Our Lives could be very different

We live in a world of potential abundance for all, but we have trapped ourselves within a social system of mass deprivation. Across the globe millions and millions of our men and women are denied the satisfaction of their basic needs. Millions die each year from starvation. Millions more are debilitated and incapacitated by uavoidable or curable illnesses and diseases. Even in the so-called rich nations poverty is the lot of the majority: not just those under the official 'poverty-line' but the relative poverty which characterises the life of every worker who is deprived of access to what society could provide for them, but they cannot afford to buy. The working class are condemned by the present social system to cut-price, second-best lives. One inescapable aspect of capitalism is poverty. By this we do not mean destitution, as when people literally cannot afford food or clothing or a place to live. There are certainly plenty of homeless people, but poverty is far more pervasive than this. It involves people not having access to what they want or need, and having to make do with second- or third-best. Shopping at a cheap supermarket,  waiting for the sales to buy what you want, telling the kids they can’t have what they’ve set their hearts on - all these are examples of poverty. So is living in a house that’s too small for your family, or booking the cheapest holiday you can find. And so is working after your anticipated retirement age because your pension will not be big enough. Another illustration is the amount of debt with which people get landed with.

It also means you are likely to suffer from stress of one kind or another. This is partly the result of the daily fight with poverty, but there are many other sources of stress for workers. Many jobs are boring or dangerous, and many more offer little satisfaction to those who do them. Worrying about deadlines or targets, or feeling at the whim of your boss’s moods - all these increase the stress due to employment. And the farther you climb up the “career ladder”, the chances are the more responsibility you will bear and hence the more stress you will encounter. Add to this the insecurity of many jobs and the consequent fear of unemployment. Then there’s the stress of the daily journey to work, whether by car or public transport. Life under capitalism means worries and more worries.

Nor is it not just that the vast majority are forced to go without; it’s also that a relatively small number of people live in the lap of luxury. This inequality is not a matter of your neighbour having a bigger car than you or being able to afford two yearly holidays abroad. Instead we are referring to the millionaires and billionaires who own land, companies or shares, and don’t have to worry about two-for-the-price-of-one offers or whether they can afford a night out on Saturday. These people live in grand mansions, probably have a holiday home or two as well, own their own private jets, and employ armies of servants to look after them. Moreover, it’s not they who do the useful work in society: those who drive the buses, teach the children or work in factories or offices are the ones who suffer poverty. The Socialist Party argues that there are two classes under capitalism: the working class (who work for wages and always struggle to make ends meet) and the capitalist class (who receive their income from rent or profit and get the lion’s share of wealth). Belonging to the working class is what makes you poor.

The things we need to live and enjoy life are produced today only if there’s a financial profit in it for the private firms, state concerns and rich individuals who own and control the world's productive resources. It is this that causes the economic and military rivalry and the neglect of human needs we see all around us. And these will go on as long as sectional (private or nation-state) ownership and production for profit continue. The alternative is a society in which all forms of exchange and money will be abolished and all land and property will be taken into the control of the community.

The essential facts are very simple. The land and productive instruments are owned and exploited by a comparatively small number of persons. The workers, therefore, can only obtain a livelihood as the beasts of burden, the hirelings, of these capitalists. It further follows that the more of the good things of life the workers can make the fewer labourers need the exploiters hire. It is therefore not lack of necessaries, but the worker’s ability to produce more than is in demand, that enables the capitalists to create that powerful means of keeping the workers poor, the unemployed. The poverty that afflicts the working class is thus obviously not due to any impossibility of producing sufficient, since it is consequent upon the very opposite!   It is an effect of class ownership in the means of life. 

The Socialist Party advocates a system without commodity-production or any “price system”, wages or payment of money. We stand for a society based on common ownership where people would produce goods and services to be taken and used without buying and selling and in accordance with the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.  The collective human action that is needed to improve human life on Earth is democratic action to make the resources of the world the common heritage of all humanity. It is only on this basis that we can freely direct production towards the satisfaction of our needs and so ensure that every man. woman and child on this planet has adequate access to food, clothes, housing and all the other things needed to live an enjoyable life.

The world has developed the capacity to adequately feed, clothe and shelter every single man, woman and child on the planet. The resources, the technical knowledge and the skilled personnel exist to do this – the information on what to do is gathering dust on the shelves of practically every NGO but it is not done because the world is currently organised on the basis of the minority class ownership of productive resources and the production of wealth with a view to profit.

It is this profit system that stands in the way of satisfying human needs. It only allows production to take place in response to needs that can be paid for and then only if a big enough profit can be made from doing so. It diverts resources into maintaining a whole superstructure of finance and commerce – banks, insurance, accounting, advertising, etc – that is only needed because there is production for the market. And it diverts yet more resources into armed forces and their weapons which every state is compelled to have in view of the competitive struggle for profits – which as a last resort involves war – that is built-in to the system.

Once this artificial scarcity and this built-in waste is eliminated, as it would be in a world where the Earth's resources had ceased to be the private property of states, national and multinational corporations and rich individuals, then these resources could be directed to turning out wealth to meet human needs. It may take some time to completely clear up the mess left by the capitalist profit system, but people dying of hunger could be stopped immediately. So could all problems arising from money worries.

This is the practical solution to the practical problems facing humanity at this particular stage of its historical development. Unless this basic change from class ownership to common ownership, permitting the change from production for profit to production to satisfy human needs, is made, then unnecessary human suffering and a generally unsatisfactory life for everybody except a privileged few will continue.

End the wages system

The working class has fallen on troublesome times. All the forces of society and all the powers of government are arrayed against workingmen and women. In many places, the lot of the average worker is scarcely one remove above slavery.

Any form of society has to provide two things. Firstly, it must have to feed its members, clothe them and satisfy cultural needs through material goods, i.e. it must produce the means of subsistence for all. Secondly, society must replace used-up raw materials, replace machinery and factories and so on to allow the continued existence of society and the provision of work. Without these two major requirements of any human society, culture and progress would be unsustainable. Even capitalist production must meet these demands.   But is it not the case that every capitalist goes blindly on producing, competing with others, and hardly sees what is happening in front of his nose, the anarchy of the market and chaos of capital accumulation. Surely with the environmental degradation and global warming, the planet is now heading for ruination. Capitalism has failed miserably to provide the basic necessities of life for hundreds of millions of workers around the world and now the future of the species on the planet itself is now in doubt.

Let the working people manage and plan production to suit the needs of the people – for peace, prosperity, and plenty for all. The Socialist Party's goal, of course, is to turn all production away from the profit motive to supplying human needs.  Let us get together and pull together for the common good of all. There is not a redeeming feature to the present competitive wage system.. Every thoughtful person knows it is maintained for sating the greed of the ruling rich. Nothing less than the complete overthrow of the debasing grinding and degrading conspiracy against wage-workers will do. Why should one person be a wage-slave to keep another in luxurious idleness? We want a society whose workers run everything in the interests of the world's workers. We want a system that encourages every worker to become involved in running society; that educates everyone to act for the common good and does not indoctrinate people to look out for number one; that opposes placing selfish interests above the social needs. In socialism, the principle "to each according to need" will be as basic as the principle "every man for himself" is under capitalism. We want society to help each person grow as an individual. Under capitalism, only the bosses are free – free to hire and fire, free to pillage and plunder, free to make their profits. With socialism, the principle of work will be: "from each according to ability." People will work because they want to, because their brothers and sisters around the world need their work. They will share in decision-making, including the distribution of goods and services according to society's needs. They will share shortage if there are any along with abundance which there will be. The wage system will have been abolished. Distribution founded on free access eliminates the material incentive for the emergence of new bosses corrupted by all sorts of privilege. Government or party officials, specialists will no longer receive more money for work that is supposed "more important." The measure of work will have nothing to do with what people receive. People should and will get what they need, within the limits of what everyone can produce. The abolition of wages causes the social basis for privileges and a new class of bosses to disappear. For the first time in history, workers will receive a fair share of society's wealth, regardless of the work they do. Socialism will bring to an end socially useless forms of work that exist now only for capitalist profit. There will be no need for lawyers, advertisers, or salespeople. In one stroke, it will do away with layers of needless government bureaucrats, as well as the hordes of petty supervisors who oversee and manage us for the bosses.

What every worker must realise is that through trade union struggle we are not fighting the causes which are capitalism but only its symptoms. We are fighting against the effects of the system as Marx points out, and not against the system itself. The capitalists would love to perpetuate this situation.  When we fight for a demand like a wage increase of we are merely fighting against the effects of capitalism. Not merely that. We are petitioning the employing class. In other words, we envisage the continuation of the capitalist system. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. Of course, every pay rise that is won by the workers is immediately offset by the employers by more intensive work, by stricter supervision etc. and by a general price increase. So that, usually the worker is back to from where he or she started. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. Trade unionism merely restricts their struggle to attempts at lessening this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it with socialism. This is the inevitable limitation of trade union struggles. We do not, of course, therefore oppose trade union struggles or refuse to participate in them. In the course of these fights with our employers, workers begin to learn about the system of capitalist exploitation and the need to abolish it. Trade union struggles are necessary to educate the workers. But the economic struggle must be transformed into a political struggle for the capture of political power by the working class and it, otherwise it will sink into the morass of reformism.  We must go further and abolish the wages system itself.

Ending the wage system will reduce the problems capitalism causes inside the working class. Sexism, nationalism, and racism, are some of capitalism's greatest evils, exploiting one worker to a greater degree than another. Marx said that "the worker in white skin can never be free as long as the worker in black skin remains in chains." We oppose nationalism. National borders are artificial; they exist to divide workers and keep different sets of bosses in power. Workers need no borders. Workers in one part of the world are not different from or better than workers in another. Nationalism creates false loyalties. We endorse the revolutionary slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!"

Less Church-goers

A census of Scottish Christians found that there are around 390,000 regular churchgoers, down from 854,000 in 1984.

7.2% of Scotland's population regularly attend church, down from 17% in 1984

The number of congregations dropped from 4,100 in 1984 to 3,700 in 2016

42% of churchgoers were aged over 65.

40% of churchgoers are male

Four-fifths of church leaders (79%) are male, with an average age of 57

Lead researcher Dr Peter Brierley said the figures indicated a crisis in Christianity across Scotland. "We are living in the 21st century and one of the features of the 21st century is that people's allegiance to particular faiths is no longer as strong as it used to be," he said.

The People's Movement

Workers’ struggles which break out today do not express– even in an embryonic form – the need for socialism and revolutionary political organisation.  Trade union struggles no longer function as a school of communism, and no longer look towards their replacement by better and superior political and economic forms. Socialists no longer expect anything revolutionary from unions. Too often the unions propagate the false idea which sees the emancipation of the oppressed as being possible within the framework of capitalism. The "official" workers' movement has largely failed to resist attacks old and new.   Many unions simply seem to be hoping for the best, while failing to prepare for the worst. No matter how close some unions get attached to the bosses, they cannot escape the fact that their organisations are the target for emasculation just the same. 

The unions were formed in the first battles of the class and aimed at the establishment of less severe conditions of exploitation by uniting the greatest possible numbers of workers:

“The trade unions aim at nothing less than to prevent the reduction of wages below the level that is traditionally maintained in the various branches of industry. That is to say, they wish to prevent the price of labour power from falling below its value...The workers combine in order to achieve equality of a sort with the capitalist in their contract concerning the sale of their labour. This is the rationale (and logical basis) of the trade unions... The value of labourpower is ‘regarded by the workers themselves as the minimum wage and by the capitalist as the uniform rate of wages for all workers in the same trade’. For this reason the unions never allow their members to work for less than this minimum...” - The Grundisse

“Apart from their original purposes, they must now learn to act deliberately as organising centres of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves and acting as the champions and representatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the nonsociety men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, incapable of organised resistance by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the broad masses of workers that their efforts, far from being narrow and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions.”

(Karl Marx, Instructions for the delegates to the central provisional council of the IWA on the various questions to be debated at the Geneva Congress of 38 September 1866)

 In a letter to F. Bolte on 23 November 1871, Karl Marx precisely defined the characteristics of the political struggle of the working class in the conditions of his time:

“To become political, a movement must oppose to the dominant classes the workers acting as a class to make them concede by means of external pressure. Thus, the agitation is purely economic while the workers try, by means of strikes etc., in a single factory or even in a single branch of industry, to obtain from the private capitalists a reduction of working time; on the other hand, it is political when they forcefully obtain a law fixing the working day at eight hours etc. It is in this way that, from all the isolated economic movements, there develops everywhere a political movement, in other words a class movement with the aim of realising its interests under a general form which has the force of constraint for the whole of society”

You’re not paranoid if you think the world feels more unstable — it is. How do we win ? The tasks are the same as before, but with a new sense of urgency. As before, we must engage millions in the fight for a different future. No true revolution is possible without mass participation. We must build a vast network of work-place and community-based organising committees alongside mass socialist parties challenging the ruling class for political power. We must also be prepared to go beyond the concept of a general strike, and to build worker and neighbourhood assemblies that will replace the state with a true social democracy. This is a struggle not just to restore the old world-system, but to build a new one. This is the time to be revolutionary, to fight to win the world we actually want. Otherwise, catastrophic apocalypse of epic proportions awaits the working class. Intensified exploitation at work when it is possible to protect jobs from automation, the ecological destruction of our life-giving planet, resurgent racism and xenophobia including vigilante attacks on immigrants and refugees with mass deportations, and the constant threat of global war. That is why we fight for the future. That is why we need to fight to win.

The People Against the Profit System

"A worker in revolt is wiser than the learned professor who justifies his chains."

Under capitalism, workers have no control over what is produced and how. All that is decided by how much profit some capitalist will gain. But socialism enables society to decide how to organise itself and the resources of society to meet the needs of the people. As long as profit for the few is the basis of the economic system, that system–capitalism–will continue to go from crisis to crisis, with more and more misery for the people.

While the capitalists revel in luxury and extravagance, the workers are condemned to lives of toil and deprivation. Members of the upper class are known for eating too much. Members of the working class die for want of enough to eat. Poverty and the fear of poverty render their lives miserable. The average worker is not more than a few weeks removed from a state of destitution.  The workers have a power infinitely greater than that of the capitalists. That is their ability to produce wealth, to run industry and to carry on production. They can do this without capitalists, while without workers, capitalists are impotent and helpless. We would lose our chains, our miseries, but gain the world for all the workers, a world fit for men and women to live their lives in freedom of love and labour.

The fight for the liberation of the working class is not a fight for new class privileges and prerogatives but for equal rights and equal obligations for all and for the abolition of class rule, an ending of the wage system and every sort of oppression in whatever form such may reveal itself. The Socialist Party  is pitted against the whole profit-making system. It declares that there can be no compromise so long as the working class lives in want while the master class lives in luxury. 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 must own in common and run democratically all the essential industrial institutions . Whatever is good and benevolent in our society can be saved only by the workers, not because they possess the men's hearts of saints and angels but because the desire to live is the basic principle that compels men and women to seek a more suitable environment, so that they may live better and more happily.  The first step in this direction is to overthrow the capitalist state and establish socialism. The Socialist Party believes that the working class is ready to challenge the wage system and is fed up with the reformist groups which offer no alternative. 

Imagine a united labour movement taking control and political power. Real working class political strength. Going on to end wage slavery. This is our future. With a proper understanding of the economic system, the workers will soon find means to end that system, and to raise on its ruins a society having for its goal the benefit of the whole, instead of just a privileged part, of the community. Wage Slaves!  Think of it!  The time has come when what has appeared so far off is fast approaching – the abolition of the wage system. The Socialist Party differs from every other political party in that it aas set up for the abolition of the wage system. While the political parties of the reformers declare their compromise and collaboration with the property-owners as their “revolutionary” goal, the Socialist Party is working on changing the basic foundation of the current social system. A mere change of government personnel does not satisfy us because capitalism remains and the exploitation continues. And it will continue, until the workers abolish the wages system. 

The abolition of capitalism is our organisation’s expressed goal. While others have expressed the damage caused by the profit system, the Socialist Party has worked out a platform which will make the end of capitalism a reality. Let us organise and learn, because we have no time to lose. The future belongs to those who fight not to those who are subservient and cowardly. Socialism will be a system in which there are no more classes, no more wage workers and no more lounging parasites. A scientific system, which will not be led by the privileged but carefully guarded by society’s useful producers, led by capable, able men. A system in which everyone will have to do useful work if they are able and if they want to live.

How to feed the world?

The world produces plenty of food to feed everyone, year after year’, with hunger being caused by poverty and exclusion, not a lack of food. The reason is that like all others today, food is produced to sell for the profit of the growers and processors.  Population growth is not the problem that it is suggested to be: the rate of population growth has slowed, and although there will still be a sizable increase in population in the coming decades and a need to increase food production, there is the potential to increase the amount of land under cultivation, which a socialist society freed from production for profit will permit.

The industrial food system is also a major driver of climate change, with around half of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the food system. This covers deforestation, food waste, refrigeration, transport, processing, and packaging. Farming practices contribute as well, in the form of petrol to run machinery and the use of chemical fertilisers. A small number of giant fertiliser companies are the major users of shale gas from fracking, and, once applied to the soil, fertilisers result in large amounts of nitrous oxide, which is far more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Cutting out the use of chemical fertilisers could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to ten percent, it is argued, and would allow farmers to rebuild organic matter in the soil and so increase fertility. Of course, profit is the force behind these industrial farming methods.

Different kinds of food make different contributions to climate change. The worst are red meat, cheese, fish, and poultry, with lentils, fruit, milk and vegetables having the least impact. Processed foods, which use soybeans and palm oil among other products, are big greenhouse gas emitters and are being consumed more and more. Cutting down on meat and dairy production – which does not imply everyone becoming vegan – could make a major change in emissions.

 Even without any increase in the global use of chemical fertilisers, food production could be significantly expanded were such a resource to be more rationally distributed. In a socialist society, free of the constraints of the marketplace, it would, of course, be entirely feasible to allocate resources in such a way as to ensure their most productive use. Underpinning this freedom would be the unity of common purpose, a unity forged in the basic structure of a society in which all had free and equal access to the wealth that society produced.
Secondly, socialist society would obviously want to halt and reverse the long-term decline in soil fertility by improving the humus content of the soil. Not only would this make for the more efficient absorption of chemical fertilisers but would help contain further topsoil loss as a result of erosion. Whilst this would involve more labour intensive work which would require a larger agricultural workforce it should be borne in mind that one of the greatest productive advantages of socialism over capitalism is that it would release a tremendous amount of labour for socially productive work. At least half of the workforce today are engaged in activities that, although vital to the operation of a modern capitalist economy would have no purpose in a society where production was directly and solely geared to the satisfaction of human needs.Eco-friendly 'cover cropping' and 'no-till farming' techniques can often build soil quality while making farms a carbon sink rather than the emitter. But as long as short-term profit and the diktats of the capitalist market which the main food processing industries and retailers submit to, reign supreme, the most eco-friendly methods will not be a priority.
Thirdly, and most importantly, as a society freed from the profit motive and competitive pressures "to produce as much cash as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as quickly as possible", socialism will be able to adopt agricultural methods which achieve a working compromise with nature (for, as explained, all agriculture unavoidably upsets the pre¬existing ecosystem to a greater or lesser extent) respecting the long-term considerations which ecological science teaches are vitally important.

What will become of the meat and dairy industry in socialism? At present, the socialist case focuses necessarily on the emancipation of the human species from capitalist-induced oppression and suffering, while the ethical question of how we should regard and treat animals remains as one of the icebergs of other issues submerged below the waterline. What is clear to socialists if to nobody else is that humanity’s relationship to nature was never really anthropocentric but in fact ‘oligocentric’. Nature and everything in it including the vast majority of the human species existed for the sole purpose, use, and disposition of the few members of the ruling elites. In the view of those elites, we humans were simply clever animals. Once this highly destructive oligo-centric principle is overthrown, a new ethical framework will inevitably emerge in relation to resource exploitation. Quite what this will be and whether it will become genuinely anthropocentric or alternatively expand to encompass considerations beyond the species barrier is at present an open question. If socialists expect a large-scale meat industry they will have to face the fact that there is no ‘ethical’ way to do this. Unless and until the welfare and humane treatment of humans is first attended to the question of the ethical treatment of animals must remain an issue waiting for its moment.

Food production should be about meeting the self-defined needs of people, not a profit-motivated venture for corporations, agribusinesses and their boards and shareholders. Food security is about meeting the dietary needs of all people, at all times, enabling them to live a healthy life and not to be constantly in fear of the vagaries of the market. Only by addressing the monetary element, by coming to terms with the absolute necessity of removing it and any profit motive from the food supply will farmers, consumers and all the peoples of the world have the security of knowing that sufficient food is available to all, at all times and in all situations. Food security for all the world's citizens is just not possible in a capitalist system. 

A key part of a socialist society would be a serious reduction in the working week. This would free up large quantities of time for participation in allotments.  Inthe usa, the community garden (equivalent to the UK's community allotment) is increasing in popularity. There are currently over two million allotment holders across Europe 

The Profit System Must Go

There prevails a widespread discontent with the existing social order which is manifesting itself in the many raised voices for the reconstruction on a completely new basis of society to end the concrete evils of this economic system. It is not a vague feeling of unrest rising out of general conditions but the result of sharp, stinging experiences. What are these experiences which have generated the demand for a different system of production and distribution? Without an understanding of what is wrong and the sources of these wrongs it is impossible to formulate the reconstruction aims which will end the social ills from which we suffer. It is necessary that we have a clear understanding of what is evil and whence its source if we are to take action to remedy the situation.

The working class must make its stand against the capitalist system – whose lust for profits and interest, for investments, markets and expanded capital, for raw materials and cheaper labour, can mean only ruthless exploitation and abject slavery.  We have solved the problem of production. The wonders of machinery and technology has freed us from the danger of lack of food, clothing, or houses to live in because of the inability to produce them. We can produce all that is needed to supply the necessities of life, as well as the comforts of life — education and the opportunity for recreation — to all the people. Yet the individual worker is always at the mercy of his or her employer, never sure that tomorrow he or she may be dismissed. Today work may be plentiful and the opportunity to earn a living easily secured but tomorrow the factory or office doors may be closed and the employees out on the streets, facing hunger and starvation. This is not only true of the shop-floor workers. It applies to the salaried staff in management equally. The plain fact is that a numerically small group of people, the capitalists, who own the machinery of production and the natural resources, have the masses at their mercy. They are our masters and we, the workers, their serfs. The evils of the present social order — insecurity, low wages, and industrial conflicts — are the product of an industrial system in which the supreme purpose is the taking of profits. The present industrial system divides the people of this country into two classes. Anyone with a grain of common sense will have to admit that. There are people who work for wages and those who employ wage workers. There are the people who own the industries and those who must go to the owners of industry or their representatives for the opportunity to earn a living. The ownership of industry is the source of the power of the profit-seeking class. It gives them control of the opportunities of the masses to secure the necessities of life. The millions of men and women in this country who are dependent upon the wages they earn for a living are economic serfs. They have not won the “inalienable right to life, liberty, and happiness,” because their opportunity to earn the necessities of “life, liberty, and happiness” can be taken from them by the owners of industry, and is taken from them whenever the owners of industry are unable to make profits for themselves from the labour of the workers. The power to hire and fire the workers, to give and take away the opportunity to earn a living, carries with it the power to compel the workers to work for such wages as will leave the capitalists a profit from their labour. 

The business of making profits is shrouded in great mystery by the capitalists. They seek to make the workers believe that it is through some occult power that they make the processes of production yield them profits and build up great fortunes for them. There is no mystery about the source of profits. The capitalists do not create wealth out of the air in juggling with industry. They make profits because they purchase the labour-power of the workers for less than the value of the goods the workers produce; that is, they do not pay the workers the full value of their labor. There is no other way of making profits out of industry. The lower the wages for which the capitalists can purchase the labour-power of the workers and the longer or intensified their hours of labour, the greater will be the capitalist’s profits. The workers naturally seek to increase their wages and reduce their hours of labor. They endeavor to secure for themselves more of the wealth they produce and better working conditions. The capitalists resist. They see their profits menaced by the workers’ demands. The existing economic system is a huge profit-making machine, which has no relation to the happiness and well-being of the masses of the people. It does not exist to bring them “life, liberty, and happiness.” The ruling class would like the workers to forget these things. If the work of reconstruction is to result in a better world, its aim must be the abolition of the profit system. Its continued existence is incompatible with any proposal to reconstruct our production system in any cooperative or rational foundation. Common ownership is logically the next step in the evolution of society, hand in hand with industrial democracy. The workers will enjoy the wealth they produce. If, after supplying everyone with nutritious food, good clothing, a comfortable home, and the opportunity for education and leisure, they find they have surplus products on their hands, they will simply cut down the hours of labour. We can through socialisation — through the organisation and coordination of our powers of production, eliminate waste and create a large increase in our productive ability. The abolition of exploitation through the abolition of rent, interest, and profits, will insure to all the enjoyment of the wealth produced through our greatly productive power and will end the misery and poverty which is such a dark blot upon our civilisation. Production for use and not for profit will enable us to bring into existence more than enough wealth to give a high standard of living.

The work the Socialist Party has to do on the way to freedom, is through building a class conscious political movement which will carry on the work of educating the workers to an understanding of the system of exploitation which now exists and the class character of the government and to organize the workers for the struggle to wrest control of the government out of the hands of the capitalist class. At the same time, it is an essential part for the workers to build up organisations in the industries themselves, having as their goal to supersede the capitalists in control of industry. In these organisations in the industries are the beginning of the new industrial order that will expand and grow until they become a huge cooperative network of the workers for control and management of the work of production and of all matters pertaining to their common interest. 

Capitalism Is To Blame.

As all of you are aware racist attacks have, recently, become rampant. The worse place being Germany where an influx 890,000 asylum seekers in 2015 have caused a backlash and a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment. There were 3,500 attacks in 2016, which led to 560 people being injured; 43 of them were children. 

Capitalism is a divisive system and there is no reason to think it will stop. As long as members of the working lass blame each other for their misfortune they will not organize for the solution of a great world-wide co-operative commonwealth called socialism. 

Steve and John.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY

“Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat".  Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme,

“Dictatorship of the proletariat” was a phrase used by Marx. The phrase was not intended for, and not used in, one of his books or major pamphlets, but was merely a remark used in passing in the course of correspondence. This however has not prevented the phrase being analysed and dissected ad nauseam. But never with the meaning given to it by either the Left or the Right. Marx derived the language from the constitution of the Roman Republic where there was provision for one of the magistrates in times of crisis to be nominated dictator, which meant that he was invested with plenary powers to deal with the situation. Proletarii was the word used to describe the poor Roman citizens who were regarded as contributing nothing to the State but children (in Latin proles means ‘offspring’.) At the time of the French Revolution, the leaders and thinkers of which modelled themselves on the Ancient Roman Republic. The Jacobins were in favour of a ‘dictatorship’ by a minority of revolutionaries to crush the resistance of the nobility. The term proletaire came into use to describe ordinary, poor people. The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ was for Marx, the exercise of political power by the working class in their own interest. This Marx equated with a complete political democracy in which the working class — the majority in capitalist society — would rule. His references to the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ all show that he understood it to be the exercise of political power by the working class within a democratic framework. n speaking of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ rather than simply of a ‘revolutionary dictatorship’, Marx made a decisive break with the Jacobin tradition. The idea of ‘dictatorship’ was given a democratic content, since the plenary political power it implied was to be exercised by the majority class in society and not by some revolutionary minority.

Engels in his introduction to the German edition of “The Civil War in France” writes:

“The German philistine has lately been thrown once again into wholesome paroxisms by the expression “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Well, gentle sirs, would you like to know how this dictatorship looks? Then look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The Commune was an instance of majority control based upon democratic elections. There was no suppression of the newspapers or the propaganda of the minority, and no denial of their right to vote. The Communards, having once obtained control of the State, set about democratising the machinery of legislation and administration. For example, they filled all positions of administration, justice, etc., through election by universal suffrage, the elected being at all times subject to recall by. their constituents. They also paid for all services at the workmen’s rate of pay.

Marx used the word in an explicit sense to mean the domination of society by one class through its control over the state machine. He often, for example, referred to Britain as a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", though he was freely allowed to write and work in the country. 

DICTATORSHIP  OF THE PARTY

Capitalism is the dictatorship of the bosses

Working people should not be content to remain wage slaves of the capitalists.  Higher wages will solve their problem, when the problem is the wages system itself which condemns workers to be wage slaves and to continually struggle for a living wage. The principal lesson is that another year from now, workers will be forced to fight precisely the same struggle again, just to keep close to their present standard of living. It is necessary to take the struggle forwards, to fight for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system of exploitation. There are no solutions within the capitalist system. The choice is between Left-wing capitalism on one side and the Socialist Party on the other. The Left is for the wages system; the Socialist Party for its abolition. The Socialist Party curries no favours of the employing class and grants none.  It panders to no-one, relying only upon the awakening working class to muster beneath its banner carry it to victory. The Sociaist Party's goal is to raise the consciousness of fellow-workers to the level of a socialist understanding.

Despite relative gains for some workers, the rate of exploitation continues to increase. Each year, a larger share of production goes for profits, a smaller share for wages and other workers’ income. For the reformists, the citizen's wage or universal basic income has become a siren song. The prophets of the future predict a social order of robots in which only a relatively small handful of workers will be required to operate an automated new technology capable of producing a super-abundance of all requisite commodities. Under this order, they argue, the wages system would become obsolete. Work would of necessity, have to be separated from income, for there would otherwise not be enough purchasers for the ever increasing product of the cybernetics. To avoid total collapse, they contend, it will be necessary to provide a guaranteed income for all without regard to who actually performs the little work involved. Most of these experts do a useful service in criticising and exposing the utter insanity of the present capitalist system. Their analysis of the possibilities of abundance for all under a rational system of distribution of the product of modern technology serves to buttress the socialist critique of the capitalist system – that under capitalism, goods and services are produced, not to meet the needs of the people, but for profit. There can be no argument against the proposition that given time and an uninterrupted development of the tendencies inherent in the technological revolution, the amount of labour required to produce an economy of abundance could be reduced to a minimal quantity. Labour-saving machinery is not objectionable in themselves, for in the long run they produce more goods for people to enjoy. What is objectionable is the way in which capitalism introduces new machines, their use to increase profits at the workers’ expense, to bring on unemployment and depression and hunger. One class—the capitalist class—owns and controls the social necessaries, to wit: the economic resources of the world. That class, for its own protection and perpetuation in power, subjects all institutions to its own interests. 

For the capitalists run things for their own profit. They don’t have to pay wages to machines, and the workers not replaced by machines have to produce more than ever. For the workers, automation mean insecurity, and often disaster. Traditional skilled and semi-skilled occupations become useless in many cases. Workers are removed farther and farther from the commodities they produce; they have less and less reason to take pride in their work. In those factories made obsolete by new methods of production, employers intensify speed-up in an effort to compete. If they can, they cut wages and make jobs and working hours “flexible”. Eventually, such factories modernise or have to be closed down. That is the way capitalism operates, the only way it can operate.  Socialism will use new technology not to produce unemployment but to produce more goods in less working time. The labour power set free by automation will be used for more science, research, education, health measures and other social services, and to promote wider participation in cultural life and recreation. Thus, with socialism the workers will get all the benefits of robotics. So our main job is to kick out the capitalists and establish socialism, not introduce some half-measure.

The time has arrived to come together and build an economy which benefit workers and communities, not industrialists and financiers. It’s time for people to come together for the battles ahead.

Protecting the Planet

Will capitalism lead the world to ecological disaster? It is certainly having a good try. Socialists have for decades railed at capitalist market production for being on a relentless collision course with the environment, and have frequently used clichés like 'profits of doom' and 'merchants of menace'. Now, rarely a day goes by when our attention is not drawn to the various issues of environmental degradation and how the increase in human activity is impacting on large areas of the natural environment globally.

It is time to stop the rape and pillage of the Earth. It is time to protect the environment and to enjoy its bounties in a sensible and sustainable way. The world has the technology and the human expertise. It just needs the political will to make the change. Democracy has been reduced to a tiresome routine that involves electing the rulers once in five years. They have become election machines with their own vested interests. These machines are designed to gather votes and use them as fodder to convert money into power, and power back into money. Substituting one party for another, or making a change of administrative power is not enough; we need an entire new politics. This cannot be done leaders or by a political party but instead if everyone joins together, understanding that this is their work, then a dream becomes a reality. People’s movements need to come together.

The fact that more and more people are becoming concerned about the way the environment is abused is encouraging. But campaigning for increased legislation is not the answer. We need to get rid of a society where a small minority can manipulate nature for their own ends and replace it with one where we all have a real say in how nature is used. While the non-violent direct action policies of the environmentalists may achieve limited success against government policies by lobbying for better regulation, at the end of the day, they will never be able to overcome the profit motive which is the root cause of the problems they wish to ameliorate and are destined to struggle endlessly against capitalism.

The built-in rivalry between vying sections of the capitalist class always results in collateral damage in some form or another. At one end we have the everyday casualties of austerity measures and redundancies. Whilst at the other end extensive damage to the environment. When confronted by barriers of environmental legislation which are designed to diminish the rate of expected profits and the accumulation of capital, the capitalists will do what they have always done in their search for short-term profits: finding or creating loopholes, moving the goalposts, corrupting officials, trying to bribe the local population with empty promises, or shifting the whole concern to an area or region where a more favourable reception is expected and profits maintained.

Before anything constructive can be done, capitalism must go and, with it, the artificial division of the world into separate, competing states. The Earth, and all its natural and industrial resources, must become the common heritage of all humanity. A democratic structure for making decisions at global as well as at local levels must come into being.  When such a united world has been established (or is about to be established) we can decide how to repair the damage capitalism has done to the biosphere. Then what scientific consensus already know should be done can be done, and humanity can begin to organise its relationship with the rest of nature in a genuinely sustainable way. The world's resources are owned by a small minority who use nature to produce goods to be sold in order to make profits. Production for profit means that costs must be kept as low as possible. In this atmosphere the cheapest methods of production must be used and the cheapest methods are rarely those which have a minimal impact on nature. As long as production is carried on for making profits and not for needs the same problems of pollution, resource depletion and species extinction will remain.  Capitalism is simply unable to run on green lines, as its motive force is expansion and domination, with no thought for the consequences for the people or the environment. 

You Have No Stake In This Matter.

The American Government said, on March 7, it had begun deploying an advanced missile defence system, (if one can call it defence], in South Korea, prompting the Chinese to warn of a new atomic arms race in the region which is on edge over North Korea's drive to build a nuclear stockpile. The US announcement came the day after the launch of 4 missiles by North Korea into the waters just off the Japanese coast which they said was a drill for striking American bases in Japan.

 Tensions are mounting as capitalists on both sides want to control the South China Sea. 

 Though we don't know how things will play out, we do know that the working class in North and South Korea, China and the US have no stake in the matter. 

Steve and John.

What It Boils Down To.

Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown, demanded, on March 7, to be informed by Education Minister, Mitzie Hunter, exactly how many Ontario schools are going to be shut down. He believes more than 600 schools across Ontario are being threatened with closure. Hunter replied, "I'm not going to provide you with an arbitrary number based on the question you asked." Patrick said, "After thirteen years of waste and scandal after scandal, the Wynne Liberals are trying to balance the books on the backs of our students by fast-tracking school closures." 

Once again, it boils down to money, or lack of. That's capitalism, folks.

 Steve and John.

Hold high the red banner

Fellow-workers, political parties are the expression of economic interests, and in the last analysis are carried to victory or defeat by the development or retardation of economic classes.  It is private property in land and in machinery that creates the division of classes into slave-masters and the enslaved.  To quote the words of Ernest Jones, the Chartist activist:

"The monopoly of land drives him (the worker) from the farm into the factory, and the monopoly of machinery drives him from the factory into the street, and thus crucified between the two thieves of land and capital, the Christ of Labour hangs in silent agony."

We appeal to you then, fellow worker, to rally around the only banner that symbolises hope for you.  Cast off all your old political affiliations, and organise and vote to reconquer society in the interests of its only useful class – the workers. Let your slogan be, the common ownership of the means of life, your weapons the industrial and political organisation to conquer your own emancipation. The Socialist Party remains revolutionary, not in the sense that policemen and politicians understand the word, but in its true historical significance, for it is the conscious expression of the working people’s will, to strive for a radical transformation of society and to enable fellow wage-slaves to substitute socialism for capitalism. The emancipation of the working-class is a historical necessity, and it can only be the work of the workers itself. Wherever folk are drudging under the yoke of capitalism, the organised working men and women will demonstrate for the idea of their social emancipation. This conviction is the keynote of the Socialist Party's message.

Neither regulatory legislation nor the resistance of the trade unions removes the main thing which needs abolishing: capitalist relations, which constantly reproduce the contradiction between the capitalist class and the class of wage labourers. The mass of wage labourers remain condemned to life-long wage labour; the gap between them and the capitalists becomes ever deeper and wider the more modern technology prevails. The reformists would gladly convert wage-slaves into contented wage-slaves, so they must hugely exaggerate the advantageous effects of piecemeal palliatives, etc.  Reforms may sometimes ameliorate the situation of the working class by lightening the weight of the chains labour is burdened with by capitalism, but they are not sufficient to end capitalism and to emancipate the workers from the tyranny of wage-slavery. Fellow members of the working- class declare that they are done for ever with the myth that liberty, or even an effective amelioration of the most cruel evils and sufferings of capitalist exploitation will be granted by the benevolence and justice of the ruling class. Only the action of the working people themselves and organised in a class party for the political struggle, can change wage-slaves into equal citizens of a free commonwealth.

The interests of the workers, as the exploited and oppressed, class of society, are the same in all countries. In consequence our must be an world-wide one. Across the frontiers and seas the workers of all nations reach out to each other the hands for a brotherly union; against the global power of capitalism rises the power of the working class as the workers stand up together in unity to affirm the solidarity of our class interests to show that the capitalist exploitation unites the workers without difference of trade, sex, religion, and nationality, into the one revolutionary force, that is going to conquer the world, where labour has all to win and nothing to lose but its chains.

To the fellow members of the working class, the time has arrived when every man and woman will have to choose whether capitalism with all its attendant miseries and horrors is to remain enthroned, or whether we intend to be free. We shall have to choose whether we really believe in self-emancipation, or whether, for generations yet to come, we prefer to remain the tools of the capitalists, and the slaves of profit. We are confident that socialism is the way out for our class from the horrid nightmare of the competitive struggle which sets nation against nation, class against class, and individual against individual. The struggle between individual capitalists to realise profits sets employer against employer. The conflict between national groups of financiers sets nation against nation, and produces war. But despite their individual and national conflicts the whole capitalist class stands united in their common desire to exploit Labour. Hence under capitalism the freedom of the working class consists in the freedom to starve or accept such conditions as are imposed upon them by the employing class. But the freedom of the master class consists in their untrammelled freedom to buy Labour to create profit. Thus the workers are not free. Neither owning nor controlling the means of life, they are wage slaves of their employers, and are but mere commodities.

In opposition to all other parties—Conservative, Lib-Dem, and Labour— the Socialist Party affirms that so long as one section of the community own and control the means of production, and the rest of the community are compelled to work for that section in order to obtain the means of life, there can be no peace between them. The propertied class controls the State machine, thus our aim demands the capture of the political institutions through the ballot box to afford an opportunity to achieve a peaceful social revolution. Work for the building of the world anew, for the sweeping away of ignorance, for the full physical and mental development of men and women free from class exploitation, and the degradations of poverty. Refuse, and by your neglect you stand for misery, exploitation, greed and war. The eyes of the world are upon you. The choice is yours.