The State and Capitalism

The foundation of capitalist society and civilisation is—as its name indicates—the private ownership of property. The state or the organisation of government in Capitalist society exists nominally to preserve the equilibrium—the balance of antagonistic forces within society—and it does this by maintaining with all the power at its command this private property basis.

In the fulfilling of this, its primary purpose, the State acts in the main according to certain rules—rules of its own making— which collectively are known as “the Law.”

The protection of property and the preservation and enforcement of the social forms and observances dependent upon property is thus the essential function of the Law. These elementary facts are, unfortunately, still unrecognised by the majority of our fellow workers. Their minds are so warped by the media and other agencies of mis-education controlled by the property-owning class that for them, as for the parasites who live and flourish on them, the Law is the great and wonderful preserver of social order without which all organisation would vanish and anarchy prevail.

The Law thus regarded comes to have a halo of sanctity thrown around it. It becomes a god-like power, beneficent in its ruling but terrible in its vengeance upon the transgressors. As a god it has its own sacred books and ritual, its prophets and priests.

Through all this glorification and mysticism the Socialist Party must show the world’s workers that the Law is one of the most powerful weapons of those who exploit and oppress them—that it is an agent of slave owners for the perpetuation of slavery. The Socialist Party works inside the trade union as he does outside, to develop the workers’ knowledge of the slave position of their class. As their knowledge grows they will have their organisation on this class basis instead of on that of craft or industry. We, however, sure of the correctness of our claim that there it no short-cuts to socialism, no other path than the hard and steep one of working-class revolutionary education, no other helpful policy than that based on the class struggle, have resolutely and consistently left such expedients to those others, content to have them provide our object lessons for us.

For our part we still proclaim that the proletariat must want socialism before they can establish it, and that they must understand Socialism before they can want it; we still assert that society is divided into two classes—a master class and an enslaved class—with diametrically opposed interests, and that the freedom of the enslaved class can only be the fruits of victory in a class struggle; we still declare that the basis of society as at present constituted, is the private ownership of the means of living, and that reforms—anything in fact short of the abolition of private ownership in the means of living, and the establishment of common ownership in its stead—must be futile and utterly helpless to effect amelioration of the general condition of the workers' position; we still preach that the road to this overthrow of the present social system lies in the capture of the political machinery, and we are as emphatically insistent as ever upon the point that the means to such end are already in the hands of the workers in their possession of the vast bulk of the voting power in all advanced capitalist countries. Such being our beliefs we have shaped our policy in accordance therewith. We have set our faces against compromises of every shape and form. We have refused to have anything to do with reforms, no matter how alluring they appeared, or how much they ran in the popular fancy. We have conducted all our activities in the light of the class struggle, keeping clear the issue—the overthrow of the dominant capitalist class and the system under which they dominate. We have held on our course without deviation, true to every clause, every statement, every affirmation, of the guiding tenets of our Declaration of Principles.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to persuade others to become socialist and act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about a new socialist society. We are solely concerned with building a movement for socialism. We are not a reformist party with a program of policies to patch up capitalism. Our aim is to build a movement working towards a socialist society. We consistently advocated a fully democratic society based upon co-operation and production for use. The Socialist Party is an organisation of equals. There is no leader and there are no followers. The more who join the Socialist Party, the more we will be able to get our ideas across. The more experiences we will be able to draw on and greater will be the new ideas for building the movement for socialism. So stir yourselves, fellow-workers, and settle with the capitalist class once for all.

Revoking the Freedom of Edinburgh

Aung San Suu Kyi is set to be stripped of her Freedom of Edinburgh award for her refusal to condemn the violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar.

This will be the seventh honour that the former Nobel peace prize winner has been stripped of over the past year, with Edinburgh following the example of Oxford, Glasgow and Newcastle which also revoked Suu Kyi’s Freedom of the City awards. 

Suu Kyi was given the award in 2005 to honour her role in championing peace and democracy in Burma, where she was living under house arrest. At the time the Lord Provost of Edinburgh compared Suu Kyi to Nelson Mandela, describing her as “a symbol of peaceful resistance in the face of oppression. By honouring her Edinburgh citizens will be publicly supporting her tireless work for democracy and human rights.”

Suu Kyi has repeatedly refused to speak out against violence committed by the military against the Rohingya in Rahkine state, which saw more than 700,000 people flee over the border to Bangladesh. The crackdown, which began in August last years, saw villages razed to the ground, tens of thousands killed and women assaulted and raped at the hands of the military. The United Nations have said the violence amounted to “ethnic cleansing”.

The past year has seen Suu Kyi’s international reputation as a beacon of hope tarnished by what many see as her complicity or apathy towards the crimes committed in Rahkine. She has repeatedly refused to call the Rohingya by their name- which is seen as an acceptance of their belonging in Myanmar- and in a speech in Singapore yesterday, she described them simply as the “displaced persons from northern Rakhine.”

This will only be the second time in 200 years that Edinburgh has revoked a freedom of the city award, following Charles Parnell in 1890, an Irish nationalist who fell into disrepute for an affair.

No to reformism

 Money rules our political system, and government ideology. Capitalism has stretched its tentacles to every corner of the Earth in its quest for capital accumulation and market expansion so that it now poses an existential threat to planetary life. It is for this reason that socialism will never cease to exist as an alternative. Our rulers make critical, world-changing decisions, but they are compelled to do so by an impersonal beyond their personal control: the profit-driven dynamic of capitalism itself.  Capitalists can do whatever they like to mitigate the injustices of the present system, but socialism will always take hold.

The ‘trickle-down’ theory argument goes thus: cut the taxes of high-income earners so they can make more money off their investments; by taking home a greater share, they would spend more, in turn creating jobs and more income for everyone. While this trickle-down economics was being promulgated to ensure the State can afford to reduce taxation, social services were cut. The trickle-down perspective was cruel in practice but understandable from the capitalist’s pressure to accumulate capital by retaining more of the workers' surplus value.

The cause of working-class misery is private ownership of the means of life. The interests of the workers, who do not own the means of life, are opposed to the interests of the capitalists, who do own them. This clash of interests is the class struggle. Although their interests continually clash with those of their masters, many workers do not understand that this is inevitable. Nor do they understand that their masters' ownership of the means of life is at the bottom of the trouble. Now why, with this continual conflict of interest, do the working class remain ignorant? And why are they so desperately apathetic? Is their ignorance not because the truth has not been told? And is their apathy not born largely of disappointment with the results of past efforts of their class to secure some amelioration of their condition?

We are very emphatic that the clear duty of a real socialist party is to work for real socialism. It has no justification for existence apart from that. The only work a socialist can do is to advocate socialism. We can never support anything that conflicts with or socialism while we remain socialists; for that is to obscure socialism. Arguing for reforms means the case for socialism has receded, no matter how temporarily, into a secondary position. Socialism is not being proposed. Secondly, doing reformist campaigns work needs no socialist party at all. Thirdly, the particular reform worked for will not appreciably affect the condition of the working class as such. Fourthly, it will therefore have wasted the working-class strength concentrated upon realising it. Fifthly, it will, because it has effected no material improvement in working-class conditions, have bred disappointment, and, from disappointment, apathy. And finally it will have made existing confusion worse confounded in the minds of the working class. Explaining capitalism and socialism is the proper work of a socialist party not demanding palliatives and amelioration of conditions. If we overleap logic we overleap ourselves and land in a bog of confusion and disappointment. We are only interested in the maintenance of truth. Truth can only be maintained inside the logical method — the truth, even if it means that we become for the time as voices crying in the wilderness.

We need not inquire for the moment into the honesty of working-class leaders. We need only deal with their teaching and leading.  If socialism is the only remedy, and they are not socialists, their teaching cannot be right because they do not teach socialism. Those who profess socialism although they talk of it occasionally, they do not teach it. The important thing in a teacher of socialism is that it should always be socialism that we teach.  If we do not explain every manifestation of class conflict in the light of socialist philosophy, it is little, better than any non-socialist political leader. Our teaching is neither logical nor consistent and lands our audience in a bog of confusion.  Working class ignorance and apathy which must be dispelled before socialism can be realised.

If we were to say that unemployment must last as long as capitalism and were then to recommend the unemployed to send a deputation to the representatives of the capitalists to ask that they, the capitalists, should abolish unemployment, we would either be fools, removed from logic of our position. If we argue that capitalist representatives are in control of the political machinery to conserve their own interests as against those of the working class (as we all agree is and must be the case); and that we must regard capitalist representatives always as a hostile force against whom war must be waged unceasingly until they are utterly vanquished, yet suspend hostilities and enter into alliance with them, we add to the confusion and disappointment of our fellow-workers. If we were to declare that poverty and misery must last till socialism is established, that until socialism is built nothing can materially or permanently affect the position; if we're to say that palliatives are therefore of little use, so little use indeed that we must have a party that shall concentrate upon the thing that matters – socialism - rather than the things that do not matter – palliatives- ; and that our organisation was founded because palliatives were not good enough, we should then concentrate our efforts upon the realisation of palliatives, we are riding rough-shod over logic and engulfing our fellow-workers in impotence and despair.  The Left-wingers might do good work for socialism if only their vaunted adherence to principle was a matter of fact instead of a figment of fancy.  They persist in the folly of emphasising non-essentials and scrimping on the essentials until they are forever remain a stumbling block.

Those who grandly announce “We are all socialists now,” are wide of the mark. Not everyone who proclaims him or herself a socialist shall find place in the real socialist movement. Not those whose desire is personal aggrandisement, nor those who aspire to lead the workers’ activities, nor the experts nor the superior persons nor the compromisers, nor those who are conscious and unconscious perpetrators of ignorance and false friends. But those who, understanding the working-class relation to the economy of production; understanding the forces that have been at work through all history to present in this the twentieth century that appalling anomaly of a starving people in the midst of a riot of wealth of their own creation; understanding how the physical and intellectual well-being of the workers is conditioned by the measure of their control of the means by which they live; understanding that control of these means of life can only be secured by workers similarly enlightened; those who understand these things and the necessity for eliminating every factor tending to confuse the issue in the working-class mind, have set themselves steadfastly to the task of translating their knowledge into clear, logical, consistent action to the end that their fellows may the more readily acquire the knowledge that shall make them free, only these are the socialists and only these can form a real socialist party. 

Homes by the Square Metre

Edinburgh continues to be Scotland’s most expensive property market with homes costing an average of £2,669 per square meter while Grangemouth is the cheapest at £1,016,  followed by Bellshill in North Lanarkshire at £1,030.

Overall in Scotland, house prices per square meter have risen by 20% since 2013 from an average of £1,320 to £1,579 in 2018.

Edinburgh is Scotland’s most expensive place at £2,669 per square meter followed by Linlithgow in West Lothian at £2,076 and Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire at £2,039.

Larkhall and Lanark have recorded the biggest price increase since 2013 with a rise of 33% while West and Central Scotland have seen the biggest increase over the last five years.

Prices per square meter increased by 33% to an average of £1,163 in Larkhall and to £1,579 in Lanark followed by Dalkeith, Bathgate and Hamilton all up 32%.

https://www.propertywire.com/news/uk/edinburgh-highest-per-square-meter-property-price-scotland-uk-average/

A FREE SOCIETY

Too often socialists express revolutionary slogans without explaining what they mean. If we want to be taken seriously we have to convince people that what we say makes sense. Our goal is a non-market moneyless economy with the slogan 'from each according to ability, to each according to need'.  In the view of the Socialist Party, an important obstacle stopping more people supporting the idea of a society based on production for use is that they simply can't see how a society without money or wages could work. It seems too daunting - too much of a leap of faith to make. The more we discuss it and argue why it needs to involve the removal of the market and money system, the less daunting it seems. In particular, the closer you look, the more examples we can find of where humans routinely behave (inside capitalism) in "socialistic" ways.

The Socialist Party rejects the idea of exchange between independent workplaces and communities.  Those at workplace level who produce goods should have no say as to how those goods would be distributed or used - since if they did they would have a property right over them and that would not be social ownership but sectional ownership. Society as a whole would be the owner of the fruits of labour produced and supplied. it cannot just be left to the workplace committees to decide what is produced (they can decide how it is produced, but not how much). We should use the local market structure that we will inherit from capitalism. In other words, it is adequate to say you simply look at what people take and that automatically triggers (without the need for money) the demand from the next level upstream of production (ie at a simple level: local store- regional distribution warehouse-manufacturing/assembly factory-raw material extraction). There is no ownership by anyone of the instruments of production, like the land, factories, or transport. Social ownership would not be based on the state (or cooperatives), but based on common ownership.  It would involve the complete disappearance of buying and selling, of money, of wages and of all other exchange. Naturally, there being no money, the goods made available for individual consumption would be available for individuals to take freely without charge. Administration – those bodies that we democratically delegate to make decisions on distribution – will allocate whatever proportion is needed for general services like health, education, housing, etc. Sure there will be disagreements but the difference is that we will seek to resolve them democratically rather than through the rule of the rich. Given that socialism will still need to concern itself with the efficient allocation of resources this will be achieved mostly through calculation in kind. Decentralised production entails a self-regulating system of stock control. Stocks of goods held at distribution points would be monitored, their rate of depletion providing vital information about the future demand for such goods, information which will be conveyed to the units producing these goods. The units would, in turn, draw upon the relevant factors of production and the depletion of these would activate yet other production units further back along the production chain. There would thus be a marked degree of automaticity in the way the system operated. The maintenance of surplus stocks would provide a buffer against unforeseen fluctuations in demand 

It's a common objection that free access to goods and services would lead to people wasting resources by taking more than they need.  Most of the objections, however, tend to be the same old "what about the lazy person who doesn't want to work ?" argument dressed up in another disguise There are plenty of examples today to indicate that free access will not lead to abuses. When there is no requirement to hoard we use resources as and when we need them. Capitalist apologists have invented a fictional person, whose wants are limitless: someone who always wants more and more of everything and so whose needs could only satisfied if resources were limitless too. Needless to say, such an individual has never existed. In reality, our wants are not limitless - people have diverse tastes and we rarely want everything available nor do we want more of a thing than is necessary to satisfy our needs.  We cannot judge people's buying habits under capitalism with their actions in a free society. After all, the vast advertising industry does not actually exist to inform us about the choice of products available but rather to create needs. Conspicuous consumption within capitalism produces individuals who define themselves by what they have, not who they are. An unalienated well-developed individual that a socialist society would develop would have less need to consume than the average person in a capitalist one, a slave to consumerism. There is also in capitalist society a tendency for individuals to seek to validate their sense of worth through the accumulation of possessions. As Marx contended, the prevailing ideas of society are those of its ruling class then we can understand why, when the wealth of that class so preoccupies the minds of its members, such a notion of status should be so deep-rooted. It is this which helps to underpin the myth of infinite demand. In socialism, status based upon the material wealth at one's command would be a meaningless concept. Why take more than you need when you can freely take what you need? In socialism, the only way in which individuals can command the esteem of others is through their contribution to society, and the more the movement for socialism grows the more will it subvert the prevailing capitalist ethos, in general, and its anachronistic notion of status, in particular.

Today we have the possibility of living a life of potential plenty, and nor what we do endure – a life of frugality and scarcity. All previous ages have been rationed societies. The modern world is also a society of scarcity, but with a difference. Today's shortages are unnecessary; today's scarcity is artificial. Planning is indeed central to the idea of socialism, but socialism is the planned (consciously coordinated and not to be confused with central planning concept ) production of useful things to satisfy human needs precisely instead of the production, planned or otherwise, of wealth as exchange value, commodities, and capital. In socialism, wealth would have simply a specific use value (which would be different under different conditions and for different individuals and groups of individuals) but it would not have any exchange, or economic, value. Socialism does presuppose that productive resources (materials, instruments of production, sources of energy) and technological knowledge are sufficient to allow the population of the world to produce enough food, clothing, shelter and other useful things, to satisfy all their material needs. Conventional economics deny that the potential for such a state of abundance exists.

For socialism to be established, there are two fundamental preconditions that must be met.
Firstly, the productive potential of society must have been developed to the point where, generally speaking, we can produce enough for all. This is not now a problem as we have long since reached this point. However, this does require that we appreciate what is meant by "enough" and that we do not project on to socialism the insatiable consumerism of capitalism. Secondly, the establishment of socialism presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement and a profound change in social outlook. It is simply not reasonable to suppose that the desire for socialism on such a large scale, and the conscious understanding of what it entails on the part of all concerned, would not influence the way people behaved in socialism and towards each other. Would they want to jeopardise the new society they had helped create? Of course not. If people cannot change their behaviour and take control and responsibility for their decisions, not only will socialism fail but itself will not succeed then either.

Sowing the Seeds of Socialist Revolution

Too often in the past has the working-class placed its trust in leaders and reforms yet ultimately for the working-class there has been nothing but a return to wretchedness and the outlook of gloom and despair unless we learn the lesson of reliance upon no other class but our own and attain that class-consciousness with its appreciation of the universal solidarity of working-class interests that shall presently deliver us and with them the whole human family from the throes of slavery for evermore. The remedy, socialism, means, not high wages or low wages, but the abolition of the wages system. Socialism means the end of the employing class. There is a real class divide. It is us against them.

The capitalist economy does not exist to serve our needs, but instead, our needs are shaped to serve capitalism. We are all expected to make whatever sacrifices are required to help the economy – so we face cuts in pay and working conditions, damage to our environment, the cuts to social services because the economy ‘demands’ it. Everyone is a slave to the market economy. Today's economy is based on a very simple process – money is invested to generate more money. Bosses call it profit, politicians use the term economic growth. When money functions like this, it functions as capital. As capital increases (or the economy expands), this is called capital accumulation, and it's the driving force of the economy. Furthermore, for money to make more money, more and more things have to be exchangeable for money. Thus the tendency is for everything to become commodified. Money does not turn into more money by magic; capitalists are not alchemists! Rather in a commodified world, we all need something to sell in order to buy the things we need. Those of us with nothing to sell except our capacity to work have to sell this capacity to those who own the things we need to work; factories, offices, etc. But therefore the commodities we produce at work are not ours, they belong to our employers. Furthermore, we produce far more commodities and products as workers than the necessary products to maintain us as workers, due to long hours, productivity improvements etc. This difference between the wages we are paid and the value we create is how capital is accumulated. The function of a class analysis is to understand the tensions within capitalist society.  Since the employing-owning class is all but powerless in the face of ‘market forces,’ each needing to act in a way conducive to continued accumulation, they cannot act in the interests of workers, since any concessions they grant will aid their competitors on a national or international level. Thus the struggle between our needs and the needs of the capitalist economic system takes the form of a struggle between classes. When we say the economy doesn’t exist serve our needs and therefore we have to assert them against capital, we beg the question what a society that does exist to meet its own needs would look like. In other words, where does our vision of asserting our needs lead? Such a society, based on the principle of ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ is called socialism. Needs’ in ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ does not mean mere physiological needs as distinct from wants. Needs are self-determined, encompassing everything from the physiological to the psychological to the social, and everyone has an equal right to have their needs met. 

 Socialism has nothing to do with the former USSR or present-day Cuba or North Korea. These are capitalist societies with only one capitalist – the state. Socialism is a state-free society where our activity – and its products – no longer take the form of things to be bought and sold. Where activity is not done to earn a wage or turn a profit, but to meet human needs. It is also a democratic society, in a way far more profound than what ‘democracy’ means in its current sense. As there will be no division between owners (state or private) and workers with the means of production held in common, decisions can be made democratically among equals. As production is not for goods to be sold on the market, there are no market forces to pit different groups of workers against each other.  There will be only a self-managed, self-governing society which exists to meet the self-determined needs of its members. Production is socialised under our conscious control. Capitalism is a class relation, and class struggle is the only way to break out of it - by ultimately rejecting our condition as human resources and asserting ourselves as human beings. This can only be done with the abolition of social classes altogether. It’s not about saying class is more important than other things, but about understanding what capitalism is and where potential revolutionary subjectivity arises. It is not from oppression, but from alienation – the separation of producers from the product, of activity from the meaning and control of that activity. The working class are potentially revolutionary subjects because of our material position within capitalist society; we've nothing to lose but our chains.

Ends are made of means – some means get us closer to what we want, others make it more remote. As the Socialist Party, we do not spend much time dreaming of the future – our politics are very much oriented to the here and now by analysing present-day capitalism and its problems. Now it is true that having some idea of what a future society could look like can persuade others we’re not just idle dreamers who don't know what we're for. But a fully worked-out vision of the future is not a prerequisite for workers to struggle to advance their concrete material interests. To this end, we try to spread propaganda advocating socialist ideas which grow more tangible and more meaningful and our fellow-workers begin to feel their power to change the world and to imagine what that world may be like. Anti-capitalism is not workers managing the economy in place of capitalists but the abolition of ourselves as a class. Non-owning bosses such as in co-operatives taking the place of owning ones are not anti-capitalism. This is because capitalism is a mode of production not a mode of Therefore anti-capitalism has to go beyond opposition to those who manage it to opposition to the social relation as such ie the abolition of wage labour.

The Socialist Party has a vision of a class-free, state-free, non-market society without money, commodity production, and exchange guided by the maxim ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need.’ We believe that only certain means can create this end, and that these means therefore form a part of our vision, a vision that extends from the present to the future. We can make suggestions as to how such a society might work. But no blueprint, merely an exposition of possibility. We think it unlikely that would-be political ‘thinkers’ such as ourselves can anticipate all the details of a future society – no society has ever been designed in such a way in advance. Nevertheless, we can offer some broad guidelines and some speculation as to how it could work, the details will need to be filled in by the self-organisation of millions, whose collective genius far exceeds that of any individual.

We do place class analysis and the profit motive as central to our understanding of capitalism and how to abolish it. This is not a priori assertion, but an a posteriori one; that is one arising from rational, critical inquiry into the social phenomenon. So when we try to understand the persistence of starvation and malnutrition in a world of food surpluses we cannot but note the impact of export-led growth policies that see countries export grain to feed cattle to export to relatively affluent markets while the populations of the exporting countries go hungry. When we try and understand the world's unswerving course towards catastrophic climate change despite scientific consensus as to the causes and the severity of the consequences, we cannot but conclude that the capitalist imperative to 'grow or die' over-rides all else, perhaps even human life on earth. When we look at rising urbanisation and the global spread of shanty towns, for example, it cannot be understood without looking at the spread of capitalist social relations into the countryside, turning peasants into landless workers, many of whom are forced to migrate to the slums of the cities to scrape out a living. When we talk about capitalism and class struggle, we are not just talking about workplace disputes, but society as a whole, and the struggles that take place in society between the dispossessed and those who represent the interests of capital. 


Adapted from this debate
https://libcom.org/library/participatory-society-or-libertarian-communism

Create a New Society

The notion that a socialist party simply needs to manage the media better is a nonsensical proposition. The capitalist media is not there to be won over, it can't just be "managed" into giving socialists a fair and balanced hearing. Journalists and TV current affairs presenters are subjected to a 'filtering' process as they rise up the career ladder. They are selected for positions of ever-increasing responsibility only if they have demonstrated to the media owners, higher management and their superiors that they can be trusted to say and do the 'right' things; even to think the 'right thoughts'. As Chomsky explained to Andrew Marr, then the young political editor of the Independent and now with the BBC:

'I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.'

 You can't make concessions and compromise with interests who want nothing but your total destruction. We are required to make our own case for socialism with information and education the best way we can with our limited resources.

The Socialist Party does not say that the trends of capitalism cannot be hastened or slowed down by legislative measures, but he does emphatically declare that such modifications are slight and that the general problems of the system can neither be overcome nor circumvented by such methods. One thing can certainly be said of future developments—that, whatever they may bring, the workers will continue to get the worst of the bargain until they cease to be deluded by the red herring of reform, by attempts to patch up capitalism, and until they unite for the only programme that can solve their problems—the abolition of the whole rotten system itself and the establishment of socialism. Though there is abundant discontent, there is in actual fact a lack of class-consciousness and an abundance of the most confused thinking amongst the workers. This, to the Socialist Party, is lamentable— but understandable. Economic developments are producing conditions that make the case for socialism more strikingly clear than was possible in the past era of rampant individualism, and collectivist ideas of sorts are floating around and being discussed in the most unlikely circles. But in the building up of a sound and powerful party of socialists, for which The Socialist Party affords a nucleus, a very great amount of work remains to be done and must be done. If you are interested, fellow worker, study our principles. If you are convinced, join our ranks.

There is and can be, only one revolutionary measure and that is the dispossession of the capitalist class of their ownership and control of the means of production and distribution and the transfer of these to society as a whole. That act once accomplished, all the rest of the adjustments necessary after the abolition of capitalism will fall into line. But if that act is not accomplished then there can be no question of socialism. The basis of present-day society is the ownership of the means of living by the capitalists as a class. It is the class that holds the power; not a number of isolated individuals acting independently of one another. Capitalism survives as a system because it is organised. Many on the left-wing encourage the workers to fritter away their energies in sectional conflicts, thus reducing the ability of the workers to organise as a class for the establishment of a new system. The workers cannot gain possession of the factories by walking out of them, nor even by staying in, so long as the capitalist class controls the coercive forces of the State. The class struggle, therefore, necessarily assumes a political form. In the words of the declaration of principles of the Socialist Party: 

"The working class, must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that .this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation.’’

The policy consistently advocated by the Socialist Party is the policy of those who understand their environment and adapt their efforts intelligently to it.  Nothing finally produces greater apathy than the expectation of the impossible; yet these are the characteristic attitudes prevalent on the Left, whose leaders have affected, in the past, such hearty contempt for patient study and organisation.  Sincerity without knowledge or intelligence is useless to any cause. 

A Better World Can Be Had

When the Socialist Party enters the electoral arena with candidates, it is not just a matter of another party muscling in on the time honoured game of fooling the workers. We do not treat the business as a sport, wishing our opponents good luck and congratulating the one who succeeds in collecting the most votes and a well-paid job with generous expenses and ample benefits. We do not indulge in hypocritical handshaking with our opponents or in the “good-luck-old-man, the-best-man-has-won” bunkum. We are in deadly earnest. Our opponents represent our class enemies and there can be no truce in the class struggle. We do not even canvass votes as do our opponents. In fact we urge workers to refrain from voting for us unless they understand our object and are prepared to work with us for its achievement. An election campaign, for us, is a means of propagating our ideas amongst the workers at a time when political interest is rife and it is a means of gauging the development of socialist ideas in the constituency contested. Further to that, of course, is the fact that, in contesting every possible election we are working towards the achievement of our object. Election campaigns that are successful in bringing more and more workers to an understanding and a desire for socialism are preparing the ground for an increasing number of campaigns in the future. Join with us in the only war worth fighting, in the only struggle worthy of working class effort, the struggle to end the system that deprives the workers of the fruits of their labour, the struggle so that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom. Instead of allowing ourselves to be the tools of the master-class; to be housed in hovels, bred, fed and buried cheaply, slaughtered on battle-fields, packed into factories or superseded by machines we must take control of the world's resources ourselves and use them for our own comfort and advantage. We urge fellow-workers to study the case of the Socialist Party and work for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. There can be only one solution for working-class problems, the dispossession of the capitalist class and the institution of socialism by the working class. Our fellow-workers must  adopt the only possible solution, the abolition of private property and the establishment of a society where the needs of men and women will be the sole criterion for the production of goods and services. The remedy is for the workers to do a little thinking for themselves. For when the majority of workers have become socialists it will mean doom for the professional politician. For then the working class will have established a society which will no longer need politicians of any sort.

From the earliest days of working-class history, racial hatreds and national antagonisms have repeatedly been an obstacle to working-class solidarity and organisation. Capitalists and their agents know the value of keeping alive these antagonisms.  It would be difficult to find a capitalist class of any country which has not at some time or other stirred up its workers against those of another nation or race.  They know quite well that, whilst the workers remain divided racially and nationally, their own privileged position in society will remain secure. It is largely to divert the attention of the workers from a critical examination of the true cause of their poverty, from an examination of the capitalist system. Racial hatreds have been of great service to the capitalist classes of America. Both in Latin America and in the United States, the idea is carefully nurtured among “white" workers that the “black" is his enemy. Here we have the capitalists importing minorities to work in their concerns because they can force them to accept low wages, and then doing all in their power to rouse white against black so as to prevent them from joining forces. The same thing happened here last century. Irishmen were brought to England to work at cheap rates and then the capitalist played off the Irish and English Workers, one against the other. About this, Marx wrote in 1869: —

   "The English bourgeoisie has not only exploited Irish poverty in order to worsen the condition of the working class in England, by the forced transplantation of poor Irish peasants, but it has, moreover, divided the proletariat into hostile camps. . . . The average English worker hates the Irish as a competitor who lowers his wages and level of living. He feels national and religious antagonism towards him. . . . This antagonism between the proletarians of England is artificially cultivated and maintained by the bourgeoisie. It knows that in this antagonism lies the real secret of maintaining its power"

The fact that the agents of capitalism are able to stir up workers of one country against another is proof of the immaturity of the working class. It is a proof that up to now the workers are without a true understanding of their position in capitalist society. They are still ready to consider their own interests identical with those of their master class.

Be Realistic - Demand the Impossible

 There exists a perspective of the Marxian socialist political theory and strategy known as impossibilism.

Impossibilists may be characterised as presenting a political theory and strategy:

“that stresses the limited value of political, economic and social reforms within a capitalist economy…and that pursuing such reforms is counterproductive as they only strengthen support for the existing system…such reforms are irrelevant to the realisation of socialism and should not be a major concern for socialists.” (Wiki)

Impossibilists argue that socialists should be engaged in class struggle, in trades unions and elsewhere but that capitalism imposed limits to the gains for the working class that such activism could achieve. Whilst impossibilists are generally opposed to syndicalism (the idea that socialism can emerge from unions organised at industrial scale rather than by trade or workplace) they are not hostile to trades unions, the function of which is to raise workers’ wages as high as practically possible within capitalism. Impossibilists hold that the political struggle for socialism ought to aim beyond the immediate ‘guerilla war’ of the struggle for immediate demands within capitalism or risk being swallowed up by those struggles. They are not necessarily opposed to individual reforms within capitalism but to a strategy and definition of socialism defined by the reform of capitalism.

This approach remained unchanged during the turbulence of domestic and world history experienced during the twentieth century and has often infuriated and frustrated its friends as well as its opponents.  This it owes in part “to a certain political style which steers an unsteady course between uncompromising clarity and doctrinaire intolerance” (Non-Market Socialism in the Nineneenth and Twentieth Century) but also to a strategy that places its emphasis on persuasion and rational argument – to the development of socialist consciousness – and does not offer the immediate hopes (or jobs) of ‘practical’ political activism or single-issue campaign politics.

There is a caricature of impossibilism which its critics often wrongly draw, that of ‘voluntarism’ – that impossibilists pursue a strategy of conversion person by person until majority of 51% is reached when socialism can be established by the election of a majority of socialists to the legislature. Impossibilists do not seek to ‘convert’ people to its creed in the manner of a religious sect but to encourage members of the working class to draw on their experiences of class struggle and to build their political conclusions based on it. The ‘conversion’ is achieved not by socialists but by the dynamic social experience of class struggle. The political object of impossibilism is to clarify and give purpose to class consciousness that it might move beyond capitalism rather than work for change within it.

The term "impossibilist" emerged, of course, as a term of political abuse. Socialists who stood for the end of capitalism and no compromises along the way were seen to be demanding the impossible. Interestingly, before anyone ever used that word there was another term which was popular: possibilism. The so-called possibilists emerged in France in the early 1880s, and they were the reformists, tired of trying to bring about socialism and nothing less, who imagined that the best possible option would be to chip away at the edifice of capitalism bit-by-bit, reforming it until it looked like socialism. Over a century has passed since these undoubtedly sincere people embarked upon their futile course and everywhere reformist gradualism has ended in the most abject failure. Over a hundred years of demanding "the possible" or "something now" has landed the Labour Party no-where. So, if we who refuse to settle for anything less then real real socialists are impossibilists, perhaps it is time for our fellow workers to be rather more practical and demand "the impossible". We are advocates of the Social Revolution. No reform can bring any permanent economic benefit to the whole working class. Revolution tears an evil up by its roots; reform merely shifts it from one spot to another.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was not the artificial creation of a bunch of intellectuals flaunting some pre-determined, universal plan of action. The Socialist Party sprang into existence when a group of socialist workers decided to organise for socialism. Mistakes were made at first but these were never more than minor miscalculations since the Socialist Party refused to deviate from its principles and, above all, never kidded itself that numbers were an adequate compensation for compromise. Viewed against the wreckage of the Second, Third and so-called Fourth Internationals the programme of the Socialist Party has stood it in good stead. After all, we are the nucleus of the Final International - the one which will achieve socialism.

'For our demands are most moderate, We only want the earth'

Adapted from here

https://impossibilism.wordpress.com/about/

Portrait Of Working Life Some 170 Years Ago ...

"It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it, but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of steam engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next."   
Charles Dickens, Hard Times, 1854

Regular readers of our monthly report will have noticed that, so far, we have not provided a detailed analysis of the friction between the American and Canadian governments over NAFTA. This is because of lack of space. We have merely said it is a trade dispute between rival groups of capitalists and therefore the working class has no stake in the matter. For those who wish for a deeper analysis, there will be one in the upcoming edition of our journal ''Imagine''; don't forget to get a copy.

For socialism,
Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC

Are you with us or them?

The State is the governmental power that makes and enforces the laws and regulations of society. Since it developed it has always represented the social class that is dominating. The armed forces of this State were organised for the purpose of defending the interests and the social arrangements that suited the dominating social class.

Every rising social class has had to struggle for control of, or influence in, this State power in order to abolish or modify the existing political arrangements that hindered the further development of the rising class.

In present society, this holds true of the working class movement which seeks to overthrow the domination of the Capitalist class; a domination that keeps the working class in a subject position. The fact that most of the workers do not yet recognise the source of their subjection, or only vaguely do so, does not effect the question. Thus, before the workers can throw off this domination they must obtain control of the State power in order to take out of the hands of the dominating class the power that defends this domination.

Parliament is the centre of state power in modern “democracies” and the workers, who comprise the great majority of each nation, vote the representatives to these parliaments. Therefore, when the workers understand the source of their subject position and the action they must take to abolish it, they can do so by sending representatives to Parliament to take control of the State power for this purpose. By doing so they will take out of the hands of the Capitalist class the control of the powers of government, including the armed forces.

Once the workers have obtained control of the governmental power what then? They will proceed to reorganise society on a Socialist basis. Now we come into the region of conjecture. While we hold the view that the overwhelming mass of the people will participate, or fall in line with, the process of re-organisation (in other words that, while the workers will participate in the movement, and probably individual Capitalists, the Capitalists as a whole will realize that the game is up, as they have lost the power of effective resistance) we make allowance for a theoretically possible attempt in some form of violent sabotage during the revolutionary re-organisation. The control of the armed forces during this period will be an effective deterrent to any such violent attempt without these forces having necessarily to be used. Should a violent minority attempt to destroy Socialism they would have to be forcibly dealt with. While at full liberty to advocate a return to Capitalism, no violent minority could be allowed to obstruct the will of the majority. Hence the phrase in the 6th clause “in order that this machinery including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation.” There will be no suppression of speech, opinion, or peaceful organisation.

A revolutionary policy is one that recognises that since the capitalist system gives rise to, and perpetuates the problems of war, poverty, and insecurity; and that these and many other problems are inherent in the system itself, the only solution to these problems is the abolition of the system itself and replacement by another—a socialist one. Programmes of social reform cannot solve these problems; they only help to perpetuate the system that causes them. Therefore one would expect a "revolutionary” not to advocate, say, a national minimum wage, but the abolition of the wages system altogether.  Many claim to stand for socialism—sometime in the future. But what do they mean by socialism? Do they mean by socialism—or for that matter, communism—what Marx and Engels meant by socialism or communism? Socialism to Marx and Engels and socialism to the Socialist Party means a world-wide universal system of society based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production. It will be a classless society, democratic throughout—a free society, where the coercive forces of the state will have disappeared, and where production will be solely in order to satisfy the needs of the people. When a socialist society "gets on its feet” the watchword will be: "From each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her needs.” Socialism will have no need of the state apparatus. That the state will have “died out"; and that the state ownership of the land, farms and the factories is, in fact, State Capitalism.

Fellow workers, your masters take advantage of your hunger and nakedness to enlist you in their battalions. For what? To defend their property at home and abroad; to keep your fellow slaves in subjection. You own no property to defend; you have no freedom to conserve. It behooves you, therefore, whether inside or outside the army, to join the Socialist Party. The aim of the Socialist Party is to abolish the property conditions that give rise to wars; to institute a system wherein armies and navies become unnecessary and merely figure in the memories of a hated past.

Manipulating The Realities

Stats-Canada reported that in June 31,800 jobs were added to the economy, but the unemployment rate went up from 5.8 to 6 per cent.

Figures sometimes can be quiet deceiving, but they explained 76,000 job seekers came into the work force. So, even if 31,800 of that 76,000 got jobs, it would leave 44,200 without one. 

Many years ago the Minister for Labour said, ''the economy can't exist without a reserve army of unemployed,'' which within capitalism it cannot. It needs this ''reserve army'' to fill jobs when the economy is going through one of its periodic booms only to discard them when it has its inevitable slumps.

For socialism,
Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC

Our Message is Socialism

Workers feel powerless to deal with the important questions affecting their lives. So they ‘participate’ in politics only to the extent of investing some emotional energy by identifying with some personality whose victory will give them some vicarious satisfaction. The workers’ sense of powerlessness with respect to events also makes them unconcerned with policy issues concerned with proposals for reform. Middle-level bureaucrats, Op-Ed writers, intellectuals, and all species of ‘middle class’ reformers frequently advance proposals that are intended to solve, within the confine of capitalism, such problems as racial conflicts, decaying cities, unemployment, climate change and pollution, and foreign policy dilemmas. Such people often bemoan the lack of interest among workers for these proposals. Workers, through their experience, have developed a cynicism about such promises and they feel “let those who get paid for it worry about it”.

Outside the small strata of the decision-makers for capitalism, little serious attention is given to the stuff that is served up by the news media as the subject matter of politics. The frivolities and gossip that pass for political and social issues are discussed by a small number of those concerned, the masses apathetic; businesses keep on making profits that are quietly pocketed by the ruling capitalist class, and everyone continually faces the problems which the capitalist mode of production makes inevitable. From this perspective capitalism has not changed fundamentally in the past hundred-plus years—only the problems have gotten larger. War and environmental destruction now threaten to annihilate the human race. Political class consciousness, the conscious desire for socialism, is still all but non-existent. The world is quiet about socialism. Yet this discouraging scenario is deceptive. Beneath the surface, the forces that shape society are at work, ceaselessly changing the foundations. It is not merely that machinery improves, workers become more skilled and new commodities are marketed while capital accumulates. Mankind's ideas also change as their conditions of life change. Ideas about social conventions change — customary formal dress and bathing attire are trivial examples. Ideas about right and wrong change—the propriety of chattel slavery, birth control, and tobacco smoking are illustrations. However, so far these changes in ideas have stopped short of rejecting the assumptions of capitalist ideology. Before there can be a change in ideas basic to a society, there first must be a crisis of confidence in which the ability of accepted ideas to explain events is disbelieved. There is some evidence that the world is just starting to enter such a crisis of confidence. Everywhere there are signs of a growing uneasiness—an increasing realisation that something is deeply wrong. People are now having second thoughts.

Capitalism sees a shiny future of more consumer gadgets. This philosophy of more and more of the same is beginning to make people wonder if it will provide the answers. The truth of the matter is that however successful and secure capitalism looks at first glance, it is plagued with deep contradictions. These contradictions revolve around the inability of capitalism, despite its wealth, technology and power, to satisfy human needs. On one hand there is fabulous wealth, on the other hand, the most basic of human needs go unsatisfied. Scientists put a man on the moon but society cannot perform the simple task of giving a hungry person a full belly. The rate of infant mortality in the US is above that of far less advanced nations. The capitalist ‘utopia’ is becoming a hell of hatred, despair, and violence. This can no longer be ignored and so people, or at least some people, are beginning to lose confidence in the reasonableness of the system.

The inability of capitalism to solve its contradictions is slowly undermining people's confidence in its ideology; this is the first step. In the middle ages, feudalism began to crumble before developing capitalism when men became sceptical about the accuracy of its world-view. Don Quixote, the famous book ridiculing feudal values, marked the stage when feudal ideas were being rejected to prepare the way for capitalism. In a similar way, capitalist values are being first weakened, then disbelieved, and finally ridiculed. In the middle ages it was segments of the intellectuals, lower clergy, and tradesmen who first became disenchanted; today it is mainly segments of the youth. The Left has undertaken political action avowedly against the system; although, unfortunately, it does not understand the system well enough to take effective action against it. But beyond those observedly alienated from capitalist ideology, there are widespread misgivings among almost all. There is a growing crisis of confidence about capitalist ideology. This is not to say that all these doubts have led any significant numbers of people to explicitly reject capitalism and to become socialists. This is where we socialists come in. The great challenge of the times is in hastening the development of a socialist consciousness that is the prerequisite of socialism. We have accomplished no momentous things, nor do we expect to do so in the near future. We take heart with the thought that, although our numbers are insignificant, our ideas will triumph. The intellectual bankruptcy of capitalism— and its phoney ‘radical’ critics—assure our success. The Socialist Party is working always to keep the message of socialism to the fore.