Time to end wage slavery

We live in times of political change. There has never been a free people. Human society always consisted of masters and slaves, and the slaves have always been and are today, the foundation stones of society. Wage-slavery is a fact. It is clear to every class-conscious worker that there is a class war being waged by the capitalist classes to secure a greater share in the exploitation of labour. It is a matter of paramount importance that we, as socialists, apprehend the basic conditions underlying the strife, and that we prepare to meet the consequences to the world’s workers that will issue from it. This address to socialists and the working class generally is directed to such an understanding. In the confusion arising from false issues of the capitalist class, put forward to mislead the workers, we must ever be on our guard against the crafty apologists of wrong posing as friends of labour.

The Socialist Party of Ireland seeks to organise the workers of this country, irrespective of creed or race, into one great PARTY OF LABOUR. It believes that the dependence of the working class upon the owners of capitalist property, and the desire of these capitalists and landowners to keep the vast mass of the people so subject and dependent, is the great and abiding cause of all our modern social and political evils – of nearly all modern crime, mental degradation, social strife, and political tyranny. Recognising this, it counsels the working class to organise itself politically with the end in view of gaining control and mastery of the entire resources of the country. Such is our aim: such is socialism. As to the necessity for working-class organisation there can be no question. The point to be decided is: How shall the workers organise? Our method is: political organisation at the ballot box to secure the election of representatives of socialist principles to all the elective governing public bodies of this country, and thus to transfer the political power of the State into the hands of those who will use it to further and extend the principle of common ownership. What is needed is unity of thought and action. Far better no organisation at all than a fake form which divides the workers against themselves and misleads them in the interests of the employing class. As working-class organisation grows stronger capitalism grows weaker. It has already outlived its usefulness. It is unable to run industry efficiently, and fails to supply the needs of the great majority of the people.

The Socialist Party is the party of the working class, the party of emancipation, made up of men and women who scorn any compromise with their oppressors; who want no votes that can be bought, and promises no offices and no support under any false pretences whatsoever. The Socialist Party stands squarely upon its class principles. Its central task today is to consistently expose the enemy and point to the aim of overthrowing capitalism and building socialism, to raise the general level of consciousness and sense of organisation and instill a revolutionary outlook among fellow-workers. Ignorance alone stands in the way of socialist success. The capitalist parties understand this and use their resources to prevent the workers from gaining knowledge and understanding. Capitalist parties cunningly contrive to divide the workers. The Socialist Party is uniting them upon one issue: the abolition of wage-slavery.

We therefore appeal to all workers to throw in their lot with the Socialist Party and assist it in giving force, clearness and effectiveness to the gathering working class movement. And on its part that Party, conscious of its high mission, pledges itself to pursue, unfaltering and undeviating, its great object – common ownership of the means of producing and distributing all wealth. As socialists our basic goal is the emancipation of labour. We oppose any so-called right to own or exploit the labour of others. The Socialist Party's aim is the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth. Socialism is not a scheme or plan. It is the next stage in social evolution. Many believe the Socialist Party is going to take all you own and divide it among the poor. We don’t want your paltry possessions. It would do us no good. We want the Earth.

Reformism V. Revolution

We live in a critical period for civilisation and we are now living in the shadow of annihilation from climate change. In the midst of this, people still show a stubborn adherence to reforms, a belief in the possibility of major improvement of conditions under capitalism, and a rejection of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Why is this so? Why the general political apathy and rejection of revolutionary changes in society, when humanity as a whole is in the grip of life and death struggle? It is now difficult to imagine that the term ‘social democracy’ once embodied workers' greatest hopes. There was a desire to bring about a profound social change and to abolish capitalism itself by gradual means. Then came the patriotic jingoism of World War One. Everything changed. From now on, social democracy saw the state not as something to be overthrown but instead as one of the principal instruments of its reformist policy. Socialism came to be re-defined. The major tendencies within the labour movement began to see its objectives as gaining more parliamentary power, initiating state-run public services, appointing more 'socialist' ministers to implement ‘left-wing progressive’ social legislation under the auspices of the state. 'Socialist' aspirations were integrated into the state apparatus. Their 'socialism' had been diluted by a programme which is in no sense socialist.

Reformism presented an outward semblance of radical aims and theory, but becomes in fact directed towards the goal of securing the maximum benefits for the working-class within capitalism. Reformism's basic political method is that working people should devote themselves primarily to voting for suitable politicians to win elections to become the government and so to pass legislation to regulate capitalism and, on that basis, to improve their working conditions and living standards. The implication is that class struggle is not necessary. If a reformist government can secure stability and growth in the interests of capital, there is no reason to believe that employers will oppose a reformist government. However, so long as capitalist property relations remain the bed-rock of the economy, the state cannot be neutral and an honest broker. This is not because the state is always directly controlled by openly pro-capitalist parties. It is because whoever controls the state is brutally limited in what they can do by the needs of capitalist profitability and because the needs of capitalist profitability are very difficult to reconcile with the interest of working people. In capitalism, you cannot accumulate capital by economic growth unless you can get investment, and you can't get capitalists to invest unless they can make what they judge to be an adequate rate of profit. Since high levels of employment and increasing state services in the interest of the working class (dependent upon taxation out of the employers share of surplus value) are predicated upon economic growth, even governments that want to further the interests of the exploited for example left-wing governments must make capitalist profitability its first priority.

Reformists viewed genuine socialism as a far-off goal and little more. Revolution was a possibility but not in the foreseeable future. Reformism pushes aside the revolutionary aspirations in the working class. When reforms fail, a series of new reforms becomes the expected course of events. Our fellow-workers become their own reformist advocates. The role of the Socialist Party is to generalise the lessons drawn from the day-to-day class struggles to resist reformism. For reformists capitalist crises and accompanying social problems can be cured within the system with palliative policies; for revolutionary socialists they can not. The acceptance of gradualism is the acceptance of the dominance of bourgeois institutions to be negotiated with and not challenged. The reformist’s method is one in which the self-activity of the working-class is necessarily minimised, its militancy curtailed. To accommodate reformist theories is to assist in turning the labour movement away from socialism itself. Reformist tactics are the effective enemy of revolutionary strategy. When movements of revolt arise and begin to march, the reformists are obliged to reject them as a hinderance to its own baby-steps towards improving conditions. It expresses no revolt of their own and cannot acknowledge other revolts. Again and again we have witnesses the spectacle of reformist politicians limiting the scale of protest, and then telling people that the failure to make gains shows that such action cannot work. Reformism always shies away from social conflict.

Reformism as a powerful ideology within the workers’ movement is far from dead. The hold of reformist ideas among people remains strong. Reformism is always with us, but it rarely reveals its presence and usually goes by another name, Despite its friendly manner it is our main political foe and we should understand that. If we wish to attract people to our socialist banner and away from reformism, it will not be through outbidding reformists in terms of palliative policies and amelioration programmes. It will be through our understanding of the world. 

The World is Ready for Socialism.

Society is today clearly on the road to the abyss. A new Dark Age confronts mankind at the end of that road if we fail to make the socialist revolution. The Socialist Party optimistically believes that the emancipation of humanity from the age-long thralldom of the class state and class rule will be finally be consummated in our own era. We have reason to believe that, despite temporary setbacks, our age is pre-eminently an age of revolution, and that the social revolutions of our day, unlike those of the past, will end in final victory. Social revolution presents itself as the only saviour of an otherwise doomed social order. The Socialist Party aims at nothing else or less than world unity and universal well-being, to be achieved by internationalism and the world-wide substitution of production for use in place of production for profit. Let us hope it can carry forward the emancipation of humanity from class rule to its final and victorious conclusion. Our mission is the redemption of the workers from the bondage of wage-slavery.

Stated in a sentence, the aim of the Socialist Party is the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, and the consequent economic equality of every human being on earth. The class struggle is the driving force of history. As clear as this statement can be, there are so many people who seem unable to grasp it. They construe socialism to mean all kinds of silly and grotesque things which makes socialism seem ridiculous to so many people and which no socialist dreams of. The trouble is not with socialism, but with what people imagine to be socialism.

The working class is the most revolutionary class in society, the only one capable of fulfilling the task of ending once and for all this oppressive system and of building a socialist society free of all exploitation. Every class-conscious worker is important. Every honest rebel against capitalism is dear to us. The Socialist Party is simply preparing the way for the peaceful and orderly reception of the socialist commonwealth. Socialism is the only possible cure for that social sickness called poverty and its countless festering sores. The cooperation of all for the good of all will inspire the love of all, and for the first time, the human race will be in harmony. The building of the Socialist Party is an important step toward the total emancipation of the working class and ending once and for all the exploitation and oppression of the capitalist system.

The enemy is capitalism.

Our present society is founded upon the exploitation of the propertyless class by the propertied. This exploitation is such that the propertied (capitalists) but the working force body and soul of the propertyless, for the price of the mere cost of existence (wages) and take for themselves, i.e., steal the amount of new values (products) which exceeds the price, whereby wages are made to represent the necessities instead of the earnings of the wage-labourer. With the accumulation of individual wealth, the greed and power of the propertied grows. They use all the means for competing among themselves for the robbery of the people. With our own eyes we can see the achievements of capitalism: millions of new graves, cities and whole countries turned into cemeteries , refugees in the millions wandering without homes or countries to call their own. Still more millions transferred from the rule of one despotism to the rule of another. Starvation, misery and insecurity throughout the world.

Working people stand before an important decision. They must decide whether they will continue to support the political parties of their enemies and exploiters or whether they will create a socialist party which will carry on the political struggles of the workers against these parties. Are the workers of the United States to continue to use their political power to support the capitalist exploiters? Fellow-workers you must use your political strength Refuse to support the parties of your enemies. Refuse to permit your political power to be wasted in another “progressive” party.

Those ever-obedient lackeys of the master class, our Labour Party leaders, when will the workers realise how they are betrayed by them each time. It is time people took their future and fate into their own hands. They will find that they can do it much better than those whom they call leaders, but who, in reality, are skivvies of the capitalist class. The Labour Party popularises the theory that the capitalist and the worker are brothers; it justifies its own existence as the arbiter of the brothers, when they have spats, as brothers will. The Labour Party is committed to the capitalist system rather than overthrowing the system of industrial slavery. We live in the era of capitalism. Our enemy is capitalism. Just as we cannot abolish the system of monarchy without deposing the person of the monarch. We cannot end the capitalist method of production without expropriating the person of the capitalist. They produce as cheaply as they can, pay as low wages as they can, and sell at a profit. The workers have nothing but their ability to labour. Our masters recognise their international interests. They fight together — against us. They are the global brigands of capitalism endeavouring to crush the labour movement of the world. In one nation after another the movement of the working class is being defeated by the combined forces of capitalist imperialism. For them there is no imaginary boundary line that keeps them separated. They stand united around the world against labour. In order to effectively resist the onslaughts of capitalism we also must act on an international scale. Against exploiters, murderers, parasites, and their flunkeys of all lands we must oppose international action on the part of the working class. Against the combined forces of capitalism we must hurl the forces of worldwide workers.

The Socialist Party strives to replace capitalism by socialism and all its members believe that it is both possible and essential. We understand the great importance for socialists to work for a new social system. we see the need to win the overwhelming majority of the population for the fight against capitalism and for socialism. If you asked me for a short definition of socialism, I would start by saying that socialism is a society where the means of production and distribution were commonly owned and in the hands of the working people. The Socialist Party does not believe that the State is neutral or above classes, and we believe that in order to advance to socialism in Britain it is necessary for the working class majority to take political power out of the hands of he capitalists and to transform the State so that it becomes an instrument of the will of the majority.

This worn-out and corrupt system offers no promise of improvement and adaptation. There is no silver lining to the clouds of darkness and despair. This system offers only a perpetual struggle for slight relief within wage slavery. It is blind to the possibility of establishing an industrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery. Previous efforts for the betterment of the working class have proven abortive because limited in scope and disconnected in action. Universal economic evils affecting the working class can be eradicated only by a universal working class movement.

Working people, we call upon you to play your part in the establishment of a real live working class party. Rally to the call for complete emancipation of labour. The great task of abolishing the present capitalist system and inaugurating socialism rests with us. The day has come for solidarity. Wherever people have the opportunity and the freedom to act, they have shown their desire for a new type of world. They want a world free of war, free of inequality, free of want. They want a world free of the rule of the few over the many. The aspirations for liberty are so strong and universal. The working class is losing confidence in capitalism and its spokesmen. That is a most encouraging sign.

Radical Glasgow

Although it does not mention the activities of the Socialist Party, this summary of the left-wing history of Glasgow makes interesting background reading.

https://libcom.org/files/radical-glasgow.pdf

Our Capitalist Foe

What stands between the liberation of the millions of exploited working people and the continued rule of the bourgeois dictatorship is the absence of understanding and awareness among our fellow-workers. The focus of our party must be directed toward the development of education and enlightenment. As our fellow-workers imbibe the lessons and climb the ascent to class-consciousness, they will apply this consciousness and experience to the problems of their existence, the practical result will be: concrete political organisation of the working class.

The capitalist understands one thing very well. He knows what his class interests are and how to protect them. He may be a fool but he knows that so long as he can maintain the organisational, political and social integrity or unity of his class on important matters and at the same time impregnate his workers with the belief that they are incompetent and impotent, he and his class are secure. Thus the ruling class puts forth the claim, in one form or another, that it has the right to rule, to govern; to own, manage and control. The claim look very impressive because his class has had an appreciable degree of success, and success can be glorified and sanctified, particularly by chicanery and trickery. The first aim is to obscure and conceal the real situation. He will never admit that political power has any class meaning or content. The existence of classes has or should have no connection with the nature of the state and the role of the government. He may speak of those who have wealth and those who do not. He attempts to explain it by differences of fortune or misfortune, of frugality or profligacy, of ability or the lack of ability, dismissing the embarrassing matter of inheritance by designating several millions for the establishment of a “charitable” but astutely also a tax exempt foundation. His aim is to conceal the fact that political, social and economic power are in the hands of a small minority. Any attempt of on the part of ordinary people to achieve and assert political power is resisted because he knows that political power is indissolubly related to social and economic power. Of course, to see that no steps are yet taken by workers in the direction of political power is beside the point. The ruling class know that even a little learning by the people is a dangerous thing and may result in progressively increasing demands. Such development would expose and lay bare the basic evil of a dictatorship exercised by a small minority, not by virtue of service to society but solely for the protection of the capitalist.

 Our capitalist fully realises the elementary knowledge that the government is not or should not be a neutral body sitting above capital and labour, impartially adjudicating the disputes which arise between contending classes or groups. He knows only too well that that it is the cloak of capitalist democracy under which the ruling class exercises its dictatorship over society. The people may vote, but the bourgeoisie rules.

An Alternative Vision

Socialism can protect the planet and its peoples. The struggle for a livable and sustainable world is a life and death issue. Socialism is the idea that working people makes all of society run so why shouldn’t they run all of society? There is throughout the world a widespread popular perception that socialism is a coercive system, and the experiences of the former Soviet Union and its satellites states have justified that perception. Generally speaking, while the world's peoples dislike capitalism, they fear socialism. This issue is often at the heart of socialist's problems in persuasion. In the face of the crisis in socialism the Left has to present an alternative programme. We must bring socialist ideas anew.

The Socialist Party rejects any notion of class dictatorship and any dictatorial form of government and ever-expanding state apparatus. Socialism is not state repression. We identify socialism first and foremost with common ownership of the means of production, and with the mass participation in and control over economic, political, and social institutions and structures. Socialism has been the goal of the working class political movement. The Left's unity is based on support for capitalism and refusal to fight capitalism.

Our vision is where society becomes a "self-administered" economy involving democratic bodies (elected by the entire adult population and subject to recall ) at the global, regional and local levels where decisions are made by the people actually affected by them. Working people must be able to express their needs and desires in the process of decision-making, in the formulation and the implementation of the allocation of resources. There is the assertion that the problem of the sheer complexity of the economy makes such an aspiration an illusory one, that it is not feasible, not workable in practice. They claim industrial democracy of that scale is utopian. They insist that the present price mechanism and the market system are indispensable to directing resources in the most efficient way. Even some who claim to Marxists suggest that some form of market will remain even in money is replaced by labour-value vouchers of some sort. The Socialist Party contests this argument and in fact posits that assessing needs and directing resources to satisfying them will actually be far simpler than employing use of money in those calculations.

There already exists a self-regulating system of stock control. How does it work? You go to a supermarket and take something off the shelf. Others do the same. What happens? The shelf empties and this triggers an order for fresh stock from the suppliers. The suppliers too might find they are running low of particular input to manufacture the good in question. So this too triggers orders for more stock of the input in question. And so on and so forth, all along the supply chain. The economy knows exactly what the real preferences of people are! These preferences are indicated by the rate of take up or depletion of stock. Stocks which are are not depleting very rapidly suggest that people don't have a particularly strong preference for them while stock which are depleting rapidly suggest a strong preference is being expressed. All this information is instantly picked up and acted upon in a completely self-regulating manner. The problem of the critics of socialism is that are not looking at production and distribution in terms of a feedback mechanism but are fixated on the idea of a priori central planning – the command economy - deciding what to produce first and then setting about to organise production according.

Capitalism is built upon monetary accounting while socialism relies on calculation-in-kind. There is no general unit of accounting involved in this process such as money or labour hours or energy units. In fact, every conceivable kind of economic system has to rely on calculation in kind, including capitalism. Without it, the physical organisation of production (e.g. maintaining inventories) would be literally impossible. This is one reason why socialism holds a decisive productive advantage over capitalism because of the elimination for the need to tie up vast quantities of resources and labour implicated in a system of monetary/pricing accounting. In socialism calculations will be done directly in physical quantities of real things, in use-values, without any general unit of calculation. 

Needs will be communicated to productive units as requests for specific useful things, while productive units will communicate their requirements to their suppliers as requests for other useful things. Such non-monetary calculation of course already happens , on the technical level, under capitalism. Once the choice of productive method has been made, according to expected profitability as revealed by monetary calculation, then the real calculations in kind of what is needed to produce a specific good commence so much raw materials, so much energy, so much labour. In socialism this choice too will be made in real terms, in terms of the real advantages and disadvantages of alternative methods and in terms of, on the one hand, the utility of some good or some project in a particular circumstance at a particular time and, on the other hand, of the real “costs” in the same circumstances and at the same time of the required materials, energy and productive effort. On the one side would be recorded the resources (materials, energy, equipment, labour) used up in production and on the other side the amount of the good produced, together with any by-products. As already stated this, of course, is done under capitalism but it is doubled by an exchange value calculation: the exchange value of the resources used up is recorded as the cost of production while the exchange value of the output is recorded as sales receipts. If the latter is greater than the former, then a profit has been made; if it is less, then a loss is recorded. 

Such profit-and-loss accounting has no place in socialism and would be quite meaningless. 

We Want Freedom. We Want Socialism

WORLD SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

Its welter of initials employed by the Left it should not mislead us into thinking that the Socialist Party is just another left-wing group. It rejects all reformist and opportunist methods of struggle. Its goal is a class-free society. The crying demand for the basic necessities of life has thrown millions into battle against capital. To all who seek to wield their efforts in a struggle against capitalism in order to survive: This is your Party. The Socialist Party calls on you to join us for the fulfillment of socialist goal. Capitalist production relations block the use of the advanced technology of production to feed, house, and provide for the growing numbers of working people. Slowly, the exploited and oppressed are starting to act and organise in their own class interests. The Socialist Party concentrates its agitation and propaganda to politically shake up our fellow-workers, exposing capitalism as the root cause of the social and environment destruction rampant today. Our educational efforts are to convince fellow-workers that society cannot be organised to meet their basic needs. Our aim is to win the majority of workers to socialism.

The great productive power of mankind is the product of the labour of countless people around the world. But while the working people created this wealth, they do not own or control it. The capitalist system has concentrated the ownership in the hands of a small group of big capitalists. The capitalist system is marked by a basic contradiction: production is social, involving the coordinated and interconnected labour of millions of workers, but the control of this social labour and its product is private. Workers are wage slaves who survive only by selling their labour power to the capitalists. Capitalists own the means of production and pay workers for their labour power. But the working class produces far more wealth than it receives in income. The difference is the source of the industrialist's profit, the banker's interest and the land-owner's rent. The capitalist tries to drive down the wages of the worker who is employed only as long as he or she helps create profit for the business. When the capitalist has problems maximising his profits, he does not hesitate to throw workers out into the street. The capitalist system exploits the working class and creates the poverty and economic insecurity of society as a whole. The capitalist system is a system of economic anarchy and crisis. Capitalism is plagued by periodic economic crises. These recessions are built into the economic system. Each enterprise tries to maximise its profits by pushing up production and cutting costs. Economic crises are also exacerbated by speculation, hoarding and other schemes of the bankers, investors and industrialists. Each tries to profit in the short run, but because of this individual greed, the working class and people suffer, and the economy is thrown into turmoil. This anarchistic system of capitalism creates waste. Technological advances are delayed or even suppressed due to profit considerations. The result of all this is that the people suffer. The capitalist class benefits from the misery of countless numbers of people. Capitalism is an obstacle to the further advancement of the material well-being of society. It is unjust, wasteful, irrational and increasingly unproductive. This exploitative and oppressive system, where profit is master, has choked our entire society with economic crises, political reaction and social decay. The drive for profits holds millions hostage to hunger and want; it has poisoned the very air we breathe. The situation demands a new, more rational system of economic organisation that will utilise the productive forces for the benefit of the vast majority of society. Exploitation, injustice, racism and oppression, as well as the constant threat of war – this is the face of capitalism today. The situation cries out for change, for a new, more rational social system – socialism.

ALL FOR EACH – EACH FOR ALL

The exploiters who squeeze profits out of the workers through the ownership of the means of production – which they innocently name “private enterprise” wish to make us all believe that the exploiting system of capitalism is still progressive and is the best possible social system. Facts will not help them at all. They will misinterpret and misrepresent those in an attempt to do this. What can be greater proof of the bankruptcy of the capitalist system than its recurring crises and recessions. No amount of distortion and deceit will wipe out of existence the sufferings of tens of millions of jobless, destitute people, while the factories and farms able to produce their needs stood idle. Nor can the capitalist system function for the purposes of peace.

Socialists will concede that in its heyday capitalism was progressive. The lure for profits in the unlimited markets of the world stimulated the capitalist class to expand and mechanise the means of production. It encouraged science and technology to make possible the mass production of an abundance of commodities. It is true that in its progressive stage capitalism robbed the workers of the product of its labour, just as it does to day. But then there was historic compensation for the robbery. The means for ultimately abolishing poverty from the face of the earth were being perfected. This reason for putting up with exploitation no longer exists. Poverty stalks the land – but not because of any technological insufficiency. Translated into food, clothing, shelter, education, health, entertainment, it spells the difference between happiness and misery. All this was kept from people by “private enterprise” with its grip upon the means of production and will not let it operate except when there is profit to be made. That is how “progressive” the capitalist system has become. It is the secret of the regressive character of present-day capitalism. Working people are robbed of the product of their labour and so that the capitalist masters may secure a larger share of the world markets in which to dispose of the wealth of which the working class will continue to be robbed. It will take more lying than there is to get the generations growing up in a world of war and poverty to believe that the capitalist system is progressive. They will be asking why the existing means for abolishing poverty are not used for that purpose. The message of the Socialist Party is bound to resonate to them: capitalism must be replaced by SOCIALISM. A socialist society will restore the human family to family homes and allow people to live in harmony and happiness.

But the masses have been known to change cruel and unjust social systems. That is how human progress has come about. For instance, the tyranny of feudalism that for centuries kept people in serfdom was swept away by the suffering people. So the capitalist system of today, which, among its other crimes, breeds modern wars, must be overthrown and replaced by socialism. All the schemes for bolstering the system are, at their best, palliatives that cannot cure – and, at their worst, strictly delusional.

Socialists oppose all wars. Workers must fight THEIR OWN WAR – the class war against the bosses. What is needed for permanent peace is a change of personnel at the controls. This means the death of capitalism and the birth of socialism. Power and profit – the motive force of capitalism – will then perish. The peoples of the world will be able to produce their goods and their resources according to their human needs. THE ONLY WAY OUT FOR THE WORKERS IS THROUGH SOCIALISM. We can no longer afford to take any chances. Socialism holds the only guarantee of the survival of the human race in a civilised society. We believe that capitalism threatens any hope for social justice, peace, and human dignity. We look out on a worldwide crisis of capitalism with mass hunger, disease, environmental destruction, poverty, and economic collapse. Capitalism threatens the survival of all life on this planet. Nothing short of revolution and socialism can end this threat. The challenge is ours to build a better socialist movement. We are Marxists who believe that capitalism—as a system centred on private accumulation and profit—is inherently a system of inequality, injustice, and war. We want a social system where social wealth is not in the hands of a few billionaires, but is controlled by the people. We seek both economic and political democracy. Human needs cannot replace profit as the driving force of society unless the people control their workplaces, their neighbourhoods and communities.

XR blocks Edinburgh roads

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-48660006

Climate change campaigners have been arrested after closing off several major roads in Edinburgh city centre. The activists have blocked several roads in a "direct action" campaign. 

Police said "a small number of arrests" were made on Lothian Road, where six people were staging a road block. North Bridge and George IV Bridge were also affected, with city bus services delayed and diverted. Officers are urging motorists to avoid the area. 

One protestor, 32-year-old Malcolm White, said: "We're blocking traffic and disrupting people's daily lives because we are so afraid of the consequences of the climate emergency and the fact that the government is not taking nearly enough action.

"Their commitment to 2045 is unfortunately ecocide, it is going to be completely inadequate and it relies on technologies which are not prepared, they're not up to scale, and some of them don't even exist yet. Whereas actually, we really need to change the system that we live in and work in, in order to make it a more ecologically friendly and more just society."

We need a new world...quickly

Climate change campaigners have set up a campsite in the grounds of the Scottish Parliament. Extinction Rebellion Scotland said the Holyrood Rebel Camp was their "biggest ever gathering" and would remain on the site for the next five days. Organisers said the camp would see "non-violent direct action" in Edinburgh with various workshops and events taking place for those on the Holyrood site.

They are calling on the Scottish government to do more in response to what they call a "climate crisis and ecological breakdown". Politicians are due to discuss the climate bill in Holyrood this week.

Lauren McGlynn, an activist, said: "Extinction Rebellion Scotland have decided to put up this camp outside of the Scottish Parliament to try to put pressure on the government to give us the best possible climate bill. Currently the climate bill they are considering is based on the Committee on Climate Change report, which at best gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5C, and it's based on a bunch of techno-fixes that haven't been proven and are yet to be invented."

Our task as socialists is to advocate for radical change and to further undermine the shaky foundations of capitalism, to challenge its ideas while encouraging the majority to cease propping up this system, and instead to go forward to a money-free, wageless, state-free and class-free global society. In socialism there won’t be any profit-seeking capitalist enterprises to regulate; just democratically-run productive units producing, in an ecologically and socially acceptable way, what people need. 

When we consider the future of the planet we are faced with two choices. People can continue to support the defenders of capitalism and acquiesce in the destruction of the environment or stand in the way by joining the struggle for socialism and the end of a system that will prioritise profit over not only humanity's well-being but the planet we live in. But, don’t wait until your home is deep in water or the fields dry and arid to make up your mind. Think hard now. Capitalism, and all that comes with it, the worsening of every environmental problem, or socialism, a world community that places control of the Earth in the safe hands of a global majority who will tend to it with respect and without the barriers profit places in the path of production.

Socialism is the real thing

The capitalist class is the number one enemy of the people. It ruthlessly exploits and oppresses the working class. Capitalism hold the working class in subjection by the strength of its might and power, but capitalism can not do it without the willing consent and acquiescence of that working class. What is the secret of the Socialist Party? The secret lies not in the personality and the ability of orators and writers; it lies in the fact that all the propaganda and teaching of this party was, from the outset, based upon the class struggle – upon a recognition of the fact that the struggle between the Haves and the Have Nots was the controlling factor in politics, and that this fight could only be ended by the working class seizing hold of political power and using this power to transfer the ownership of the means of life, viz, land and machinery of production, from the hands of private individuals to the community, from individual to social or public ownership. This party had against it all the organised forces of society – of a society founded upon robbery, but it had on its side a latent force stronger than them all, the material interests of the working class. The awakened recognition of that material interest has carried us far; it will carry us in triumph to the end.

Political pundits are always telling us that the world has changed — the system has changed and the whole nature of capitalism isn’t what it used to be. The Socialist Party asserts capitalism has not changed. The struggles between rival capitalists, the harsh conflict of interests between workers and capitalists, the blind and wasteful way in which worker is set against his brother worker — these things remain, today. Socialism will be the outcome of a process of social evolution that is going on now. The culmination of this process will be the capture of political power for socialism by the working class and the consequent social revolution from capitalism to socialism. It is capitalism that paves the way for socialism. Capitalism has already brought into being a world-wide productive system that could provide a plenty for all and the people to run this system. What it has yet to bring into being is the desire for socialism on the part of those who work for wages throughout the world. This is the only real barrier to socialism today. If what our correspondent implies at one point is correct — if workers can’t run society without the capitalist class — then the time is not ripe for socialism. Our answer to this is clear and the evidence for it can be easily seen by looking at the world in which we live: the working class do now, as industrial, agricultural, clerical and, yes, managerial workers, run society from top to bottom even if not in their own interest. The capitalist class play no role in production; they are superfluous. On the personal-level few are even '‘skilled technicians”. Let’s get this straight: it is the working class who run the world today without the help-of the capitalist class. We are merely arguing that means of wealth production that are at present socially operated should also be socially owned and controlled, and that the people who run society today can and should — run it in their own interests.

We have no detailed plans for socialism. This is because socialism can only be established by the working class once they have become socialist. It is up to those people around at the time to work out the exact forms of running social affairs in a socialist society. It would be presumptuous and foolish of us today to predict the future. All we can do now is say where we think the general trends we see operating today are leading. When a majority of workers have become socialists they will organise for political power; then use this power to end private property in the means of wealth production, thus ending also their position as wage-slaves. This done, society can set about reorganising itself on a socialist basis, with production for use and free access for all to what has been produced. In such a society the government of people (and all that goes with it like armed forces, police, judges and jailers) will be unnecessary. Parliament as the means for controlling the machinery of government too will be unnecessary. But this does not mean that there will be no means for exercising democratic control over social affairs. The exact form of such democratic social control once again we can’t predict and don’t try to. Complex productive apparatus as exists today can only be controlled democratically by society through such means. If you find difficulty in envisaging world wide organisation and control of production consider that many organisations today are already world wide: General Motors, Shell, World Health Organisation, International Postal Union, to mention a few. Socialist society will allow a great variety of forms of social control from the local to the world-wide. Beyond this we can’t go today.

 

Glasgow Branch Meeting (19/6)

June 19 at 7 pm 
Maryhill Community Central Halls, 
304 Maryhill Road, 
Glasgow G20 7YE

The Socialist Party recognises that only through socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing wealth, can the people be freed from misery, we declare ourselves a socialist movement, and undertake to conduct campaigns among the people to win them to the need to establish socialism. We pledge ourselves to socialist understanding. It will be the task of the Socialist Party to establish a movement that will not only organise the energy and enthusiasm of our fellow-workers into the revolutionary struggle for socialism. It is our task to organize this energy in such a way that it strengthens the cause of socialism. We are now engaged in a struggle to build the Socialist Party, a party that can unite the working class over-throw capital and end the exploitation of mankind forever. Creating a world, a socialist society, where people live from birth to death never having to suffer under the chains of wage slavery is what all honest socialists should be fighting for.

The Socialist Party is based on the task of the emancipation of labour from the oppression of capital, the transfer of all means of production to social ownership and the capture of political power through capturing state power by the working class. 

There is a real need for genuine radicalism. We don’t mean the pettifogging, the slogan-mongering, the pseudo-Marxian profundities, the dogmatism, the bickerings and sectarian factionalism which have distinguished the Left and which carry a heavy onus of the responsibility for our own ineffectiveness.