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.

We want socialism

We live under the system of capitalism. By that very fact, inequality, class inequality, and therefore, social, economic and political inequality, are the inescapable preconditions for the continued existence of this profit economy. The economic differences between the classes are enormous; the variations in the standard of living between the capitalist class and the proletariat are tremendous; the bourgeoisie has many ways of enriching itself, the proletariat lives only on its wages.

The Socialist Party produces a guide to action, defining the focus of the direction in which the working class must be educated, organised and mobilised by its own experience to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish socialism. Our Party is a working-class party based on the theory of Marxism. To make revolution and put an end to capitalism, the proletariat must have a clear plan. It must determine what the nature of the struggle is, who are its enemies, and who are its friends that can be rallied to its cause. After we have overthrown the capitalists we will establish socialism which will mean the rule of the people, the broadest democracy. We shall confiscate the factories, mines, railways, banks and large stores from the capitalists without compensation and turn them into the property of the people. The enormous waste of capitalism will be abolished.

Socialism is the future of humanity, a radically new society where classes and the state will have been completely eliminated. Socialism means tremendous progress. Humanity has not always been divided into classes. The State is simply an instrument by which one class dominates another. It became a necessity when society split into classes. Throughout history there have been many revolutions where the oppressed classes have broken the fetters that bound them and overthrown the ruling classes. When socialism is realised, classes and class inequalities will have been eliminated.

 The State and its instruments of repression will have ceased to exist; the class antagonisms that necessitated their existence will have ended. All social inequalities will have been banished; there will be no rich and no poor, and all members of society will contribute to the common good. Each person will contribute to society according to capacities, while society in turn provides for needs. The differences between workers and farmers, town and country, and manual and intellectual work will have disappeared. Each individual will develop to one's full potential.

Workers have no borders

Change taking place in the world, in communities and in workplaces. There has emerged of a minority of people who now question the global capitalist system. The mood of the people is changing rapidly who feel emboldened to demand more from governments. Suddenly there are large numbers of people around who are moving in the same direction, questioning environment policies, challenging their ineffectiveness, asking why this is. If we look about us today we see that the world is filled with suffering and despair. A new mood of resistance is changing the political scene.

 The Socialist Party does not only dream of the day when the world shall know that men are brothers and that women are sisters to each other, but it is working without respite to make that dream come true. Socialism is the greatest thing in all the world today. Those who are clear-eyed enough see that socialism is coming and are at the battle-front fighting to overcome the prejudices against it and to pave the way so that it may come.

The Socialist Party is the only party that has the future of our children and grand-children at heart; the only party that has a message for them. The children of working people have always been poor because the world has never been just. For ages and ages those who have built the houses, cultivated the fields, raised the crops, spun the wool, woven the cloth, supplied the food we eat and the clothes we wear, and furnished the homes we live in, have been the poor and despised, while those who profited by their labour and consumed the good things they produced, have been the rich and respectable. The Socialist Party says there has got to be some changes made. It says that the world is big enough for all the people that are in it, with plenty of room to spare for parks and playgrounds; that there is land enough to go around without over-crowding; that there are farms enough, or can be easily provided, to raise all we can eat, so that no child in all the world need to go hungry; that there is plenty of minerals and metals, stored in the earth; that there are forests and mountains and water courses galore; that there are mills and mines and factories and trains, boats and planes and railways and communication networks, and the power supplied free by nature to run them all; that there are millions of men and women ready to do all the work that may be required to build homes, raise crops, bake bread – and cake too – weave cloth, make clothes and everything else that is necessary for everybody, and have time enough besides to build schools and provide playgrounds for every child to make this earth a children’s paradise.

For real individual freedom, economic security is certainly necessary. That is, to be really free, human beings must be secure from economic want, the fear of unemployment, poverty and the misery that the masses are heir to today. They must be free from the oppression of the boss. They must be free, too, from the necessity of serving in the ever-recurring wars of capitalist society. When, in the

course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of humanity, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people should overthrow these institutions. The Socialist Party goal is to establish a new world without capitalism and without the exploitation of man by man. Only the working class can make the socialist revolution.

The Nats on Tour

The pro-independence group All Under One Banner have  marched through the streets of Oban. Organisers claimed 7,000 people took part.

The growing strength and influence of nationalism has compelled the World Socialist Movement to address the issue. Nationalist struggles are placed above the class struggle and eliminate the role of the working class and the socialist revolution. Nationalist struggles, by no means, stands for the liberation of workers. Pro-nationalists are driven by their desire to find a special explanation for the oppression of minorities. The class struggle is not enough; there must be a “national struggle” as well. The ruling class struggles for its own selfish ends, using nationalism to mobilise all the people under the leadership of the local capitalist class. In other words, it wants a bigger slice of the profits from exploitation of Scottish workers. Sections of the local capitalists, wanting a larger slice of the cake, offer nationalism and separatism as the peoples’ salvation.

Left nationalists view an independent Scotland as the first step on the path to socialism. They believe that Scottish (also Welsh, Cornish and Irish) nationalism is a progressive force, and can therefore be used. They either do not understand, or opportunistically, refuse to accept the fundamental role of nationalism. They see this nationalism as the lesser of evils. That’s why it resorts to all sorts of demagogy to the effect that it will “liberate” the workers. Scots do not see secession as their way to liberation but as some palliative remedy for the economic social problems in Scotland. Socialists must on no account help spread this new diversion but must resolutely expose and attack it. The ruling class, using nationalism and nationalists, has side-tracked the class aspirations of the working people.

The Socialist Party constantly hammer home that the SNP and their like are nothing but tools of the ruling class. We must popularise socialism in order that the workers shall not be side-tracked. At present, Scottish Nationalism and the SNP have the appearance of a progressive movement to some sincere people who have almost no political understanding. Deceived by this, people will work in and around the nationalist movement only to discover, in some years’ time, that they have been mistaken and most cruelly misled, have been wasting their time and worse – have been advocating a diversionary movement. Workers must not fall into this trap; they must not be deceived by any so-called potentially progressive facade of nationalism. Instead of tragically wasting their time fostering nationalism (in whatever form), the Socialist Party campaigns to prepare a powerful and unified socialist movement. We know socialism is the solution. We must prove it to our fellow-workers.

The Socialist Party repudiates the romance of nationalism, an idea that divides mankind into separate distinct sovereign nation-states whose claim is that the freedom and fulfillment of mankind are to be worked out in terms of its national identity. 

The class war is for the existence of humanity.

Then for a’ that and a’ that, man to man the world o’er, shall brithers be for a’ that.

The mission of socialism is so to organise the mechanism of production that wealth can be so abundantly produced as to free mankind from want and the fear of want, from the brute’s necessity of a life of arduous toil in the production of the brute’s mere necessaries of life. Socialist philosophy has made this clear. The Socialist Party is the only party that is or can be truly representative of the interests of the working class, the only class essential to society and the class that is destined ultimately to succeed to political power, “not for the purpose of governing men,” in the words of Engels, but “to administer things.” Between private ownership and common ownership there can be no compromise. One produces for profit, the other for use. One produces millionaires and mendicants, the other economic equals. One gives us palaces and hovels, robes and rags, the other will secure to every man and woman their full product of his or her toil, abolish class rule, wipe out class distinction, secure the peace of society, and make of this earth for the first time a habitable place. In the wage system you and your children, and your children’s children, if capitalism shall prevail until they are born, are condemned to slavery and there is no possible hope unless by throwing over the capitalist and voting for socialism. Now, what you want to do is quit every capitalist party of every name whatsoever. What you want to do is to organise your class and assert your class interests as capitalists do the interests of the class that is robbing you. Your lives depend upon the control and ownership of the means of production and distribution. Arise, ye wage-slaves! Declare war, not on the capitalist, but on the capitalist system. What is wanted is not a reform of the capitalist system, but its entire abolition. 

Socialism will give humanity a new world. Let us work so that the socialist revolution may come in peace. The Socialist Party is organised to pave the way for its peaceful culmination. We declare then, that the time has come when working men and women should open their eyes, when they should have an understanding of socialism and pave the way for its triumph and the abolition of capitalism from the face of the world. We are educating, we are agitating, we are organising, that is to say we are preparing for socialism.

The Socialist Party is founded in the bedrock principles of socialism. It understands the process of social evolution. It deludes itself with no promise of premature victory. It has no desire for political office. Spoils and privilege hold no temptation for it. The Socialist Party has but one mission and that is the political unity of the working class to wrest the State from the capitalist class as the necessary means of abolishing the capitalist system and achieving industrial freedom and social justice. This party knows no such word as fusion with our class enemy. The merest hint of compromise is rejected. No concessions that any capitalist party might offer would turn the Socialist Party the breadth of a hair from the clear-cut course through which it is hewing its way to ultimate victory. The Social Party is composed of working men and women who have come into consciousness of their class interests. It is a party of thinkers and the only party in which he rank and file are supreme. This party has no use for a political saviours and can never be misled or sold out by corrupt leaders. Private ownership of he means of life has reduced millions to hopeless poverty, ignorance, vice, and crime. Capitalism and competition have had their day. Socialism and cooperation are next in order. This will mean society free from class rule and all the world at peace. Then exploitation of class by class will cease — rent, interest, and profit will be no more. Wealth will be produced by social labour in such abundance as to satisfy all human wants. Then leisure, light, virtue, and joy instead of idleness, darkness, misery, and death.

In spite of worsening economic conditions, nothing can be accomplished until the people hold a vision of where they want to go and what they want to be. Creating and imbuing them with such vision is the foundation of our organisation. Destruction of the environment, the continual threat of nuclear war and looming pandemics are calling the very existence of the human race into question. Yet we in the Socialist Party face the future with confidence.

Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?

The Socialist Party calls on fellow-workers to study our principles. Together let us build our socialist party on firm foundations. We favour abolition of the wage system as a whole. Let the organised working people manage industry, eliminate private profit, plan production to suit the needs of the people – for peace, prosperity and plenty for all.

The Socialist Party declares that life, liberty, and happiness for every man, woman, and child are conditioned upon equal political and economic rights. That private ownership of the means of production and distribution of wealth has caused society to split into two distinct classes with conflicting interests, the small possessing class of capitalists or exploiters of the labour force of others and the ever-increasing large dispossessed class of wage-workers, who are deprived of the socially-due share of their product. That capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the ever-growing majority of our people. That the same economic forces which have produced and now intensify the capitalist system will compel the adoption of socialism, the common ownership of the means of production for the common good and welfare, or result in the destruction of civilisation. The Socialist Party's object is the establishment of a system of cooperative production and distribution. The capture and control of political power by the Socialist Party will be tantamount to the abolition of capitalism and all class rule. The solidarity of labour connecting us with millions of class conscious fellow workers throughout the civilised world will lead to world socialism. Working people will be guaranteed security, democracy, equality and peace only when our planet is run on an entirely different basis than it is now; only when a socialist system replaces the present capitalist one. The new socialist system would mean that working people would own the country’s factories and farms and they would plan production and distribution for their own needs. Workers must unite with workers in all countries to win peace and socialism. There must be constant public advocacy for socialism. The Socialist Party must always work towards unity and against division. At one point, a clear line drawn. The Socialist Party may never sacrifice their principles in order to maintain some unwarranted unity or to gain some temporary advantage.

To the establishment of socialism and the building towards communism, we pledge our efforts. To begin to understand it, and to be capable of revolutionising it, the first step is to distinguish between two antagonistic classes: the capitalist class and the working class. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production, distribution and communication. The working class owns none of these, and therefore workers must sell their labour power to the capitalist for wages in order to live. The worker creates a product of value, part of which is returned to him as wage, and the rest of which is taken from him by the capitalists as profit. Thus is created the basic antagonistic contradiction between worker and capitalist, since the interest of one is, and has to be, directly opposed to the interest of the other. This most fundamental of contradictions will not end until capitalism with its private ownership and/or control of the means of production is itself ended, and replaced with socialism.

In socialist society, all means of production will be common property. There will be no classes and no class struggle. The consequences of class divided society – racism, national chauvinism, male supremacy, the monogamous family based on property, etc. – will all have disappeared. There will be no wars, no armies, and no need for weapons of war, which will become historical curiosities. There will be no distinction between mental and manual work. Socialism will be a life of material and cultural abundance. The world is currently in a period of great economic and social crisis, as is the entire capitalist world. Layoffs, cutbacks, and inflation are damaging the lives of millions while a small minority reaps profits. And the crisis is showing itself not only in the economic sphere, but in every area of life for the people. Piecemeal reforms cannot solve the problems our society faces.