The Socialist Party - for the cooperative commonwealth

The Socialist Party exists to help build the Cooperative Commonwealth. The Socialist Party stands not for reform but for revolution, because it holds that the rule of the capitalist class, under which the workers now suffer, must be brought to an end. As to the means by which the capitalist class is to be overthrown, the real question worth considering is what means will prove most effective.

If it could best be done by, reformism, working for “one gain at a time,” and bidding for the votes of people who have no idea what the class struggle means, we should no doubt favour that method. But history has made it very clear that such a method is a dead failure.

If, on the other hand, the working class could best gain power by insurrection taking up arms, we should know that the capitalist today control the military that could in a few hours slaughter any revolutionary workers of any of our cities.

It is by voting for the party of the working class, that is, the Socialist Party, plans to assume political power. The old pro-capitalist parties are controlled by “bosses” who take their orders from the capitalists who pay the campaigning bills. There is a worldwide chasm between the social philosophy and political aims of Socialism and those of the old parties. The politics of the dominant political parties revolve around property and property rights. They are rooted in the conception that the world exists for business and profits and that the men and women in it are only cogs in the industrial machine. Socialist politics, on the other hand, are concerned with life and liberty and are inspired by the conviction that the earth and the fullness thereof are for people, and that all wealth and industries are for the happiness and well-being of the human race

The Socialist Party understand that if all the “reforms” that are being agitated were to be conceded by the capitalists, there would be no real gain of any great importance for the working class. Its constant aim is to organize the workers into an effective political party to dislodge the capitalists from power once for all, and establish the Cooperative Commonwealth.

While the streets and alleys of the poor have remained ugly and filthy, lined with dark, crowded, and disease-breeding tenements. A Socialist administration would give its first care to the dwellings of the poor. It would construct attractive and sanitary buildings with proper provisions for light, air, and privacy. It was the capitalist system of industrial and commercial rivalry, the system of exploitation, hatred, and intrigue, the capitalist system with its kaisers on the throne, in the factory and counting-house in all lands, that plunged the world into the unspeakable disaster. It is the socialist movement based on the rule of the people, the Socialist movement synonymous with true absolute democracy, industrial as well as political, that lone can save the world. The Socialist Party will bring peace to the whole world. The Socialist Party alone has the courage to voice their desire and their demand openly, vigorously, and defiantly. We are for peace. We are unalterably opposed to the killing and the draining of our resources in a bewildering pursuit of an incomprehensible ‘democracy,' a pursuit for democracy which has the support of the men and classes who have habitually robbed and despoiled the people; a pursuit of democracy which begins by suppressing the freedom of speech and press and public assemblage, and by stifling legitimate political criticism. Not terrorism, but socialism will make the world safe for democracy.

Left to die

Mercy Baguma, 34, was an asylum seeker from Uganda.

She was living in “extreme poverty” and relying on charities and friends to buy food and was found dead next to her crying baby in a flat on the Southside of Glasgow. Her one-year-old son was suffering from malnutrition and required hospital treatment.

Baguma had lost her job after her limited leave to remain expired.

Robina Qureshi, the director of Positive Action in Housing, said “The question remains, why are mothers and babies being left to go hungry in this city, and why is it being left to charities and volunteers to pick up the pieces? The fact is there is no safety net if you are a refugee or migrant.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/25/mercy-baguma-woman-in-extreme-poverty-found-dead-next-to-crying-baby-in-glasgow

Socialism Now More Than Ever

The Socialist Party strives to explain that capitalism is incompatible with the advancement of the interests of the working class. What is meant is that the workers in their struggle can go only so far within the boundaries of the system. The socialist conception of social revolution is that it is the process by which the people go beyond the limits of capitalism in the course of their class struggle.

Capitalism has provided the trained workers and the technology, i.e., the machines, plants and techniques which are necessary for a socialist reorganization of society, it long ago ceased to provide for the simple wants and needs of the plain people. We want peace, instead of bloodshed and destruction. We want security and jobs, instead of insecurity and joblessness. We want decent homes for our families and good and plentiful schools for our children. We want comfort and prosperity, instead of slums, child labor, low wages, unemployment and starvation. We want democracy and freedom instead of totalitarianism, bureaucracy and racial and religious conflict. Despite intricate machines and abundant natural resources, capitalism is unable to provide us with these elementary wants. It is unable to avoid constant warfare. Instead it dooms us to serfdom and poverty. 

Under capitalism, an elite control the wealth and power of the country. They own industry, banking, mining, transportation. They own our jobs. They own the politicians because they finance the business parties which put these men into office. They send us to war to protect their vested interests. They have the power of life and death over all of us. The insanity of this system of capitalism is that it creates inequality, poverty and unemployment and all the crises of society because it produces too much! Not, to be sure, in relation to human needs, but in relation to the market. While the capitalists are united against the workers and their political and economic organizations, they are in competition against each other and against their capitalist counterparts abroad. They all try to outproduce and outsell each other on the market because the mainspring of capitalist production is profit, not human needs. Capitalism produces more and more for destruction. It has not been able to use its vast technical and material resources for constructive purposes.

Socialism, and only socialism, will create a true world commonwealth, a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, without masters and slaves and a world without war.  Its primary purpose will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, hunger and general insecurity. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people.

Socialism will end root problem of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life. With socialism, these instruments of production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth. 

In abolishing classes in society, socialism will change the form and type of governments which exist today. Governments will become administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class. The preoccupation of the administration in socialism will be to improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to elevate the cultural level of the whole world. In abolishing classes, the nation- state and war, socialism will at the same time destroy all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. World socialism will be the freest, most democratic society mankind has ever known, truly representing the majority of the population and subject to its recall. A citizen of a socialist society will look back with horror upon the capitalist era with its wars, destruction and bloody and cruel despotism.

The world cooperative commonwealth will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment. Socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent housing for all the people. Socialism will provide for a multitude of schools for all the people. Socialism will eliminate illiteracy, which is one of the hallmarks of capitalism, and cease to regard schools primarily as institutions to produce skilled labour to help operate the profit economy. Socialism will create a system of health preservation in which the needs of the people and the improvement of the human race would be the paramount consideration. Above all, socialism will provide jobs without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of labour, but the utilization of machinery, technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress.

Today’s world holds all the necessary conditions for socialism. All about we observe gigantic industrial enterprises containing technology which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed a marvelous machinery. The discovery and control of automation and robotics has not only made it more possible for humanity to control natural and social environment to create a fruitful life of abundance, but has made it imperative. Socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help create an ever-improving social life for mankind. Under capitalism, scientists are mere wage workers hiring out their skills to private industry, servants of the corporation. The fruits of their intelligence, learning and research become the exclusive property of the capitalists, protected by patents who profit from the efforts of these scientists. Thus, science has become subordinated to profits rather than to the common good of all mankind. Yet the future society depends in large measure on changing this relation of science to society. Only socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.

Humanity is at a crossroads. We can travel the road of capitalism, i.e., the route to chaos, war, poverty and barbarism, or we can take the socialist path  toward true freedom, peace and security, the road toward a society of plenty for all which would end the exploitation of man by man for all time.

Break the Chains

As revolutionary socialists we recognise that capitalism can’t grant all the reforms workers need. At this stage of the descent of capitalism into barbarism the only thing the capitalist system can offer workers is austerity—the choice between less and less. This is what’s happening everywhere across the globe. As revolutionary socialists we know that no socio-economic transformation of society has ever been achieved through reforms within the power structure of that society. Supporting (critically or otherwise) candidates of the parties of the capitalist class is deceptive because it implies that the system can be changed through such reforms as long as we elect the correct capitalist candidates.

Workers’ democratic control over the means of production and the establishment of socialism is the only solution to austerity, unending war and the destruction of our environment. And it is the only road to the reversal of the current descent into barbarism. Working class democratic control over society is the goal of revolutionary socialism and, practically speaking, the only thing that will save the world. This cannot be reformed into being. Supporting radical sounding or so-called socialist candidates of capitalist parties (because one can’t really distinguish between them) muddies the truth that the system of capitalism itself is the real enemy of the working class. 

Revolutionary socialism is not just about fighting for reforms or demands. A minimum wage, while it’s better than nothing, is ridiculously inadequate. We need to organise independently of the capitalist class and their parties. We need to show the working class that we have strength and power on our own because we do. This is socialism.

 Supporting the candidates of capitalist parties weakens us. It ties our hands to the capitalist system to resolve our problems. It’s a dead end. Reformism is not the same as revolutionary socialism. We can’t make that distinction clear if we lend our support to capitalist politicians no matter what they call themselves. It’s the job of revolutionary socialists to clarify what socialism means and how it will be achieved—specifically through mass, independent struggle of the working class. Describing capitalist candidates as socialists will not clarify anything. Progressives share the idea of socialism as the Swedish or Norwegian model. But those countries are also enforcing austerity—cutting back on social welfare programs and privatizing them because they are capitalist countries that called themselves socialist to win over their population. It gives false hope that electing a capitalist candidate can achieve all the reforms workers need to survive or all the reforms the world needs to keep the planet from being destroyed.

We know that the only solution to the plight of the working class and the planet is socialist revolution—the complete overthrow of the capitalist mode of production for profit and replacing it with a system of production for want and need, democratically controlled by the working class—to end hunger, homelessness, oppression and inequality. We can’t substitute fake socialism for the real thing. It will only lead to defeat and demoralization.

Socialism has to do only with the mass power and mass action of the proletariat, and scorn the futile acts of individual terrorist violence which are unrelated to the organized proletarian movement. Nobody ever was or could be urged to individual acts of violence or sabotage through the propaganda of revolutionary socialism. Reformists conceive of political action in terms of a modification of the political and economic regime of capitalism. Reformism is little more than making capitalism the better-ordered slavery of the wage-worker.

The work of the Socialist Party is to develop the consciousness upon which depends the overthrow of capitalism; to develop the organization for the expression of this consciousness; and to formulate the general tactics for  both in winning power and in using this power to make the basic economic changes upon which the socialist order of society depends.

The class struggle is not a theory but a fact, not a dogma but a grim reality. Out in the mines, the steel hells, in sweating dens of the exploiters, and everywhere that our class is drained of its vitality, there is the class struggle. Get in it. Be of it. Know its reality and the theory will take care of itself. The socialist movement in  depends today on the rise of a politically-conscious working class.

The Socialist Party dedicates itself to the purpose of hastening and influencing such a development. And then we shall see the Revolution.

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.