Solidarity Without Borders - World Socialism

Ecological, economic, and health crises spill across frontiers. We must create a solidarity without borders, inspired by a vision of revolutionary change, rooted in the socialist ideals which continue to inspire us. Political freedom without economic equality is a pretence, a fraud, a lie. The Socialist Party strives for a fundamental transformation of society, the abolition of classes. Mankind is social. It is this solidarity and cooperation which makes the “impossible” becomes possible. The spirit of mutual aid gives socialism its strength. The cut-throat competition of capitalism results in undisputed victory for the strong and destruction of the weak. To the victor go the spoils. In the battle for survival in old society it is everybody for himself and the devil take the hindmost.

What does the understanding of the socialist position involve? The Socialist position involves a recognition of the fact that the interests of those who own and control the means of life (the capitalist-class) are absolutely opposed to the interests of those who own nothing but their power to work (the working-class). The first are concerned to make a profit out of the labour of the second. The second are battling for the best conditions they can get. If the second are successful to any degree to that degree the first are losers. To the extent that the first are able to use their power to coin wealth out of the labour of the second, to that extent are the second the losers.

Don’t be put off the track by good capitalists. We are not concerned to deny that some members of the capitalist-class are genuinely sorry that the condition of the working-class is so bad and would prefer it otherwise. That is not the point. The point is that as a class their interests are opposed absolutely to the interests of the class they exploit — the working-class — and under no circumstance whatever can that conflict of interest be avoided. It does not matter whether the working-class are conscious of it or not. The conflict is inevitable and unceasing. The socialist calls it the class-struggle. The ownership by a few people of the means of life is the cause of working-class misery. They say the only remedy lies in the common ownership and control (ownership and control by the whole people) of these means of life. Which is socialism.

While society is based upon the private ownership of the means of life, the worker’s position must always remain the same in its principal features, that political reforms or what not leave him or her always the exploited, always the under dog. These reforms are never achieved except at great effort ; that they are never achieved at all (except they benefit some section of the capitalist class) unless and until the workers have set on foot such a determined agitation that their demands cannot with safety be longer disregarded, as a glance at industrial history will show. Things must always be the same until the workers have fully realised where their real interests lie (have become class-conscious), and have organised their forces specifically for the complete overthrow of the present system of production and the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth.

In every part of the world today there is a growing a movement consisting of those who say that production should be for use and not for profit; that it is competition and the absence of mutual interests which make the millionaire on the one hand and the thousands of casual labourers on the other; that it is possible and desirable to abolish both by the introduction of world co-operation

A New Beginning?

What’s important to understand is what works on the ground is community; what works on the ground is cooperation. Strange as it seems but socialists have never took a more hopeful view of the future than now.

The lords of capital, by the very nature of the economic system, will fight to the last person on the planet for the last pound on planet. There can be no end to war, exploitation and disease as long as capitalism continues to enslave the mass of humanity and place private profit above all else. In fact, capitalism is holding back the progress of humanity and it is a real and deadly serious threat of worldwide annihilation.

Those of us who create, invent, explore, study, mine  farm, build, construct, teach, cook and clean, who do all the work, we’ve designed and manufactured robots that can do much of the work for us, quicker and more efficiently. We’ve made instant communication across the globe an everyday reality. We can exchange any information available with our fingertips on a key-board in a matter of seconds.

Just imagine if we used all this knowledge and technology   to satisfy everyone wants and wishes without waste of either resources or labour or polluting the environment. And then distributed them free to whoever wanted them according to a democratically conceived, worldwide plan?

We have the machinery and materials and human ingenuity to do all these things. Only capitalism stops us. Private property and capitalist control over the means of production and the accumulation of massive amounts of private wealth stands in our way. The fulfilment of people’s needs could be accomplished. The material conditions necessary to do so are available. It just can’t happen under capitalism. But the capitalist profit motive because it must come before human needs won’t permit it. The tragedy is that  competition for profit trumps people’s welfare security and safety. 

Today it is clearer than ever that the curing a disease is a for-profit business (and certainly the pharmaceutical industry is one of the most lucrative of them all), the quest for more profits will aggravate the disease and the human suffering. The need is to put profits above all other considerations. The irrationality of the capitalist mode of production for private profit comes first, and humanity’s progress is sidelined.Governments in the epoch of austerity have been the dismantling of existing public health institutions and the downsizing of hospitals and frontline medical resources.

We, the people, hold the power to put in place a socialist system of production for human need and want instead of for private profit. We have all the resources, technology and know-how to democratically redesign the whole economic system to provide for all human needs and wants without wars, oppression or environmental destruction. A society that if it cannot avoid the rise of new viruses, it can contain and limit its spread. It’s simply a matter of understanding that the planet belongs to everyone and each one of us has something to contribute toward the welfare of all. And that each of us can share equally in its fruits. Democratically planned socialism is the only rational approach to ensuring a bright future for all.

THE PROFIT SYSTEM                      OR  SOCIALISM

The Socialist Party Isn't The Same

The leaders of the political parties, in order to obtain the confidence and support of the voters —without which they cannot obtain seats in the House of Commons and other comfortable positions — have to satisfy them that they understand social problems, and possess the ability to cope with them. This, in itself, is not difficult, because working people, surrounded by capitalist institutions and taught capitalist ideals from childhood, have not yet, in any considerable numbers, questioned the basis of the system under which they live. They accept in blind faith the assertion that there must always be rich and poor, rulers and ruled, if there is to be any sort of order. The result is that, although the workers recognise the social evils from which they suffer, they are easily persuaded that those evils can be removed by legislation.

Ignorant of the conflicting interests between capitalists and workers, they believe that when due representation is made to Parliament legislators will, acting with fairness and impartiality, take steps to deal with those evils. People are all the more readily believes this fiction because the exploitation which he or she suffers from, and has suffered from for so many generations, has reduced them, both mentally and physically, to a condition of abject apathy.

This is the mistaken belief that leads the workers to support reformers. The leaders of the parties do their utmost to foster this belief, because it increases the security of their positions. But those on the left-wing go further than this, for they assert that the reforms they advocate, besides improving the conditions of the working class now, lead gradually toward socialism. Yet class ownership of the means of life would still persist as the basis of the system, and the working class still retain their wage-slave status. Wealth still would be produced for profit, and unemployment still be necessary in order that the price of labour-power might be kept at or about the cost of living — the difference between the cost of living and the total wealth produced being the extent to which the workers are robbed.

The constitutional form of government depends for its authority upon the support it receives from those it governs over. The more workers that support capitalist parties, the firmer and more stable is the capitalist rule.

Practical politics for the working class mean to organise for control of the political machine, in order to take possession of the means of life. The Government will introduce reforms fast enough when they are threatened with such an organisation. They have not yet commenced to throw any real sops or palliatives to the working class. When they do commence their concessions should be treated with contempt, for they cannot be anything else than paltry in comparison with the object the workers have in view.

Politicians deny that the interests of the workers and those of the capitalists are in conflict. To them working-class revolution is impossible: from their standpoint, therefore, socialism, too, is impossible. Like Christianity they mouth the "brotherhood of man " and denounce class hatred, posing all the while as mediators reconciling conflicting interests—regardless of the fact that reconciliation means submission for the workers. Socialism is always impossible  because to confess otherwise prevents a career politician’s personal ambitions from being realised. Seats in the House of Commons and other comfortable jobs are not offered to socialist advocates and agitators. The only  propaganda permitted is capitalist propaganda.

The working class can only achieve their emancipation when they understand socialist principles, and are determined to follow those principles to their conclusion. But they have first to learn, and the real Impossiblists are those politicians who would teach them something else. A socialist must not only be one who understands socialism but must be one who wants socialism, whose political activities, be they great or small, are consistent with the understanding of what socialism is, and with the desire for its speedy achievement. A political party is a group of people organised to achieve a certain object or objects. The duty of its representatives is simply to act as its agents. If they are sent to Parliament it is not to vote according to one's conscience, but according to the will and instruction of those who sent them there. There is but one such political party in this country; there is but one party so grounded in democracy that its candidates are but the mouth-pieces and representatives of vital socialist principles. That party is the Socialist Party, whose members are all agreed upon the overthrow of the master class and the collective control of industry by the workers, that is to say, the social revolution.

THE ALTERNATIVE IS SOCIALISM

The capitalist system creates a contrast of the conditions between the producers of wealth and those who own the wealth. The difference is maintained by an apparatus of class dictatorship in the interests of property. The law is based upon property and the protection of property interests. The organisation of the forces for the administration of the law is in the hands of the people of property. The police forces are headed with officers of the propertied class. The armed forces are officered by the elite. The media is owned by the lords of property, and they mould the news of the day in the interests of property. All their activities for the maintenance of the power of the propertied class over the property-less working class.

There are two different sorts of private property. The one is private property in the means of production: private property in a factory or a mine, or in the land. And the other sort is private property in consumers’ goods, in personal possessions and keepsakes, in houses, in cars, in gardens, in labour-saving devices, in access to amusements, in every sort of thing which we actually use and consume. It ought to be impossible to mix them up. For there is one rule for distinguishing between them. Private property of the former carries an income with it. Private property of the latter sort does not carry an income with it. The economic system which is currently called socialism involves abolishing the first sort of private property in order to increase vastly the second sort of property. Not less but more private property is needed. But it must be the right kind of property. There are two kinds of private property. Private property in the means by which things are made – factories, land, mines, gives to the owners power to control the lives of others. That must cease. It is wrong private property. Capitalism robs men and women of the fruits of their toil. Socialism has no complaint concerning such private property, save that the masses lack it. Socialism means that the means of production are owned and controlled by society so that what is produced can be shared out according to people’s needs. Socialism is founded on the idea of equality, which means that most people will get the same. Socialism is a planned economy, so that production is for need, not profit. Socialism is about democracy so that goods are produced and distributed fairly.

The intellectuals and philosophers tell us that socialism, as an idea, is a very fine thing but is unrealisable. When we look at this world of misery, and see our life is not a happy one, the Socialist Party seeks to bring your attention that the basic cause of all the ills of present-day society, which is normally attributed to the imperfection of human nature, is in fact the lack of organisation of human society. Our task is not to convert the world, we leave the evangelic preaching to others. Our task is only to point out as widely as possible what is self-evident to every sufficiently educated person that capitalism has created an unbridgeable gulf between rich and poor, between employer and worker.

Socialism means fewer officials than capitalism, not more. It is capitalism which has a huge bureaucratic machine of administrators, directors, managers, under-managers, foremen, sales managers and advertising experts. With socialism there will exist a range of more interesting, and more creative jobs in the effort to supply the demands for increased goods and services. Socialism confronts a world where disorder reigns: the chaos of sovereign states; the chaos of a world of booms and slumps, where natural resources and machinery of production are retained as private property by men who can bar the people from their only means of livelihood; chaos where vast corporations engage in trade wars with one another until real war breaks out.

The world socialist movement is advancing towards its goal. True freedom and equality begins when distribution is "according to needs" regardless of the work supplied.

For a new commonwealth

In recent years there has been a renewed interest and growing movement towards socialism.

The aim of the Socialist Party and the World Socialist Movement  is to replace world capitalist economy with world socialism. The capitalist system  threatens to degrade and destroy the human race. Human culture and humanity is threatened with complete annihilation. Socialist society will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will be a united cooperative commonwealth.

We argue that the problems are no longer technological but subjective. The more insidious and dangerous basis for erroneous ideas is that of subjectively and objectively maintaining a capitalist bias. An individual may claim to be a Marxist, may learn various phrases but all the platitudes in the world cannot conceal that the practice of this type of reformist is always pro-capitalist, anti-working class. Such individuals have no real concern for the working class as a whole. To them, workers are incapable of realizing their objective interests; they are stupid, racist, sexist, absorbed in their petty concerns. Thus, workers are not a revolutionary force. Revolution must be made for them and they must be coerced into accepting a socialist society in their own interests. In other words, with the only difference being that between a “socialist” society and capitalist society, these individuals view the working class exactly as do the capitalists.

The capitalists have an interest in promoting the highest rate of exploitation possible. It is through exploitation that they maximise their profits and maximisation of profits is the basis of capitalist production. Thus, businessmen have an interest in paying the lowest wages consistent with capitalist reproduction (they cannot kill off their working class). They have an interest in a longer working day or more intensive toil, poorer working conditions (health and safety,  are all costs of production). In other words, they have an objective interest in promoting a situation that makes the life of the worker increasingly intolerable. In this fight, the capitalists have the state to assist them.

Workers, on the other hand, have the opposite point of view. They prefer higher wages and salaries to lower; safer working conditions to unsafe; a shorter working day to a longer one. Hence the two classes have conflicting interests and, as they are conflicting, they must be resolved through a fight, sometimes open, sometimes concealed, but a fight nonetheless. Workers have themselves and their labour organisations to advance their interests.

For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the development and strengthening of its own collective cooperation. After abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, the world socialism will replace the world market, the competitive and blind processes of capitalist production, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of competition and anarchy in production, devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces. 

The abolition of private property and the disappearance of classes will do away with the exploitation of man by man. No longer can some men (the capitalists), by virtue of the fact that they own the means of production, live off (exploit) the labour of others (the working class). No longer are the workers compelled to sell their labour power to the capitalists in order to live. The workers are no longer property-less proletarians. They now own the means of production and work them in their own interests and in the interests of society. For society is now composed of workers by hand and brain, i.e. of an associated body of wealth-producers. Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of our masters and from being merely a means of livelihood, full of want and inequality, imbued with the misery of enslaved classes, the wretched standard of life generally will disappear and the hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished, together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed. At the same time, the organ of class domination, the State will disappear also. The State, being the embodiment of class domination, will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire.

In socialism no social restrictions will be imposed upon the growth of the forces of production. Private ownership in the means of production, the selfish individualist lust for profits, the artificial retention of working people in a state of ignorance and poverty which retards technical progress will have no place. Hunger and misery cannot be abolished under the capitalist system. There is only socialism able to save humanity. Socialism is the only way out of the many existential crises that faces humanity. Socialism means peace. Within the country there are no longer capitalists who profit by war, who see in war the way to secure more spheres of influence, more markets, more trade routes, more sources of natural resources and raw materials and a chance to dominate the world. Everyone loses by war not only in terms of personal suffering but also by the diversion of resources from construction and the advance to a better life.

The Socialist Party is the deadly foe of capitalism and capitalist parties. It has as its aims the establishment of a socialist society in which the means of production will not be the private property of the few, a society which will not be based upon profit but on production for people’s needs, will not be based on class division, will eradicate both wars and the class war, and abolish poverty for ever. When the working class has power it can build socialism and liberate the exploited and oppressed peoples of the world. The Tory, LibDems Labour and assorted nationalist parties appeal to you in the name of the “NATION.” One Party—the Socialist Party—appeals to you in the name of the working class. No party can serve two masters. No party can serve the robbers and the robbed at the same time. To speak of “common shared interests” is camouflage to hide their support of the robbers because the great majority of belongs to the class which is robbed. The Socialist Party is thus the only party of the workers.