It is time for a world without money

There’s no doubt that everyone wants to live in a better world. Almost everyone you speak to today senses that big changes are coming to our way of life.  We are now seven billion people yet there is no common goal, and no coordinated administration to manage our society and environment in a fair and sustainable way. The capitalist exchange economy with its production for profit prevents this from happening. Our current system is clearly not working. With socialism humanity unites in common purpose – to create a better life for everyone and a better life for ourselves. You probably think a world without private property, prices, money or even a government sounds crazy, right? We have been brought up to believe that we must compete to survive, and that life is a constant struggle. But does it really still have to be this way? We need a whole new system. The old system don't serve us anymore and we can do much better now. Why not try?

New technology and robots mean more people are losing their jobs and struggling to earn enough to survive, resulting in more poverty. Meanwhile, capitalism demands constant growth, which results in companies ravaging and polluting the environment, making shoddy products that are designed to break The 1% own half of all global wealth today, while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet. Improved and better technology is not the problem but part of the solution as we can use it to automate the production of pretty much everything, meeting practically all our needs with minimal effort. Just people helping each other and using technology to provide abundance for everyone. We can now automate the production of most things we need, so scarcity needs no longer be an issue, thus neither will greed be a problem. Why do people work in the first place? To enable them to meet their basic needs, ie. food, shelter, etc. What if those needs were already met? By working together for the benefit of each other, automating the production of many things with today's technology, and rotating certain community tasks amongst its members, you'd then be free to do whatever you want. People who already work in jobs they're passionate about would carry on because that's what they love. All of us, using the internet, online referendums, community voting, the appointment of project managers and delegates to committees will collectively administer society.

It is time for humanity to evolve; to rise above the limits of money and borders. We have the technology now to create an efficient hi-tech and abundant society, with all of us working together, connected, for each other, if we choose it. Now is the time for the next chapter in human existence. It’s time to make everything free.  it’s the only rational and logical way to proceed.  Just think about our world today: Because of capitalism, we have wars, poverty, greed, corruption, inequality, and injustice; our air, rivers, lands and seas are poisoned; we can’t access good healthcare or a decent education. Most of us are hard-pressed to make ends meet, we work in jobs that we hate or don’t get paid enough for, or we are unemployed, homeless and on the periphery of society. While life may be difficult for us in the developed world, remember, it is literally impossible for many millions of people every year in developing nations. We have tens of thousands of children dying every day in the world of hunger and diseases, even though we have the food and the cures to prevent it! How on Earth did we come to accept this as normal? Our planet has become a hostile place to live in.  Companies need a constant turnover of products in order to be profitable. It just doesn’t make financial sense to build products to last. It is better for business to keep producing disposable or sub-standard goods, despite the waste of natural resources and pollution that this causes. Many companies spend millions on advertising every year ‘creating a market’ for unnecessary products to justify manufacturing for profit. This is not just wasteful and polluting but has also created a culture of consumerism and a dangerous illusion of ‘limitless’ growth – an illusion that is slowly poisoning and choking us.


  Human beings are becoming more and more obsolete in the workplace. Our increasing global unemployment has nothing to do with incompetent governments. It is merely the growth of technology, and it’s going to get worse. Machines are taking over. Technology is a major contributing factor to unemployment. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we’re doing a lot of things wrong in our society. Everywhere you look – greed, corruption, crime, poverty, financial stress, our health system, climate change – all of it links back to the way we do business on this planet. This simply must change. With the establishment of free access production-for-use socialism, there would be no more poverty or social inequality for example. There would be no more reckless destruction of the environment in the name of profit. All the associated problems of greed, corruption, and crime would become almost non-existent. We would each be able to live richer, happier and more connected lives while reaching our fullest individual potential. There’s no doubt that the rewards of a money-free world would be immense. Socialism is no longer a futurist utopian dream. A money-free world of true abundance, peace and fulfillment are attainable today. What are we waiting for? Whose permission do we need?


Adapted from Freeworlder website

  https://freeworlder.com/blog/

Sounds Nuts Doesn't It?

A buddy just bought a fresh off the assembly line Ford Escape, which he calls, ''a computer on wheels''. Actually, there are four computers which help run it, one of which breaks the speed down if it's too close to the vehicle in front. Many may think its great since it prevents accidents and also saves the insurance capitalists a lot of money, but let's not kid ourselves, it's a step towards driverless vehicles which will inevitably cause more unemployment.

This may not mean that in a socialist society one will be able to program his/her car and take a nap on the trip. Maybe yes, maybe no, though it could also mean that in socialism we wouldn't need cars so badly. The automobile is both a product and a symbol of capitalism. For millions of us, a car is a necessity; we need it to get to work so we can make the money that will pay for the car. 

Sounds nuts doesn't it? But don't expect sanity and capitalism to go hand in hand, cos if you look for a connection you'll be looking longer than it will take you to pay for your car.

 Steve and John

Spoil the Ballot

SPOIL THE BALLOT
WRITE "WORLD SOCIALISM"

Our emancipation can only be achieved by turning the machinery of production into the common property of society so that they can be used to produce the requirements of life in abundance for all; in a word, socialism must be established. The Socialist Party is the only party in this country that consistently works towards this end to hasten the day when the fratricidal warfare of capitalism is replaced by the fraternal co-operation.

Until the time arrives when our fellow-workers rally to the Socialist Party in greater numbers and enable it to take its proper place in electoral contests as the only working-class political party in this country, it has no candidates standing in Scotland. Hence all candidates before you at this election stand for the maintenance of capitalism. Your duty to your class is plain. Go to the polling station and write “WORLD SOCIALISM” upon your ballot paper. 

 Afterward, the task before you is to join in the fight for socialism, for only that alone can deliver you from the misery and drudgery which to-day you experience and endure.

Chaos or Sanity - the election choice

Once more we are faced with a bunch of politicians who can only be distinguished from one another by the colour of their rosettes, but there are many thousands of people not prepared to support any of them. This is no ordinary election manifesto. We make no promises; we do not ask for your support. Indeed, the Socialist Party does not want your support unless you are convinced that the case for socialism is a sensible one and is in your interest. Most of you will not know much about the Socialist Party. Many people have heard the word “socialist" and imagine that it was something to do with the dictatorship that used to exist in Russia. It is understandable that many people regard “socialism" as nationalised industries or as just another political cliché, used to win votes for Labour politicians, but has very little meaning. The Socialist Party stands solely for socialism because we do not think that capitalism can ever be made to work in the interests of the people. Capitalism always puts the needs of the minority who own and control the factories, farms, offices, the transport, the media, the means of wealth production and distribution, before those of the vast majority — we, the working class — who produce the wealth, but own little more than our ability to work, which we have to sell for wages.

No political party — not even ourselves — can humanise capitalism to make it run in the interests of the wage slaves. That's why it’s time for you to stop giving your votes to politicians who stand for the profit system. None of them possess recipes for economic success. None of them will provide decent housing for everyone. None of them will prevent people from starving to death. None of them will end the threat of wars. None of them will effectively halt climate change. Why waste your vote on parties that cannot solve those pressing problems? Why keep hoping that a miracle will happen and the insanity of capitalism will be put right?

 The Socialist Party says that the resources of society must be taken into the hands of the whole community — and by that, we don't mean the state, but all of us, organised together, consciously and democratically. In a socialist society, we will produce for use, not profit. Producing for use means ending the colossal waste of resources on armies, armaments, trade, banking and insurance, and all the other social features which are only necessary within capitalism; it means devoting human energies and natural resources to producing the best of what people really need and want. By running society on the basis of common ownership, democratic control and production for use we can all have free access to all goods and services.

Socialism can only be established when a majority of workers understand and want it, so there is no point in seeking support on any other basis. Secondly, you will have noticed that what we are advocating is different — it has never been tried. That gang of political has-beens, the Lib-Dems have nothing to offer. The Labour Party, if elected, will continue its futile exercise of trying to reform capitalism. The Tories will pursue their vicious policy of dancing to the tune of austerity. This is the only election appeal which is making a proposal to transform world society from the chaos and waste into the co-operative democratic commonwealth.

Capitalism puts the profits of the few before the needs of the many. Proposals to reform the profit system cannot bring socialism. When a majority of workers, disillusioned with the old parties understand and want socialism, the new system can be established almost immediately. Have the millions of workers who were fooled by the bogus promises in previous elections learned not to trust their destinies to the professional politicians? Capitalism is the cause of poverty, unemployment and environmental destruction. As open defenders of the capitalist system, the Tories undoubtedly belong in the political museum of bankrupt ideologies. They stand before the working class with a bag of vague, stale and unworkable policies which we are supposed to believe will make capitalism decent and pleasant. So, is Labour the only alternative? Desperate Labour canvassers plead for working class votes on the basis that anything would be better than the Tories. Socialists do not want something better than the Conservative Party but something better than capitalism! Workers must make clear to the Labour mis-leaders that never again will a Labour government receive the support of those over whose exploitation it presides. Socialists have clear memories of when Labour ministers used all the power they could muster to attack the striking public service workers. The workers must put the reformists of the Labour Party where they belong: on the political scrap-heap.

If you are a convinced socialist you should vote for your principles whether there is a socialist candidate in your constituency or not. The Socialist Party is contesting  three seats:

Islington North (Bill Martin)

Battersea (Danny Lambert)

Swansea West (Brian Johnson)

Where there is no socialist candidate, write “World Socialism” across your ballot paper.

In this election, the choice, as always, is simple: capitalism or socialism; chaos or sanity. We know which side we are on. Do you?

Socialist Party Election Video

SPOIL THE BALLOT PAPER
WRITE "WORLD SOCIALISM"

The hour is late. Join us now

The immediate future does not look especially bright. It will grow darker still until the workers rise to the task of removing the curse of capital from the means of production, thus clearing the way for a better, a more decent civilization. The problem of production has been solved by the working class. The task now at hand is the solution to the problem of how to so handle the means of production and dispose of the product as to best conserve the interests of all. The control of the resources of the earth and the instruments of labour must be taken from the hands of the capitalist class and these means of production dedicated to the service of the whole people under the administration and control of those who, by doing the world’s work, make any sort of civilisation possible. You workers of the world constitute the only useful part of human society. You have long fed, clothed and sheltered your masters in comfort and luxury while ekeing out a slavish existence yourselves.

To put an end to the present system of capitalism, where the first and last issue is profit and more profit is the aim of the Socialist Party. Today profit rules, not the needs of the people. Capitalism is a system where those who have ownership of the factories, the mines, the mills, the land, the machines, and so forth have everything. It’s a system where those who have no other way to make ends meet except to sell their ability to work to the bosses, must labour to enrich the capitalist and can work only so long as they do so. When the capitalist finds no further use for a worker, when he finds it unprofitable to continue paying his workers, the wage slaves are thrown out into the streets as additional figures on the unemployment lists. Under their system, democracy is for the rich, justice is for the rich, a good education is for the rich, and medical care is based on your pocket book. The Socialist Party clearly targets the capitalist system as the problem, and points to the solution, socialism, where the working class rules and completely changes society in their interests. The most important thing for people to understand is that the only way to do away with the misery and oppression which capitalism breeds is to build a united and organized movement against the capitalist class and for a socialist revolution.

We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humankind. It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in living standards with more poor people now in the world than ever before, starts murderous imperialist wars to steal the resources of less developed countries and causes the growing devastation of our natural environment.  Either we get rid of this outmoded decrepit system or it will devastate humanity. The hour is late and urgent action is necessary. The only viable way forward is revolutionary struggle to achieve socialism, a class-free and state-free society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural environment. The working class must depose the capitalist ruling class and establish socialism, a system of real, popular democracy that sets about the reconstruction of society. From the already existing capitalist-created world economy, a planned and unified world economy will be brought into being, and not merely the productive forces (as under capitalism) but also production itself will be developed to levels hitherto unknown.

As production increases producing an increasing abundance, distribution according to need comes into existence. “To each according to his need” And as the possibility of distribution according to need grows, pari passu [with equal pace], the need for the apparatus of force, the “state,” which protects the earlier form of distribution also disappears. That is to say, “the state withers away” completely. Human nature itself will have undergone a transformation; and since also, by reason of technical development and the vast extension of leisure, work itself will have become a pleasant pastime instead of a laborious task; mankind will have learned to work for society according to ability. The other half also of the slogan descriptive of communist society will thus have been translated into reality – “from each according to his ability.” And this self-acting society of associated producers will also be classless inasmuch as its members will have no differential relation to the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Property will no longer belong to the state, which is the instrument of a class, but to the community, which is now classless; and the state itself, if the term be permissible for an apparatus of the nature that it will be, will be concerned not with the government of men but the administration of things. The producers themselves, the workers, will decide what to produce and how – not “the market”. Production will be planned on the basis of what serves society, not what yields the most profit for the owing employing class.

Capitalism has nothing to offer the large majority but uncertainty for tomorrow, unemployment, environmental disasters, poverty, and war. Global warming and the environmental crisis is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. The uncontrolled exploitation and gross waste of resources typical of capitalism is the source of this disaster. The answer is not reform, but revolution. Another world is necessary – revolution and socialism are the solution. The working class is the only revolutionary class under capitalism. It is the historical task of the working class to put an end to capitalist exploitation and oppression. Socialism is the power of the working class. This class repossesses and expropriates the people’s property from the capitalists. 

Vote None of Them

We, in the Socialist Party, hold that society needs to be changed fundamentally and we advocate the abolition of social classes through production based solely on meeting people's needs, democratically administered. This goes much deeper than a mere change in government and it also assumes a widespread understanding of what needs to be done. We are members of the working class, which includes everyone around the world who must sell his or her capacity to work to some employer to stay alive. We understand capitalism has gone as far as it can go and now the time has come to put it behind us and build a world that really works for everyone.

It is time to draw some lessons from the past and apply them now. One of the most important lessons concerns class and how many workers fail to act in their own interest. People increasingly appreciate that capitalism is the key problem of our time, but they see no solution that can overcome the limits of the present political discourse. The Left, Centre, and Right haven't solved anything that counts - and they can't. Real solutions require rational thought, not spin or hype.

If our goal is the eradication of capitalism, then supporting the SNP or the Labour Party is just delusional. The object of socialists is to assist in the emancipation of the workers from its enslavement to the capitalist class. To those who support the SNP or the Labour Party we would appeal to reconsider their position. What does their boasted achievements amount to after all? Join the Socialist Party in a refusal to vote for evil, either of the lesser or the greater sort. 

The Socialist Party’s case is that socialism will be established by the conscious democratic political action of a majority of workers using the electoral machinery, which in this country means parliament. The Socialist Party is in fundamental opposition to all other parties. It proclaims that the building of socialism, the re-organisation of the economic life of the whole world, is impossible unless the working class overthrows the capitalist class and asserts its control. The Socialist Party, therefore, is the enemy of capitalists and capitalist parties. The class war is our war and our only war. 

For socialists, the rule of government can never be democratic. Though it may include some incidental functions arising from the needs of people the main work of the State is the running of class-divided society; a system of economic exploitation. In the main governments work for a privileged section of society. They make the laws which protect the property rights of a minority who own and control natural resources and industry. In fact, though, there is a sense in which the government does not run the system at all - rather, the capitalist system runs the government, by limiting the actions that can be taken. The capitalists and their governments can propose what they like, but it is the capitalist economy that disposes. Raising of interest rates, increased unemployment, devaluation - these may not be what governments want to do, but may well be what they are forced to do because capitalism leaves them no choice.

Socialists point out to our fellow-workers that they possess, as a class, all what is needed to build a new social system based upon the common ownership of the means of life where we will no longer sell themselves as merchandise. We will be free to enjoy the fruits of our collective labour. Having arrived at this understanding, our fellow- workers will recognise that their political power must be put to an infinitely better use than that of providing fat plum jobs for nimble-tongued tricksters and instead seek our own emancipation. The vote is not useless if backed by a class-conscious understanding.

Society is run in the interests of those who own the wealth. They argue among each other over Brexit, GDP rates, profits, and exports, because where the borders lie matters to them. Every border is an opportunity to wring cash out of other property owners. They’ll try to sway us one way or another with crumbs (or the promises of crumbs) but we’ll only get what they feel they can spare to protect their privilege and wealth. We will remain dependent upon their investments making a profit for them before we can get our needs and interests seen to

The only way to stop this dependency would be for us to take ownership and control of the wealth of the world into our own hands. We could, together, use the wealth of the world to meet our mutual needs and grant the true independence of being able to control our work and our lives in a free and voluntary association of equals.

Though the outcome of this election is irrelevant, it is an opportunity for us to tell our fellow workers that this is what we want. We don’t have to suffer in silence, we can go to the polling booth and write“WORLD SOCIALISM” across the voting paper. A vote is always worth using - even when there is nothing worthy of voting for. 

Grassroot opinions

Elizabeth lives in a tenement block in Easterhouse, part of Glasgow East, held by the SNP, having been taken from Labour in 2015. She is not voting in the election on Thursday. “What’s the point?” she said. “Nothing will change.

Elizabeth said she was not the only one living hand to mouth in the area, or the sole person not voting because they did not see evidence of any political work from one day to the next.

Easterhouse is among the poorest wards, scoring a rating of one on the Scottish index of multiple deprivation for 2016 for low income, unemployment, and poor education and health outcomes. Elizabeth said: “Easterhouse is a dump. There’s nothing for the wee ones here.”

This election is not going to change much. Easterhouse is Easterhouse.

 John, Elizabeth's partner, confirming he would not be voting either, said: 
“The election is a load of shite. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, they fuck the country up anyway.”

The Socialist Party suggests to Elizabeth and John that they should exercise the power their ancestors fought and died for - the power of the vote- but to show their contempt for the political parties standing by spoiling that vote. 

Write "World Socialism" across the ballot

Treat The Cause Not The Effect.

How can anyone keep the Toronto Transit Commission out of the news - fat chance!

 On May 8, the very first employee tested under their new drug and alcohol testing policy passed with a blood alcohol level of more than .04 per cent, which the agency considers impaired. For years the agency had been locked in battle with Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents more than 10,000 TTC workers and which insisted random substance testing violated the workers' rights. However, in April the Ontario Superior Court upheld the policy.

It's easy enough to lean towards the court's decision on the premise that people wouldn't appreciate being driven anywhere by someone of dubious capability, but it would be much better if we lived in a society where people wouldn't feel a need a form substance abuse. 

Steve and John.

Socialists Say, Revolution is the Only Way

The capitalist mode of production has posed before humanity the alternatives: socialism or barbarism The only power that can save humanity from the peril of barbarism is the working class. It must free itself from all dependence on the possessing classes. It must cease all collaboration with the exploiters and embark on the road of class struggle, the path of socialist victory. The resources of the world must pass into the possession of working humanity. All other problems, the problems of nationality and of race and color will be solved once society is freed from exploitation and class divisions. Socialism will bring real democracy. The revolution is coming that will place the working women and men in full command over its vast resources, that will link the world and lay down the foundations of the new socialist order of peace and freedom. For us, socialism equals People Power with commune councils organising neighbourhoods and communities and workers’ democratically running production through their own organisations, workers’ committees, elected at the work-place.

The division of the world into different nation-states imposes a definite form on the revolutionary process. The workers must and can take power in the territories defined by different existing states. But the construction of socialism can be completed only on a world scale. The victory of the socialist revolution requires international organisation. The first requirement for the workers in all countries of the world is to break cleanly from the capitalist class and their political parties, and any and all concepts of coalitions with their parties.  Capitalism is slashing the gains that have already been won, imposing cuts on social legislation and straight-jacketing the unions with labour legislation. Technological progress is now reaping vast profits for the industrial and financial oligarchy and condemning thousands to permanent unemployment. The scramble for profit has wasted and despoiled our rich resources of soil, water, forest, and minerals. This lack of social planning results in a waste of our human as well as our natural resources. Our human resources are wasted through social and economic conditions.  Production can and should be so operated as to enable our people to use fully their talents and skills. Such an economy will yield the maximum opportunities for individual development and the maximum of goods and services for the satisfaction of human needs. Unprecedented scientific and technological advances have brought us to another technological and industrial revolution. Opportunities for enriching the standard of life are greater than ever. Unless there is intelligent social planning, the evils of the past will be multiplied in the future and new technology changes will produce greater concentrations of inequalities of wealth and power and will cause widespread distress and discontent through unemployment and the displacement of populations.

Capitalism promises people not an amelioration of conditions but austerity and harsh oppression. Only through an irreconcilable struggle against capitalism, towards its elimination and the establishment of socialism, will the people of the world find the full freedom, equality, and democracy for which they aspire. Economic growth and capital expansion motivated by the drive for private gain and special privilege and accompanied by widespread suffering and injustice is not desirable social progress. 

The Socialist Party reaffirms its belief that our society must build a new relationship among men and women--a relationship based on mutual respect and on equality of opportunity. In such a society everyone will have a sense of worth and belonging and will be enabled to develop his or her capacities to the full. In the cooperative commonwealth, people will be working together in everyone's interest. The hungry, oppressed and underprivileged of the world must know democracy not as a smug slogan but as a way of life which sees the world as one whole. 

The Socialist Party will not rest content until every person in all lands is able to enjoy equality and freedom, a sense of human dignity, and an opportunity to live a rich and meaningful life as a citizen of a free and peaceful world. We do not stand for the reform of any institution under capitalism. Our activities have always been directed towards the complete overthrow of capitalism, and to that end, we have concentrated our attention on the education of our fellow-workers who are engaged in wealth production and who are exploited in the process. Only socialists who present the true facts of the class struggle, and who seek to advance that class struggle, ought to be allowed to call itself revolutionary. 

Don't Give Capitalism Your Vote

"It's a nice idea but it will never happen" is one of the most common responses to the idea of building a socialist society. The assumption is that socialism will rely upon everybody sacrificing their own interests for those of others, that workers need to be saints and angels for it to work. In fact, socialism doesn’t require people to be any more altruistic than they are today. We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs. It is enlightened self-interest that will work for the majority. The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave, essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, co-operation) at the expense of others which capitalism encourages (acquisitiveness, competition.) Socialism is not the result of blind faith, followers, or, by the same token, vanguards, and leaders. 

Basically, there is only three ways of winning control of the State: (a) armed insurrection; (b) more or less peaceful mass demonstrations and strikes; (c) using the electoral system.

The Socialist Party has adopted (c), but without ruling out (b) or even (a) should conditions change (or in other parts of the world where conditions were different).

But this is not simply putting an “X” on a ballot paper and letting the Socialist Party and its MPs establish socialism for workers. The assumption is that there will be a “conscious” and active socialist majority outside Parliament, democratically organised both in a mass socialist political party and, at work-places, in trade union type organisations ready to keep production going during and immediately after the winning of political control.  The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority and they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule and they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control. The vote is merely the legitimate stamp which will allow for the dismantling of the repressive apparatus of the States and the end of bourgeois democracy and the establishment of real democracy. It is the Achilles heel of capitalism and makes a non-violent bloodless revolution possible.

But in this election, there is no candidates in Scotland. So what to do? The choice is between abstention and spoiling the ballot paper. Not voting at all is a valid option, but casting a spoiled ballot paper is better. One or two spoilt votes can be ignored, tens of thousands or even millions could not be – especially if backed by a vocal movement explaining what is happening. A concerted campaign of spoiling the ballot paper by writing “socialism” across it would signify a write-in vote. 

Education Is Supposed To Inspire.

The Vancouver Sun's, "Youth and depression: Building supports in schools" story tells us students who returned to their classrooms last autumn gained access to curriculum that encouraged "mental-wellness skills such as regulating emotions, managing stress and asking for help."

The program, run primarily by teachers, welcomes volunteers to provide positive adult interaction. We learn about one volunteer helping distressed children, Lindsey – herself a sufferer ofnear-debilitatingg anxiety and depression while a youth in school. Lindsey says when she was in grade 6 ". . . I didn't know who I was and feeling like I would rather walk into traffic than go to school."

The program is a sad indictment of Canadian schools generally, places of education supposedly to inspire learning – learning that is natural to the human condition.

What is it about schools that would want to keep children like Lindsey away? Well, capitalism doesn't exactly lend itself to a cheery study for anyone, unless you happen to be the beneficiary of vast sums making you a mogul of capital.

Schools under capitalism have one agenda to meet: making wage slaves for the system that blinkers kids for later abuse as adults in factories, resource industries, and proliferating low paying, no benefit or pension service industries.

In a sane society schools would be places people would want to be – places where learners develop and explore their interests, unhindered by the dictates of tests

measuring one future worker against another. Schools in such a sane society, as opposed to the insane one we have now that provides mental health services to wider and wider segments of the general population to keep the jolly old system of capitalism afloat, would be places of leisure and social joy – not the workshops of misery they are today.

For now, though, we'll all have to resign ourselves to observing our children and neighbours' children receiving what is tantamount to psychotherapy in schools, delivered by those hardly in positions to deliver it: teachers.

Steve and John 

The socialist hope for humanity

The Socialist Party is irreconcilably opposed to capitalism and works for the establishment of world socialism. The workers' movement needs a party of its own to capture the political power of the State. Aspirations means nothing without a political party to fight for them. Big Business has its political parties representing its interests. Workers must have its own too. People want a change from the misery and uncertainty of the system of capitalist exploitation and profit, and all the capitalist parties can offer is the preservation of the old, discredited and bankrupt system. Socialists do not hide the fact that as enemies of capitalism, we aim to replace capitalism, not only because it is possible to do so but because it is absolutely necessary that we do so. We are convinced that if capitalism is allowed to continue, we will be plunged into barbarism. We hold that capitalism has outlived its usefulness and that if humanity is to advance it must move on to socialism which means peace, security, prosperity, freedom and equality - all the things that the working people have always wanted and longed for. Decades ago, socialism could be looked upon as a noble ideal, but it is an urgent necessity. Peace is fleeting. War is an ever-present threat or a monstrous reality. Our environment is being raped and pillaged. Capitalism drives society to a new barbarism.

Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production and their democratic organization and management by all the people in a society free of class division and class rule. Socialism is the democratic organization of production for use, of production for abundance, of plenty for all, without the exploitation of man by man. Socialism is the unity of the whole world into federations of free and equal peoples, disposing in common of the natural resources and wealth of our earth. Capitalism has already established the great industrial capacity of the machinery of production and distribution. It is only necessary for the working class, in the name and interests of society as a whole, to take these enterprises out of the hands of the capitalists and place them into the common ownership of the people as a whole. Socialism means abundance for all. Where there is abundance for all, the nightmare of insecurity vanishes. There are jobs for all, and they are no longer dependent on whether or not the employer can take a fat profit. There is not only a high standard of living, but every industrial advance is followed by a rising standard of living and a declining working-day. Where there is abundance for all, and where no one has the economic power to exploit and oppress others, the basis of class conflict vanishes. The basis of a ruling state, of a government of violence and repression, with its prisons and police and army, also disappears. Police and thieves, prisons and violence are inevitable where there is economic inequality, or abundance for the few and scarcity for the many. They disappear when there is plenty for all, therefore economic equality, therefore social equality. Where there is abundance for all, and where all have equal access to the fruits of the soil and the wealth of industry, the mad conflicts and wars between nations and peoples vanish. With them vanishes the irrepressible urge that exists under capitalism for one nation to subject others, to rob it of its rights, to exploit and oppress it, to provoke and maintain the hideous national and racial antagonisms that cling to capitalism.

Abundance for all means freedom. Where mankind is free of economic exploitation, of economic inequality, of economic insecurity, it is free to contribute to the unfolding of a new culture and a new humanity leaving capitalistic war only as an ugly, sordid and horrible memory. To the achieve this is a burning necessity, and the Socialist Party addresses itself to our fellow members of the working class. This struggle cannot be conducted consistently nor, in the long run, successfully, unless it becomes a conscious fight against the whole rotten edifice of capitalism and for laying the foundation of socialism. We in the Socialist Party are organised to make the working class conscious of its historical mission, of the great part it must play in leading and reorganising society itself. We are part and parcel of the working class. Marx believed that the working class would lead in the transformation of society because it was at once the most dehumanized and alienated class, and potentially the most powerful, since the functioning of society depended upon it.

The defeat of the capitalist class, the rule of the working class, the inauguration of socialism - that is the aim of the Socialist Party. That is the task of the working class. Under the wage system, you and your children, and your children’s children are condemned to slavery and there is no possible hope unless overthrowing the capitalists by voting for the Socialist Party. What you want to do is quit every capitalist party of every name whatsoever. What you want to do is to organise your class and assert your class interests as capitalists do the interests of the class that is robbing you. Arouse, ye slaves! What is wanted is not a reform of the capitalist system, but its entire abolition. Declare war, not on the individual capitalist, but on the capitalist system, and if it should be your fate, your misfortune to suffer in years to come, that suffering will not be the result of your own voluntary act of submission and subservience. Only the working class itself can achieve its own emancipation. Socialism will give humanity a new world. 

The Socialist Party will be contesting three seats in the up-coming General Election:

Islington North (Bill Martin), Battersea (Danny Lambert), and Swansea West (Brian Johnson).