Socialism - A Solidarity Society

 

The Socialist Party conceives of a society without exploitation, organised democratically for the common good. There may be still room for improving the present social system, but it is of minor consequence compared to the world’s crying need for industrial and social reorganisation. The next great change in the evolution of society must be the socialisation of the means of our common life. Privately owned production for individual profit are no longer compatible with social progress and have ceased to work out to humane ends. With all its marvellous progress in technology and invention, the monumental achievements of science, this world of ours has not yet learned how to feed itself. There is no longer the least excuse for a hungry person. All the materials and resources are at hand and easily available for the production of all things needed to provide nourishing food, good health and decent homes for every man, woman and child, thus putting an end to the poverty and misery. But these tools and materials and forces must be released from private ownership and control, socialised, democratised, and set in operation for the common good of all instead of the private profit of the few. A privately owned world can never be a free world and a society based upon warring classes cannot stand. Such a world is a world of strife and hate and such a society can exist only by means of coercion and force. The education of the people is the task of the people to be performed only by themselves. All history attests the fact that all the few have ever done for the many is to keep them in ignorance and servitude.

The Socialist Party visualises socialism as a higher stage of human society, economically, socially and intellectually, where all science and the arts is to be utilised, not for the few, but for the benefit of mankind as a whole. Based on the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, a new and better economic system is to be built, ending all social oppression creating a community of free and equal producers striving not for sectional interests, but for the common welfare. This socialist commonwealth, liberates the individual from all economic, political and social oppression, would provide the basis, for real liberty and for the full and harmonious development of the person, giving full scope for the growth of the creative personality.

If mankind equally possessed and enjoyed in common...the goods, wealth, and conveniences of life and if they wisely managed the goods of the land and the fruits of their labour and industry, they would all have sufficient place to live happy and content, for the earth almost always produces sufficient and even abundantly enough to nourish them and sustain them, if they would always make good use of these goods, and it’s quite rare that the earth fails to produce the necessities of life; and thus all would have enough to live peacefully. No one would lack what is necessary, no one would suffer in order to have what they need to feed or house themselves; for all would find all of this surely, abundantly, easily and comfortably in a well-run community; and thus no one would have any interest in resorting to fraud or falsehood.

No one would have any interest in envying neighbours, nor to be envious of each other, because all will be more or less in a state of equality. No one would have any interest in stealing what others might have, no one would have any interest in killing anyone in order to acquire their possessions, for this would be of no good. No one would have any interest in working themselves to death with fatigue, as is now done by countless numbers of poor people, who barely have what they need to live as well as to meet the expenses that are rigorously demanded of them because each would assist the other in sharing the sweat and toil of labour, and no one would remain uselessly idle while others occupy themselves usefully at labour. The rich steal the better part of the fruits of your hard labours, and leave them nothing but the dregs, fearing penury or poverty. There is no happiness anywhere. Surely we ought to make a stand. What is your life or my life worth, unless it has been exercised in doing something to add to the sum of happiness of the human family? 

Co-operation instead of competition is one of the aim of the Socialist Party. It is nonsense to say that if you remove competition individuals will not excel. How many geniuses who have given us great things thought of profit when they were inventing them? Was it not the thought of the having accomplished something so wondrous for many of them? They did not think of themselves, nor of profit.

Our present system has been a pronounced failure. Political parties have failed. There must be unity and co-operation if we are to rise and take upon ourselves the responsibility of proving that we can under the favorable conditions we have around us find the solution to capitalism’s problem. We can do it. We can if we set our minds upon it.

Socialism - A Better World

 

The Socialist Party seeks to build a workers’ movement which believes in political action and also in economic organisation.  Both these methods go side by side. What the workers need is political education, class consciousness and trade union solidarity. When it comes to a showdown between the working class and the capitalist class, these are vitally necessary. Until we break the power of the state, nothing else can be accomplished. When we proclaim the abolition of the capitalists’ property and the establishment of common property, that in itself is a political act. And the socialists believe that it is necessary, as a matter of strategy, to attack the capitalist at his only accessible point, his government. We regard the state as a very efficient weapon in the hands of the ruling class. Until it is taken over no attempt at a social revolution will be safe for the working class. With the armed power of the state out of the way, then we shall be in a position to inaugurate a co-operative commonwealth, and we shall be ready to set it in motion. And when that time comes, it will be done through the activities of the economic organisation of the working class.

The  wages system, under which labour has been reduced to a commodity is to be supplanted by the cooperative system under which all may engage in useful occupation and work together in harmonious cooperation for the emancipation of labour, the uplifting of humanity, and the advancement of our civilisation. By uniting at the ballot box, political control of the State can be secured, and the cooperative commonwealth established. The Socialist Party is not content with piecemeal, incremental improvements in the conditions of the working class, but instead advances the need for a revolutionary transformation of society that would result in a cooperative commonwealth where workers would democratically determine their working conditions. We shall unite all our energies to destroy the present capitalist system.

The time has come for social regeneration, and this is only possible through a new and worldwide change of system.

We therefore call upon all to muster under the banner of the Socialist Party, so that we may be ready to conquer capitalism by making use of our political liberty and by taking possession of State power, so that we may put an end to the present barbarous struggle, by the abolition of capitalism, the restoration of the land, and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution, to the people as a collective body, and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production, commercial competition, and social strive — a commonwealth which, although it will not make every person equal physically or mentally, will give to every worker the free exercise and the full benefit of his or her abilities , multiplied by all the modern factors of civilisation and ultimately inaugurate the universal brotherhood of mankind. The Socialist Party will make democracy, “the rule of the people,” a truth by ending the economic subjugation of the overwhelmingly great majority of the people. The cooperative commonwealth is the inevitable, inexorable product of the evolution of society. There is no power in capitalism, nor in the universe, that can prevent the consummation of a united and harmonious socialist movement in the cooperative commonwealth.

Private ownership of the centralised means of production and distribution — an industrial despotism, or common ownership and an industrial democracy? It must be one or the other — which? Socialism will wrest the earth from its exploiters and its vast and inexhaustible storehouse will yield abundance for all. The growth of socialism is the promise of freedom. Socialism means a more perfect and equitable distributions of the products of labour; cooperation instead of competition; common ownership of land, capital, and all the means of production and distribution. It proclaims the coming of the cooperative commonwealth to take the place of wage slavery.

The present economic system is not only a failure, but a colossal aggregation of crime. It robs, it degrades, it starves; it is a foul blot upon the face of civilisation. It promises only an increase of the horrors which the world deplores. There is no hope for our fellow-workers except by the path mapped out by socialists, the advocates of the cooperative commonwealth.

As we have witnessed in the recent American election, it will then make no sort of difference to capitalists, or to the working class either, whether the Republican or the Democratic Party be in control of government; for capitalism will be in possession of both parties. The perpetuity of the capitalist system depends upon its having two political parties, about equally matched, to play off against each other, and to shuttlecock the proletariat behind blind issues. America]s electoral process have long been a sort of Punch and Judy show; and it has been all one to the working man, whether he was looking at Republican Punch or Democratic Judy. The strings of both parties were in the capitalists’ hands.

Whatever is done we must do ourselves

 

Joseph Dietzgen, in his philosophical works, has demonstrated the fact that all of man’s ideas come from the outside—that no thought ever sprang spontaneous in the human brain. In other words—human thoughts, human ideas, spring from human contacts and experiences with the physical universe about us. Man’s ability to think—his consciousness—the thing we call the "Ego"—the mind—is a natural development. According to Dietzgen, "human thoughts and ideas spring from human experiences." Similar experiences produce similar ideas. History furnishes us with many instances of great popular and class movements which concertedly move towards some definite goal, having discovered those similarities of experience and their common ground. Mankind is a product of its environment; and that its collective thoughts and ideas are generated by contacts and experiences with the world around it.

 The wages system is, in essence, another form of servitude. Free trade—free competition in buying and selling commodities—is the basic principle of the Capitalist system of exchange of private property, and it is but natural that the labor-power of the working class should also be regarded as a commodity. In fact, it is inevitable that, under a system of production for profit, labour-power should take on such a character and that it should be bought and sold in the open market according to the law of supply and demand of commodities. Nor is it surprising that in a competitive market, where the seller with the greatest necessity for cash fixes the market price, the price of labour-power should always tend to sink to the level of a bare subsistence for the workers; and that those workers with the ability to exist at the lowest standard of living should dictate the terms on which the others may also continue to exist. The whole tendency of the wage system has been to drag all the workers down to the same poverty.

The associated producers collectively organise and manages production and is itself responsible for overseeing the labour process. This is self-organisation, This is self-management.

“… by far the most important decree of the Commune instituted an organization of large-scale industry and even of manufacture which was to not only be based on the association of the workers in each factory, but also to combine all these associations in one great union; in short, an organization which, as Marx quite rightly says in The Civil War, must necessarily have led in the end to communism.” (Engels, Preface to The Civil War in France).

We, the workers, who operate the productive apparatus that has been bequeathed to us by capitalism will strip away all State power. We shall reduce the role of public officials and civil servants to that of mere executors of our directions, responsible to recallable by the workplace or community. We want every person engaged in industry to have a voice in making the rules under which they must work. In socialism the workers would elect their own administrators, regulate their hours of work and determine the conditions under which work would be carried on. We may be sure that when this power is arrived at, the work-places will be arranged according to wishes of the workers and all disagreeable pollution and noise eliminated, and with every precaution taken against accidents. In other words, under Socialism the workers would have absolute freedom in the economic sphere in place of the present absolute servitude.

The economic emancipation of the working class requires a political revolution, the conquering of state power. Workers have not yet awakened to independent political activity. The pro-capitalist parties simply want the workers to be voting fodder in elections and servile camp-followers. They seek to keep the workers politically subservient. 

The Socialist Party emphasises the need of economic freedom, for it is the basis of all freedoms. There can be no liberty in economic dependence. Freedom will become the heritage of all as soon as socialism is realised. True liberty and freedom can only be attained in the cooperative commonwealth.

So long as the worker is deprived of ownership in the means  of production, so long as labour-power is a commodity which he or she is obliged to sell to another, a person is not free but simply a slave to a master. The worker today, then, is a slave, bound by the pressure of economic need to compulsory servitude under capitalist masters, obliged to sell one’s liberties in exchange for the means of subsistence. We live under the greatest tyranny of all — the tyranny of want. By this lash men and women are driven to work long hours and in despicable occupations and to live in slums.

With new technology and the scientific organisation of industry, eliminating all the wastes of the present system, two or three hours a day would suffice to supply all the comforts and even luxuries of life. This would secure to the worker the leisure necessary to to develop skills and talents.  

"If a worker wants to take part in the self-emancipation of his class, the basic requirement is that he should cease allowing others to teach him and should set about teaching himself." - Joseph Dietzgen 

The Emancipation of the Wage Slaves

 

The purpose of the Socialist Party is to accomplish the Co-operative Commonwealth. We demand the common ownership and control of industry and its democratic management in the interest of all the people — that is our demand. The elimination of rent, interest, and profit and instead the production of wealth to satisfy the wants of all the people — that is our demand. Cooperative industry in which all shall work together in harmony as the basis of a new social system, that is our demand. The end of class struggles and class rule, of master and slave, of poverty  of cruelty and crime; the birth of freedom, the dawn of brotherhood, the evolution of mankind — that is our demand. That is our socialism!

The Socialist Party is organising to securing control of  government powers. Having conquered the political power upon the platform that declares in favour of common ownership in the name of the people, they will take possession of production. It will already have already begun the organisation of industry , that is to say, self-management. Industry will be will be cooperative in every department of human industry. Men and women will be economically free; life will no longer be a struggle for survival and sustenance. Labour will no longer be servitude. Every person will gladly do one’s share of the world’s useful work. Every person will be able to say honestly they enjoy his or her share. Every technology will be a blessing to mankind because it will serve to reduce the number of hours constituting a day’s work, and the work-day will be shortened in exact proportion to the progress of invention. Labour will no longer be bought and sold on the market of the world. We will not make things for sale, but will make things to use. We will fill the world with wealth and every person can have all that a person can rationally use. Rent, interest, and profit, three forces of exploitation, will disappear forever.

The existing system is unspeakably cruel. Capitalist society is a diseased organism. We boast of our civilisation and yet every nation on the face of the globe is armed to the teeth against other nations. Is that civilisation in the proper sense of the term? We must bear in mind that competition is war; that war is the normal state of capitalism. With the end of capitalism comes the end of war, and the inauguration of peace. The Socialist Party does what little it can to hasten to coming of the day when war shall curse this earth no more. Its members are not patriots and possess no ambition to kill their fellow-workers from another land.

The Socialist Party is the expression of the world socialist movement, based upon the class struggle in which all workers of all countries, regardless of race, nationality, creed, or sex, are called upon to unite against the capitalist class, their shared common exploiter and oppressor. In the class struggle the equality of all workers is a foregone conclusion, and who does not recognise and subscribe to it as one of the basic principles of the socialism  is not a socialist and should be speedily set adrift to  return to the capitalist parties with their divisions.  Foolish and vain indeed is the person who makes the colour of skin or nationality the stepping-stone to an imaginary superiority. Socialism will give all people economic freedom. Socialism will break the chains of capitalism.

The abolition of the capitalist system does not merely mean the emancipation of the working class, but of all society. It will level upwards. This planet for the first time  will be fit for  men and women to live in.

 

The SPGB - The People’s Party

 The economic basis of society is changing more rapidly today than ever before in human history. This is an age of social evolution.

So much has been said and written of socialism by those who have no proper understanding of it and who have resorted to a wilful misrepresentation of its ideas, that it is not at all strange that a great number of people reject it and look upon those who advocate socialism as enemies. The evolution of the social organisation is a fact in nature. In the ceaseless process one state of society follows another in the sequence of succession. Socialism means the overthrow of capitalism, the abolition of wage-slavery, and the creation of the cooperative commonwealth. It means a social revolution which shall give to every worker economic freedom. The working class is the foundation of society. You are the producers of all value. All the wealth you see around you is the result of labour. Yet, do you own the wealth which you produce? No, you do not. You are the wealth-producers, but you live under wage slavery, in poverty and misery.

 You are the fundamental power of society, and you don’t know it. You imagine that you are free, while in fact you are enslaved. The man who owns the tools of of your livelihood, the means of production, controls you. The class which owns the means of production, owns your very life. You elect the same political parties into power whose policies are to protect and advance the class interests of capitalism.. The politicians flatter you before the day of the election; after the election they forget you. Whenever and wherever organized labour is engaged in struggle against the powers of capitalism you will find both the same parties on the capitalist side, fighting against the working class. By voting for the parties of capitalism you help to perpetuate wage slavery, you  strengthen the chains of misery. The political parties of capitalism are organised against you. It is for you to organise under the banner of socialism and the Socialist Party and fight the battles of your own emancipation

Think for yourselves. Be men and women who do their own thinking. Under the present system of society you are being robbed whether you receive higher or lower wages, because the wage system is based on legalised robbery. The millions of toilers slave and starve for the idle few who accumulate the stolen products of labour and lead a life of luxury. We want you to fight for the freedom of your own class and join the working class party, which is the Socialist Party.

The aim of the Socialist Party is for of the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution: namely, the land, mines, mills, factories, and productive machinery, for the purpose of operating industry in the interest of the whole people. Present society is based upon private property and is essentially coercive, with the function of the government being to protect the interests of the owning and ruling class, and to keep their victims in subjugation. When production becomes common property, government will be purely administrative, and will cease to be unjust and oppressive. The owning class in the present, as in all past ages, is necessarily the ruling class, and all legislation is enacted and interpreted in the interest of said class. Equality under the present system is simply a myth. The wage-worker whose employment is controlled by his industrial master ,and who in that relation is at the mercy of the master since we depend upon his arbitrary will for the opportunity to labour and support the family, is not on terms of political equality with the master. Political equality is rooted in economic freedom, and only when the means of production shall have become the common property of all, as they have been produced by all, are used by all, and are necessary to all, only then will political equality prevail and all men and women enjoy equal rights and equal opportunities. The Socialist Party proposes to establish industrial democracy, based upon cooperative industry. It should be understood that the party proposes to increase and not diminish the production of wealth. Rent, interest, and profit, three forms of exploitation, will be totally eliminated. Production will be carried forward for use and not for profit. The human trafficking — men women, and children — their purchase and sale upon a weekly or monthly instalment plan, will cease. The workday will be reduced in proportion to the progress of technology.

The Socialist Party is the only world political party in the world. Its fundamental principles are the same in all lands. The Socialist Party recognises no frontiers or borders. The nation in which we live embraces the working class of the world. Every worker everywhere is our brother and sister. Across the borders of all lands socialists clasp hands as comrades. The nationalism and patriotism which the ruling class of each nation is promotes, is the power which these give to capitalism to keep the workers of the world from uniting, and to throw them against each other in the struggles of contending capitalist interests for the control of the yet unexploited markets of the world, or the remaining sources of profit. The socialist movement, therefore, is a world movement. It knows of no conflicts of interests between the workers of one nation and the workers of another. It stands for the freedom of the workers of all nations; and, in so standing, it makes for the full freedom of all humanity.

The Socialist Party is the only party that stands for economic justice, and this is impossible in a system based upon exploitation. Political democracy and industrial despotism cannot co-exist. Socialism means that all those things upon which the people in common depend shall by the people in common be owned and administered. It means that the tools of employment shall belong to their creators and users; that all production shall be for the direct use of the producers; that the making of goods for profit shall come to an end; that we shall all be workers together; and that all opportunities shall be open and equal to all people.

The cause of the Socialist Party is and will be wholly educational. To arouse the consciousness of the workers to their economic interests as a class, to develop their capacity for clear thinking, to achieve their solidarity industrially and politically is to invest the working class with the inherent power it possesses to abolish the wage system and free itself from every form of servitude, and this is the mighty mission of the World Socialist Movement. We shall not compromise, nor shall we be diverted from the straight road to the cooperative commonwealth.

The Socialist Party is the only party that does not want a vote that is not intelligently cast. The popularity of a candidate is against him rather than for him in the Socialist Party. No vote is wanted on account of the personality of a candidate. It is the value of the socialist principle that is taught and emphasised, and if this is not understood and approved the vote is not wanted. Mere disgust with other candidates or their parties is not accepted by socialists as sufficient reason to encourage the voting of the Socialist Party. Such votes are unreliable, deceptive and misleading which are apt to desert at the very time they are most needed Any vote that is subject to the influence of personal considerations is so vacillating that it is of no use in the constructive work of a revolutionary political movement. Better united on the solid basis of principle, than thrown together on the shifting sands of personality. It is the case, not the face. Too many people are forever looking for some “great leader” to watch over and protect them. The Socialist Party makes principles paramount; the candidates are the last and least consideration. The supreme question is, “What are the principles?” and any interest in the delegates is about can he or she advance those principles.

The Socialist Party appeals to for fellow-workers for the realisation of its cooperative commonwealth. The Socialist Party is the party of the workers, who are on the right side of this worldwide struggle. The Socialist Party is the party of the present and of the immediate future. The Socialist Party stands for the abolition of the wage system, for the economic freedom as well as the political equality of the working class, knowing that without the former the latter is impossible. The Socialist Party stands for the common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution and the operation of industry in the interest of all. The Socialist Party stands for industry of the people, by the people and for the people, that wealth may be produced for the use of all instead of for the profit of a few. The Socialist Party stands for a social order, in which every human being, in the full enjoyment of economic freedom, shall have full opportunity, in the best possible environment, to develop their best.