Who We Are

We clearly see the socialist future and prepare the way for it. Capitalism can offer no prospect but the slaughter of millions and the destruction of civilisation. Only socialism can save humanity from this abyss. This is the truth. Our aim is to convince the majority that our programme is the only one which can put an end to capitalism. Society contains many contradictions which have arisen as a result of the fact that production has a social character under capitalism while ownership of the means of production is in private hands. In a world of abundance, we suffer from serious poverty and misery. 

There are only two classes–those who sell their labour power and those who exploit the labour of others.

The Labour Party has nothing to do with socialism. It is a programme to always rescue capitalism from its crises. The vast majority of British industry is corporately owned; by banks, by finance or insurance companies, by monopolies or by the STATE. These are all forms of capitalism in which capitalist property relationships remain intact. Surplus-value is still appropriated and production is governed through the market by the operation of the law of value and commodity exchange. These laws operate whether private companies or the state control production. The essence of capitalism is property relationships; ownership is merely a formal question, which can take MANY different forms. It is irrelevant to the real interests of the working people of Britain whether profits are in private or state hands. Campaigns for nationalisation diverts the fight for socialism to a fight for reformism and gradualism.

Working people will be guaranteed security, democracy, equality and peace only when our country 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 collectively own the country’s factories and farms and they would plan production and distribution for their own needs. In order to have socialism workers have to be in control. 

The socialist revolution is not an endeavour of individuals or a select sect; rather, it is the endeavour of the exploited of all lands. On a worldwide scale, socialism is essentially connected to the rise and struggle of the working class. It is the only class whose liberation is impossible without the abolition of class society on a global scale. It is the class whose very functioning in the processes of modern society – based as they are on a collective process of production – predisposes it to reach an understanding of its own situation and the cause of its oppression, to combine with other exploited groups and classes for a common revolutionary struggle, and together with them to organise the life of post-revolutionary socialist society. The modern world is a single interlinked system, and as the ruling and privileged classes in all countries have interconnected interests opposed to the socialist revolution, it is a supreme duty of revolutionary socialists to act in mutual international solidarity, and to lend fraternal support to the struggle of every exploited and oppressed group of human beings against exploitation and oppression based on class, sex, nationality, race or religion. Capitalism is the foremost enemy of the socialist revolution: the revolution strives to overthrow capitalism, and the latter attempts to prevent and suppress the revolution.

Since the mass of workers, though predisposed by their condition to achieve revolutionary consciousness, do not achieve it automatically  it is incumbent on socialists in every country to combine in revolutionary organisations in order to disseminate revolutionary consciousness among the masses; to aid the mass struggle and to learn from it; to crystallise an overall revolutionary strategy and apply it in initiating struggles and working for unification and coordination of spontaneous struggle that break out on partial fronts; and to awaken in the toilers a consciousness of international solidarity. The revolutionary organisation must facilitate manifestations of self-initiative, self-organisation and self-activity of the masses in the revolutionary struggle, and propagate consciousness of people’s ability to control their own fate and to manage the social process autonomously. The revolutionary organisation must aid processes of social self-liberation. The role of the revolutionary organization is not to seize and hold on to power, but to work to the best of its ability for the seizure and retention of power by councils elected by the masses. Seizure of power by such councils is the hallmark and decisive step of a socialist revolution. The councils are a form of self-organisation of the masses: in the productive cells their function is to manage the process of production in each plant, subject to central planning, which will itself be determined by the masses through their councils. Council power, by its very nature, cannot be a rule of a minority against the majority, but constitutes the form of broad democratic participation of the masses in managing the social process as a whole. The councils at the various levels (an individual plant, a district, etc. – up to the council of regional at large) are democratically elected; the representatives constituting the councils do not enjoy any privileges and their mandate can be revoked at any time by their electors. 

Workers must unite with workers in all countries to win peace and socialism. Against the mad chorus of national hatreds we advance once more the old slogan of socialist internationalism: Workers of the World Unite!

Dounreay - a long wait

In 313 years’ time, 378 years after it first opened in 1955, and 339 years after it ceased operations in 1994, the 178-acre nuclear power facility site at Dounreay will be safe for other uses, a new report has stated. A draft report from the government’s nuclear decommissioning authority states the site will only be ready for other uses after the year 2333.

It was only home to functioning nuclear reactors for 39 years, and the clean-up will take roughly ten times as long, with efforts already underway to clean up hazardous radioactive material. Fishing has been banned within a two-kilometre radius of the plant since 1997.

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nuclear-power-dounreay-scotland-thurso-decommissioning-radiation-a9680611.html

Our minimum demand is Utopia

URSULA LE GUIN

The Socialist Party is opposed to the system of society in which we live under because we are not comfortable knowing that there are millions of  fellow men women who suffer for the scarcity of the necessities of life. We are opposed to the ethic of the jungle. In the Bible, Cain asks the question. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The socialist answer is plain and simple “Yes”. We say there is plenty for all. We say an injury one, is an injury to all. We socialists seek a society in which we shall produce, not for profit, but in abundance to satisfy human needs, where every man and woman will be economically free. We will be brothers and sisters, sharing the World and sparing the planet. We sweep aside the miserable prejudices and bigotry to proclaim the solidarity of all. The working class will emancipate itself and establish the socialist commonwealth. The state will be captured through the ballot box.

The Socialist Party looks towards the possibility of a different and better world. There is only one hope for the future: Socialism! Socialism alone guarantees the absence of exploitation, unemployment, hunger, poverty and war. Socialism alone guarantees true economic and political democracy. Socialism alone guarantees the freedom of the peoples of the whole world. Socialism alone guarantees victory over racism and bigotry. Socialism is the only thing worth fighting for because it is the society of true and lasting peace and freedom for all mankind. We aim at replacing the present capitalist system by socialism, understood broadly as a system where there will be social ownership of the means of production and distribution. We envisage socialism as a society where material wealth will be in the hands of those who produce it, where the exploitation of man by man will be ended, where production will be used not for private profit, where a new  relationship of fraternity will develop between peoples based on equality and independence, where individual men and women will find totally new possibilities to develop their abilities.

The first requirement for the workers in all countries of the world is to break cleanly from the capitalist class and their political parties, and any and all concepts of coalitions with their parties.  Reformists project a perspective of merely removing what they present as minor defects in the existing capitalist order of things, of patching capitalism up and making it more tolerable, instead of a perspective of fundamental change. Reformists preach reconciliation with capitalism, not class struggle against it. Capitalism promises the people  not amelioration of conditions but austerity, oppression, environmental and/or atomic destruction of mankind. Only through an irreconcilable struggle against capitalism, towards its elimination and the establishment of socialism, will the people of the world find the full freedom, equality and democracy for which they aspire.

Capitalism is the right of private property, the right of a few to own and control the means by which all must live, the right of the owners of the means of production to utilise it to exploit the rest of the community in the interest of their personal profit, the right to determine what shall be produced and how, regardless of the misery and wretchedness of those who produce it. It is  the right to exploit, the right to rob, the right to cause crises, the right to compete, and to cause conflicts.  the basic answer is the abolition of the right of private property, and instead the common ownership of the means of production, so that all may enjoy the fruit of their labour, and consume it, thus eliminating the crises, and the crises of military wars. Socialists are not out to create a bloody revolution but to work for the improvement of the conditions of the people by embracing socialisation where the whole of society is changed by the elimination of the private ownership of the entire means of production.

The time for patching up the capitalist system is over.  It must go. And in the work of abolishing it we need to co-operate together, knowing no rivalry but the rivalry of endeavour towards an end beneficial to all. The movement for democratic liberty grows and grows. It is certain to be victorious.

Lest we forget

Obituary from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

West London branch regret to have to report the death of Comrade Gordon Docherty in June at the age of 79. He hailed from Glasgow where he joined the local branch in 1964 after listening to Party speakers in George Square. He served an apprenticeship as a turner lathe operator at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan and was one of a number of Glasgow comrades who moved to London at the end of the 1960s.

As a skilled engineering worker he had no problem in finding a job, at the Lucas CAV factory in Acton where he was an active trade unionist and AEU shop steward. In 1974 he won a landmark court case – which the New Statesman called ‘the case of Mr Docherty’s furniture’ – which resulted in hundreds of thousands of furnished tenancies becoming unfurnished and so enjoying a greater security against eviction.

He was a regular attendee at branch meetings and other branch events till last year. Our condolences go to his family and friends.

Out with the old - In with the new

End the Old - Build the New

 We are the Socialist Party which can transform society. Our aim is the socialist revolution that will put an end to capitalist exploitation and all the forms of oppression that inevitably accompany it. Will you help?

Humanity has become class-divided communities through the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a minority of people who constitute themselves as the ruling class. The aim of all those who want working class self-emancipation has to be the destruction of the capitalism

The theory of surplus value is the cornerstone of Marx’s economic theory. Marx argued that the value of every commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time spent on its production. Where the capitalist economists saw a relation of things (the exchange of one commodity for another), Marx revealed a relation among people. The exchange of commodities expresses the tie by which individual producers are bound through the market. Money signifies that this tie is becoming closer and closer, inseparably binding the entire economic life of the individual producers into one whole. Capital signifies a further development of this tie: people’s labour power becomes a commodity. The wage-worker sells labour power to the owner of the land, factories and instruments of labour. The worker uses one part of the labour day to cover living expenses (wages), while the other part of the day the worker toils without remuneration, creating surplus value for the capitalist. This is the source of profit, the source of the wealth of the capitalist class.

As the working class fights against its increasingly worsened position it comes to the realisation that the only way out is for labour to take what it has produced for itself. To take over the means of production, the mines, mills, factories, resources, utilities and run them for their own benefit. Then we will have production for use and not for profit. Then we will end both despotism in the factory and anarchy in the market. Then society will allocate its resources and labour power according to a social plan that will benefit all. It is capitalism which creates the working class, which places this class before its problems, which sharpens its intelligence and gives it its science. It is capitalism that arms the workers and gives them the strength to carry out their own interests. In short, capitalism as it grows out of date creates its own grave-diggers who begin to do their work. But the interest of the workers is diametrically opposed to the interest of the capitalists and exploiters of the workers who, controlling the government and the social educational agencies, strive to keep the workers down. The capitalists want to keep the old relations of exploitation. They fight the rise of the workers. But their only alternative is to plunge society into one crisis and one war after another. The victory of the workers cannot be forever delayed.

When, however, the workers of the world unite to take over, then the rule over persons will begin to give way to an administration over things. The state, with its religion, will begin to wither away. There will be no exploitation. There will be no classes. Each will receive according to what he puts in, and as the productivity of labour will greatly increase, each will receive according to needs and will contribute according to ability. When we have reached socialism humanity will have reached a rational system of society where development of mankind will no longer be choked by social relations, where, therefore, society will be a free one and humanity emancipated. Socialism is seen, and rightly so, as the complete negation of the social order that has dominated the world for many generations of mankind. The supporters of capitalism have nothing to offer mankind beyond the continuous existence of a system of society which totters on under the the weight of crises inherent in that very system. 

Socialism will be possible only when the workers, those who meet the needs of society, decide that they are determined to lay the living conditions of mankind on a new foundation. The whole future of humanity rests on the emergence of the working class as the creative force in society. Socialism meets the desire for freedom. With the end of class oppression the state disappears.

Wars, hunger, environmental destruction are a terrible cost humanity has had to pay for the delay in instituting socialism after capitalism has outlived its usefulness. This delay of the revolution has visited a terrible plague upon mankind that is going to destroy hundreds of thousands of human lives. 

We Will Change The World

The Socialist Party is for general emancipation, i.e. for a class-free society. But such emancipation presupposes the abolition of private property, of commodity production and of the market economy, as well as of competition and the private enrichment. The realisation of these goals is only possible when the socialist struggle for them is merged with the real struggle of a class that is materially interested in it, intellectually prepared for it, and socially inclined to it. This means a class that is potentially capable of ‘bringing all wheels to a standstill’ if it so wishes; a class that, organised into the associated producers, is capable of taking over the organisation of production. The overthrow of capitalism, the transition to a class-free society, the replacement of domination by a free association of producers can emerge from the self-organization and inevitable, elementary class struggle of working people.

The educational and organisational activity, the stimulating of class consciousness and class organization shall be the task of the Socialist Party to build a society without private property, production of goods, money, enrichment, competition and nation-state. The practical task of abolishing the bondage of humanity thus becomes the practical politics of the Socialist Party. Its case is the total renunciation of manoeuvring, of tactics, of temporary compromises and retreat is unrealistic and impossible even if it means facing our opponents with the hands tied. Endless scheming, unlimited willingness to compromise, unprincipled manoeuvres, and total exclusion of self-activity, initiative, and action of one’s own class leads to nothing and brings us no closer to the goal.  Realpolitik and Machiavellianism can never be the strategy of the Socialist Party because the emancipatory goal is not a small-minded but a radical one: to overturn all conditions in which man is a degraded, enslaved being. Particular methods cannot bring about our goal because they contradict it too much. Even temporary, partial successes have long-term effects that are devastating. The unique nature of the socialist revolution  is that it can only be realised by a conscious majority. To this end it must conquer political power. The goal can only be achieved through the self-organisation and self-activity of working people.

Capitalists cannot exist without workers, but workers can exist without capitalists. As it is workers who actually do the producing, they are quite capable of undertaking this activity in their own interests. This cannot be accomplished unless workers are aware of their objective interests and are organised to achieve this goal.  The socialist movement without a working class is impossible. But a working class which does not have the necessary knowledge to effect its transformation will not spontaneously evolve into a revolutionary force. For this to occur, workers in large enough numbers must develop sufficient knowledge concerning the nature of capitalist society, the nature of the state and the necessity of revolution to “change the world”.

In a democratically planned and ecologically rational society, many of the lifestyle changes that individualist environmentalism points to as necessary would occur, but as part of a social process of liberation, not as a forced sacrifice or moralistic principle. Work would be structured in ways that allow people to feel a closer connection with the production of food and resources. Overall, a socialist society would give us the freedom to live fulfilling lives less centered around consumption. The level of individual consumption will naturally decrease, without anyone forcing workers to lower their standard of living. Certainly there would be changes in what people consume in a sustainable society — an ecologically sound agricultural system would probably supply less meat and less out-of-season produce — but this would occur because of a change in production in context of revolutionary liberation leading to a better life (overall, such an agricultural system would supply healthier, cheaper and better-tasting food), so it would not be experienced as a sacrifice. All this being said, environmentalists must face the reality that much of the world does need higher levels of consumption — more stuff.

Billions of people in the world need, in order to live fulfilling lives, secure food and water, better transportation and communications infrastructure, and medical services. Under a democratic, planned program of development, these resources could be produced in different, more efficient and ecologically sound ways, paid for by reparations from imperialist capital for its centuries of exploitation, and in concert with reducing the ecological footprint of the developed countries. If people have no secure means of subsistence to live, they will survive as best they can using what means are available to them, which tend to be highly ecologically destructive.  Poverty is a major part of the reason there is so much deforestation. Renewable energy provision for the entire planet — and the eradication of poverty — would have to be part of any move to living sustainably with the Earth. The only way to both develop human potential around the world and regenerate a healthy biosphere is through a development of the productive forces of society. A democratically planned and ecologically rational society will be able to overcome the ways in which capitalism is holding us back from producing more efficiently and sustainably. In an economy designed to meet human needs, there would be many opportunities to eliminate waste: for example, by eliminating product packaging, by eliminating planned obsolescence so that electronic equipment and machines (e.g. laptops and mobile phones) will last longer, by reducing imports and exports and producing locally where most efficient, and by eliminating many industries — advertising, health insurance, financial services, the military — that will be largely useless in a socialist society.

Further, the technological basis of society could be transformed. We could adopt a power system based around solar, wind, geothermal and tidal energy. We could redesign urban areas based around walking, bicycling and public transit. And we could transform our agricultural methods, drawing from organic agriculture and permaculture techniques.

All these transformations in production and social allocation of resources are possible with technologies that exist now, but capitalism’s drive for private profit holds us back from implementing them. An ecologically rational society is incompatible with capitalism. Ecology need not be treated as a separate concern that must be brought into other movements. Because all aspects of society are involved in the relation to nature, all struggles have an ecological dimension; and because a sustainable society and a socialist society are inseparable as the aspiration ecological demands belong in all struggles.

The spirit of socialism is best summarised in the verse from the Internationale:

“No saviour from on high delivers

No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear.”