can change this with campaign-finance reform or new voting systems are on a fool's errand. One way or the other big money always finds a way to control government.  Those who seek real democracy must attack the economic inequality that blocks its realisation. The idea of economic equality may seem unrealistic to many people today. The aspirations of the majority for security and well-being, a clean environment and a peaceful world are blocked by the profit interests of a small minority. The only way out of the impasse is to create a new system of production and social administration, one that can direct our resources to meeting human needs and solving human problems.

In socialism, the community collectively are the co-owners of all the workplaces in the economy. All the goods and services created by the people who work belong to those same working people. Socialism cannot be 'given' to the workers by a political or intellectual elite, however sincere it may be. Socialist self-administration can only be built by the informed and united action of the workers themselves.

Let's Put Off Till Tomorrow!

The $70 million spent by Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne to set up the Ontario Pension Plan has caused a bit of a stink. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) is upset because the set-up cost was higher than expected. The group which represents 42,000 small businesses said it was a payroll tax, meaning they would have to pay it, and that Wynne should wait a year to see if the Federal Government increases the C.P.P. Boy ain't these guys all heart?

The plan is now being shut down, following a deal in June between the Provinces and the new Federal Government to improve the C.P.P.

The P.C.'s were upset because the plan included $12.1 million for a 5 year lease of two furnished floors of an office building, $17.6 million for consultants, and $3.5 million in legal fees.

Finance Minister, Charles Sousa, defended the planned O.R.R.P. on the grounds that two-thirds of Ontario workers, who don't have company pensions, will need more than C.P.P. at retirement.

So, there you have it, folks, a crowd of various politicians and businessmen who are upholders of Capitalism, squabbling about the implementation of another reform.

So why not scrap reforms, including pension plans, and while we're about it, why not scrap Capitalism? John Ayers

Liberating workers

People feel trapped on a treadmill from which there is no escape. Yet, at the same time, workers are working longer and harder for less, the amount they are able to produce in an hour's labor is greater than ever before, and this productivity of labor continues to climb. Probably everyone except workaholics, for whom work is an obsession or a way to escape other problems of life -- would choose to work less. But most would say they can't afford to, or that their jobs don't allow them to slow down. In other words, our way of living and working isn't something we can, as individuals, choose for ourselves. We have to live and work pretty much the way the system forces us to. In the system as it exists today, working less does mean sacrificing things that are part of the standard of living we expect- and it doesn't only apply to luxuries or frills. People are working long hours just to hold onto their homes, keep their cars running and send their kids - or themselves - to college. Most workers desperately want more leisure time, but giving up the income means giving up the means with which to enjoy the extra time. In addition, being willing to do without things doesn't necessarily mean ending up with more time. For example, because the economic system favors private transportation over efficient mass transit, not having a car means spending a lot more time getting around to do everyday chores.

But under the profit system, the workers do not get the benefit of their effort; the owners of businesses do. Corporations introduce technology to reduce the time needed to produce the product or service. But rather than spread the saving to all their employees by having everyone work less for the same pay, they lay off a number of workers in order to pay less in total wages and thereby increase profits. By lessening the amount of labor needed to make a commodity, the owners can sell it for less and hold onto market share against their competitors, who are also driving down costs by displacing labor. To survive in the competitive market each company must keep cutting its costs of production, which means the workers must be sacrificed to keep the company afloat. But in addition to layoffs, labor costs can be cut by having the remaining workers work harder and longer. This is done through speedup, or through overtime, which at time-and-a-half is still cheaper than hiring additional workers. Or costs can be slashed through outright wage cuts, the cuts that force people to get second and third jobs to pay the bills.

This is the "secret" behind the irrational situation of having millions of people who are not allowed to work at all or only a few hours a week, at the same time millions of others have to work  more hours than they want. Both groups lose. But it's better to have a shrinking income than none at all, which is why so many workers accept ever-more unreasonable work-loads to hold onto their jobs.

Currently, it takes only a small portion of the work-force to produce all the manufactured goods consumed, an indication of the great productivity of industry. Other workers produce useful and needed services, such as education, transportation, health-care, etc. But there is still a large percentage of the work-force that is "surplus" relative to the number of productive jobs in the economy. These workers are absorbed in non-productive activity, jobs which are necessary for the functioning of the profit system, but which don't add to the real wealth of society. They work in the financial and insurance industries, in sales and marketing, in government bureaucracies. Besides this great waste of labor -- and all the skills and creativity these workers have -- much of the productive labor expended in industry is being wasted. Planned obsolescence to ensure a renewing market and profit flow means more labor and resources are used than would be necessary if goods were built to last. To keep the auto and oil companies in business, more cars have to be built and sold each year, which means more efficient systems of transportation have to be kept out. So, besides the unused and underused labor of the unemployed and partially employed, there is the mis-used labor of tens of millions of full-time workers.

If all the wasted labor were devoted to productive and socially-beneficial tasks, we could produce enough to provide everyone with a decent standard of living working only a fraction of the time we do today. By dividing the labor time needed in all industries equally among all who can, should and want to work, the workday for everyone could be drastically reduced. This is not a utopian dream. It is a simple recognition of the facts of industrial production, of the level of productivity technological development has achieved. But it is a hopeless dream to imagine that an equal distribution of work can be achieved within the capitalist economic system. As long as the technology is owned and controlled by a few, and as long as their profit remains the motive of production, labor will remain a mere "cost of production"-a cost to be lowered by throwing some workers out of jobs while pushing the remaining ones to exhaustion.

If workers want a secure and comfortable livelihood, if they want productive and rewarding jobs, if they want enough leisure time to develop their individual talents and satisfying relationships -- if this is what workers want, they need to organise a new social system to take democratic control of the industry and technology that makes it all possible.

Olympic Pressures And Nationalistic Feellings

Most of us have enjoyed watching the Rio Olympics and there is much to praise in its planning and the performances over all of the competitors. However, Grinch that I am, there were some things that weren't so wonderful.

British athletes confirmed what they had shown in 2012, that they are a power to be reckoned with in world sports. This is a far cry from their performances years ago. In 1952 they won one gold medal, and, since it was equestrian, they needed a horse to win it.

The explanation I was given for their present success, is that, in the 1980s, the government decided to spend a lot more on sport, so, like everything else under capitalism, it all relates to money.

Another negative comment is that one could hardly fail to notice the sometimes, disgraceful behaviour of the Brazilian fans. They jeered the French pole-vaulter because he was a threat to the Brazilian who won. They taunted Russian swimmers. They booed a ball boy for dropping a tennis ball. They booed a German player when he twisted his ankle in a tennis match, also against a Brazilian.

In the air pistol finals, they tried to disrupt the concentration of non-Brazilian shooters as they pulled the trigger.

At show jumping, a bellowing Ring Master had the crowd jeering, to startle the horse when an Argentinian rider approached a fence. When the Brazilian team won the men's beach volleyball, their excitement could be best described as "hysterically happy."

Brazil is undergoing economic, hence, political crises, which, plus the fact that the majority of the population lives in abject poverty, causes them to seek an outlet by venting their feelings in sport. This is little different from British soccer fans from slum neighbourhoods, building their lives around the success of their local team.

The above and the nationalistic feeling it engenders, only accentuates the happiness, or sadness, the fans feel depending on the result.

Socialists do not condone such behaviour, but understand the economic pressures that cause it. John Ayers.

Why Work?

Workers are in the majority and their numbers could bring the system to its knees. By infusing religion and patriotism into the issues that confront our fellow-workers the owning class can channel workers' frustration over declining wages and benefits into diversionary dead-ends. Using nationalism and creed as weapons are part and parcel of the owning class's war against workers. It creates a smokescreen for the plutocrats and oligarchs in their financial maneuvers. Politicians will continue to provide empty promises and temporary band-aid solutions that can only continue this shameless wealth and needless poverty. Only an economy that is owned and democratically managed by the workers who produce all the wealth can deliver lasting prosperity and economic security for all.

Many people think that the word capital is just another word for "money" or "wealth." For instance, a person might say something like, "I don't have enough capital to buy a new car." But capital is not just money. In fact, capital doesn't need to be money at all. Capital is wealth that its holder uses to get more wealth. If a company takes a certain amount of its money, its assets, and buys a piece of machinery, has its capital gone down? No. The new machinery has replaced the money as part of its capital. But machinery is no more capital all by itself than money is. My car is machinery, but it's not capital. The thing that makes the machinery a company buys into capital is its relation to labor, the workers who operate the machinery. When the workers go to work, they use the machinery to make things. When those things are sold, they are sold for a certain value, all of which has been created by the workers. But the workers don't get all the value their labor adds to the things they make. If they did, there would be no money value for the owner of the capital, no profit. jnIt's this social relationship of owners and workers, the relationship that says the workers have to fork over part of the value they produce to the owners as the condition for being allowed to work, that makes wealth into capital.

Which brings us to the next question. Just what is "work?"

If I sit at a computer screen and type in data for eight hours, I put out a certain amount of effort, and in return I am paid. But what of a thief, who may put out a lot more physical effort to break into my house and steal my possessions? He takes the stuff to a fence and sells it, so he is getting paid for putting out effort just as I am. The difference, of course, is that his effort is not work that is useful and constructive for society. He is merely a parasite, living off my work.

Now let's look at another species of parasite, the CEO of a major company. Let's say that I, Joe Public , working at my $10-an-hour job, but must work overtime and put in 50 or 60 hour weeks in order to pay rent on my apartment, the payment on my car and my food and utility bills, plus an occasional night out or some new clothes. Compare that with the CEO who pulls in a million dollars or more per year in salary, plus half a million or so worth of stock options, etc., not to mention returns from other investments outside the company he works for. He also spends maybe 60 hours a week -- doing what? Well, first of all, he is busy trying to increase market share for his company. That means he is trying to replace another company's product with his company's in your shopping basket. Does this effort increase society's quality of life? Probably not. When one company, say Pepsi, succeeds in getting people to buy it instead of Coke, their production goes up and they may hire more people. But Coke's production goes down and they lay people off. The net number soft drinks produced may stay the same. The price for the consumer may also stay roughly the same, dropping when Pepsi is under-selling Coke and rising again later, after Pepsi's market share has grown, to help offset the cost of the nationwide advertising campaign. That's what the "work" of CEOs adds up to -  stealing each other's profits.

Second, the CEO is trying to increase profits by cutting costs. He can't do a whole lot about the costs of the raw materials except if he is retail food supermarkets and can bully farmers and growers his company uses. But he can do quite a bit about what you, the employees, cost. He can make you work harder with fewer breaks and by speeding up the machines, and he can figure out how to delay or minimize your pay rises or even cut your pay. All of this "work" done by the CEO increases profits but creates no new useful articles for society. And just because the CEO puts out some wasted effort, he thinks that entitles him to get paid for my work as well.

At least the burglar who broke into my house to rob me needs the money for food, or maybe he steals because he has to finance a drug or alcohol problem. What's the CEO's excuse? He has none. Not only does he make me work to produce what he then steals, he also thinks I should thank him for "giving" me a job. If anyone's doing the giving, it's me, the worker, Joe Public, the chump. Only my relatively weak position- legally, financially and socially -- keeps me from claiming the full value of what I produce and from telling Mr. CEO and all the wealthy capitalist shareholders he "works" for to take a hike and get a real job. But once we as workers have wised up to the game and get ourselves organized, we will be able to get these welfare bums of our backs.

A great struggle lies ahead of us. Whether we welcome it or fear it or deny it or want to avoid it, it will come, because the economic laws of the capitalist system will force it on us. Let's hope it ends in a fairer reconstitution and reconstruction of society rather than the common ruin of us all.

Lost on a dark road

Many defenders of capitalism admit the cold-heartedness of capitalism, but they claim the system is, nevertheless, the best because it is efficient. The claim of efficiency for capitalism is pure nonsense. Capitalism has given us traffic jams rather than efficient mass-transit systems; a high percentage of potential industrial output stands idle; the incredible waste of planned obsolescence and duplicated effort; dependence on oil instead of renewable resources; the destruction of our nation's topsoil and aquifers; depletion of wildlife and fish stocks; the burning of the rainforests; the massive production and use of weapons which destroy wealth rather than create it. The list could be extended almost indefinitely.

Self-styled visionaries assert that advances in computer and communications technology will bring about a fundamental and "revolutionary" transformation of society. The prophets of this so-called "knowledge revolution" proclaim that the rapidly developing information superhighway is a liberating technology which will irrevocably transform every aspect of our life-education, culture, politics and even national identification. It's easy to see what they are talking about. The computer has made enormous inroads into the lives of people everywhere. The power of silicon chip has sparked a meteoric rise in productivity. But what revolution?

Capitalism has been modified by "revolutions" in production such as the assembly line, transistors and by the introduction of telephones and television. But these changes haven't altered the system's fundamental operations geared to making profits for the corporations that own the technology. The true meaning of revolution is one class seizing economic and political power from another class. The oracles of the digital age overlook that the new technology does nothing to change underlying relationships of capitalist production. That genuine revolutionary change can't be accomplished by any machine, however, marvelous its technical capabilities. The relationships of production can be changed only by the human agency, by the working class organising to make the technology its own. The capitalist class finds, in the consequences of any new technology, only capitalist issues. A typical proof offered for the supposed revolutionary consequences of computer technology is that it will force a redefinition of property rights. The most valuable computer commodity is software, the labor-intensive product of highly-trained teams of programmers. Once written, software can be reproduced in unlimited quantities. To Silicon Valley, the replicative productivity of the new technology requires legal and technological solutions to ensure that "owners" get compensated for the use of their information. In other words, digital information, which can be made so readily available for use by everyone in society, must be "privatized" by copyright and intellectual ownership to the profit of an owner. Open-source is pushed to the margins, out-competed by brand advertising. When the industrialist hires workers to manufacture his product, that product loses the privacy of ownership that characterizes the work of a lone artisan. It becomes a social product, the product of the collective work of many people. To production by hired workers add the public availability of information with the new communications technology, and it becomes undeniably a social product. The "private ownership" of this intellectual property is a legal fiction. Converting it into the common property of all members of society changes the social nature of the product only by having it lose its class character.

Technocrats of robots and automation understand the new technology, and can even foresee why it will help some people and hurt others. But all the changes they predict amount to nothing more than the flourishing of some industries and the decline of others. Unless there is a fundamental change in the relationship between capital and labor, talk of revolution is pure hyperbole.

People considered "successful" in capitalist society such as Gates and Zuckerman are those who accumulate large sums of money and property. They automatically receive respect, admiration and deference - the very things the poorest people in society, who endure the chronic contempt or pity of society because they have no money, long most to possess. Since the manner in which the rich got their money is secondary to the fact they have it - if it is a concern at all-there is a hazy line between fortunes acquired legally or illegally.  The big corporations particularly those in the computer industry are habitual lawbreakers, convicted over and over of violating anti-trust, restraint-of-trade, price-fixing, bribery, workplace-health-and-safety, labour-relations and environmental-protection laws. If they were real persons instead of only legal ones, nearly all would be locked up for life without parole. As it is, corporation executives seldom spend any time in jail, and corporation stockholders don't even have to worry about being accused for their companies' illegal actions that may provide them millions in dividends.

Our Goal is Socialism

Economic, social and environmental problems cannot be solved under capitalism. Working for a new system is the only practical course of action. Given the global character of capitalism, it is necessary for socialists to build a world movement, where the goal of is the revolutionary destruction of capitalism and its replacement with a world socialist community. The Socialist Party seeks to bring the entire global economy under the ownership and control of all the people. A democratic economy will provide useful and satisfying jobs for all workers. It will end production for profit and will produce to meet human needs. By eliminating the profit motive, it will end waste and pollution and will make the conditions of work as safe, comfortable and gratifying as possible. The workers need a political party to spread the idea of social ownership, and to gain the support of the majority at the polls. The Socialist Party will educate and rally the majority for a revolution at the ballot box, the people's mandate for economic democracy. When this is achieved, the workers will assume control of their workplaces, and manage them democratically in a variety of ways, determined by local conditions and customs. Socialism is not state control from the top down. It's a state-free democracy from the bottom up. In practice, economic democracy means the end of the capitalist market, whose only goal is to realize the highest profit through the maximum exploitation of the working class. Labor power will no longer be a commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. Workers will no longer be exploited. Workers will collectively own and run the workplaces. Workers will democratically control all of our society. If the majority of workers are ready to vote for their revolutionary party, they'd certainly be ready to take over their workplaces and implement social and industrial democracy. The Socialist Party’s function is to educate and organise while providing the vehicle and mechanism for advocating fundamental change.

Production will be based on the needs and wants of all working people, taking into account environmental protection, conservation of resources and the needs of workers of other countries. Because we will be working and producing to meet our own needs and not for the profit of others, and because we will own and control the technology and use it to meet real human needs, we will be able to provide everyone a comfortable and secure livelihood working far less than we do now. The work-week will be reduced and leisure time increased for all workers. Under capitalism, almost everything that is produced is produced for profit. The needs of humanity, and the needs of all life, are subordinated to the bottom line. With capitalism, everything is turned into a commodity to be bought and sold.

All social wealth is ultimately the product of labour and labour alone. This includes the factories, technology and all other means of production, which are the product of past labour. Capitalist development has placed the modern facilities of production under the lock and key of private ownership. As a result, the working class majority suffers from growing privation and all the social ills emanating from that mal-distribution. The only solution is for the working class to organize and establish social democracy. In doing do, it can reestablish and reclaim possession of the wealth which past generations of workers created. Since this wealth was created by the collective labour of society, it rightfully belongs to all society. The fact that it today is privately owned by a few is the result of it being "legally" stolen from the working class. Society thus has the right to reclaim the property in the name of human survival, social well-being and progress.

Production and distribution will be planned to meet the needs of society. This will be a society of cooperating interests rather than conflicting material interests. People's priorities, their attitudes about life and their fellow humans, will change in an atmosphere of cooperation. The needs of the environment and consideration of all forms of life will be paramount. In our new society, we will receive the full product of our labour. Our compensation will be direct, as individual consumers of food, clothing, shelter, recreation, etc., and indirect, as social consumers of roads, schools, parks, and the repair and replacement of the tools of production that we cooperatively own. Socialism will abolish the wage system and thereby correct the imbalance between production and consumption that creates such catastrophic problems under capitalism.

De-fanging the capitalist beast

From cradle to grave, commercial interests infiltrate every aspect of our lives. Education has turned into vocational indoctrination, with predatory student loans and standardised testing, this schooling trains youth to become obedient wage-slaves who would never challenge the prescribed answers to ‘happiness’ as defined by corporate values. Health care systems have become insidious profit-making machines, where our bodies become a new frontier for exploitation for medical insurance and pharmaceutical profits. While low-income people (disproportionately those of colour) are sent to privatised prisons for minor offenses to engage in slave-labour camps. Those who manage to escape police repression are induced to volunteer to combat on the front lines of expansionist wars. The rule of conquest and blind eye to war-crimes have become entrenched within our very culture. This heartless system creates imaginary enemies and raises artificial threat levels to justify invasions of foreign countries. It crucifies innocents in “collateral” damage. Aggressors brutalise anyone who stands in the way of their conquest.

Capitalism is intent upon spreading its tentacles to conquer the globe. Some individuals may express regret for the crimes against peoples and nature but as a system, capitalism is devoid of empathy and remorse. Behind the supposed human rights and rule of law is the drive for profits, forever looking for the loop-hole to exploit to further accumulate capital. Corporations see everything in terms of quarterly business reports and profit margins. They legitimatize exploitation, making it rational to cheat and extract resources through sophisticated schemes of financialisation and privatisation which in another era would rightly be described as plundering and pillaging. De-fanging the capitalist beast calls for establishing socialism. We have to commit ourselves against capitalism and rediscover our own humanity.

Employees we are constantly struggling to keep up. And going on strike is the most publicised evidence of this. Militants emphasise that when everything else fails we must use the strike weapon.

We don't want more jobs. In fact, we don't want the jobs most of us have now. Bank tellers, bookkeepers and cashiers - all those who handle money. We don't want cops, lawyers and judges either. Nor soldiers and prison guards. But don't get us wrong. We do want to be useful and productive members of society. But first, we must be free. And that means a revolution to socialism. Socialism means production to satisfy social needs. So the next revolution must abolish capitalism and the government. It means the end to poverty, war, famine and tyranny: And the beginning of the true brotherhood of man.

It's difficult to understand exactly why Leninists reject so utterly the idea of a peaceful revolution. One explanation may be their romantic attachment to the model of urban insurrection played out in Petersburg in 1917. Another may be that the Socialist Party model of a political party leaves no role for the vanguard party and its leadership elite -- no place for Lenins, Trotskys, Stalins, Maos of such a revolution. Perhaps they feel that sacrifice at the barricades and blood-on-the-streets insurrection will pave the way for the CHEKA that will police their dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Socialist Party conception of the process to achieve socialism is a peaceful revolution through the ballot preceded by a period of economic and political education by a democratic mass party. An educated working class would result in an overwhelming victory at the polls. The socialist majority in parliament would abolish capitalism and disband the state apparatus. The power that will enforce the victory at the polls will be the class-conscious working class organised in their trade unions whose members do the work and are in a position to control production, communication, transportation and all other activity a counter-revolution would require.

Because we want a world without money: Free access to the necessaries of life, the only real issue in any election is the private ownership of the means of production and distribution. In one word, that issue is capitalism.