Fact of the Day

 Child poverty in Scotland has been on the rise for the past few years.

Figures released last week revealed that, before Covid, a quarter of all children in Scotland - around 240,000 - were living below the breadline.

Two thirds of them come from families who are in work.

 The pandemic has likely made that problem worse.

 In the last year, the number of people claiming Universal Credit in Scotland doubled - suggesting many families are struggling.

The Class War of Self-Liberation

 

The Socialist Party leaves reforms of all kinds to those who think the present social system worth reforming. For its part, the Socialist Party seeks the abolition of the entire capitalist system. Let us rather take up the work of clarifying out movement; let us cast out the dross of legislative reform, and carry to the working class an uncompromising message, rallying them for the first step — the conquest of political power. It advocates that the workers must gain political power in order to get possession of the government. It will then be possible for them to use the institution of the State for its final function — the abolition of all classes by the socialisation of the means of wealth production. We, the Impossibilists, have always been charged with not being constructive. Actually, however, it was the gradualists who perform no constructive work themselves.

The framework of the new socialist society  requires no building within the old. It is already built — in the form of highly organised, socialised production, which by the way is in no way connected with the cooperative movement of industrial unionism. The task that presents itself is to abolish the present class ownership. Let us not fritter away our time dreaming about how affairs will be administered in the future socialist world. What the Socialist Party presents is a clear-cut revolutionary platform around which most workers could consistently rally and present an unbroken front to the class enemy.

We live in a world where hunger, poverty, unemployment,  racial and sexual discrimination, and many forms of repression, including the most barbaric, such as torture and genocide, are the lot of  the planet’s  inhabitants. Around the world, the lives of hundreds of millions of men, women, and children scarcely tolerable and injustice has become common practice. Humanity’s resources are senselessly wasted while people’s  needs remain unsatisfied. The land is despoiled and misery abounds. We ask: why is it that we have to put up with these conditions? The reality is that the vast majority of the people of the globe share a common condition: that of living in a society where the owners of the means of production impose their will over those who possess nothing or little. In other words, the vast majority of people live in a society divided into social classes where the propertied classes, the capitalists and landowners, dominate the classes who have little or no property, the workers. The economic base of this social regime is the capitalist system. Essentially, capitalism is the result of the exploitation of the labour power of working people by the employers, owners of the means of production.  

The mission of the working class is thus not only to replace the rule of one class with that of another, as has happened already in previous revolutions, but also to liberate all of humanity from the chains of exploitation and oppression by the abolition of classes themselves. In this way the divisions between the city and countryside, and between mental and manual labour will also be abolished, and a society without a State will be created, since the State is nothing other than the instrument of the dictatorship of one class over the others. The emancipation of the workers will be accomplished by the workers themselves. They will achieve it through socialist revolution, which will suppress the private ownership of the means of production in order to establish socialist and collective property, and replace capitalist commodity production by the socialist organization of production based on the labour of all the members of society and designed to ensure the complete well-being and full development of each person.  The Socialist Party expresses the idea that the only demand that can really lead to  emancipation is the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, the abolition of the exploitation of Man by Man, and the construction of a socialist society.  It is the fundamental task of the socialist revolution.

Only Socialism Can Bring Freedom

 The aim of the Socialist Party is to establish a a more secure and abundant life for all. The Socialist Party is opposed to the entire concept of collaboration between labour and capital because labour becomes the captives of the ruling class, who use them as part of the state apparatus. The fight for socialism to is the struggle for the new society of freedom, the world brotherhood of all peoples. The course of capitalism's evolution is a unique blood-stained history of murder. Murder of competitors, of workers, of populations foreign and domestic. Since the era of its birth, the pages of  the history of capitalism has been soaked in blood.  

The capitalist class proposes to spread capital throughout the whole world and to extract more and more profits, from this expansion and from all the peoples of the earth who they want to transform into their wage-slaves. It is profit for the capitalist class which is calling upon the bankers and industrialists to vote in favour of increased militarism. Capitalist profit is surplus value sucked from the workers. Capitalism, born of private ownership of the means of production, grows by means of conflict.  Profit is made the aim of all human effort, not use. By abolishing profits socialism will be an entirely different system. Socialist society could produce ten times as much as we do now. Socialism will be the cooperative control and the democratic management of the means of production. Socialism is the next natural stage in the evolution of human society; an organisation of all men and women into an ordered, cooperative commonwealth in which they work together, consciously, for a common purpose: the good of all, not of the few, not of the majority, but of all.

A socialist society run in the interests of the vast masses of humanity, and not a tiny elite class of profiteers, is the only alternative. It is not pie-in-the-sky dreaming or just a “smarter” way of running things. Capitalism has itself laid the basis for transcending the misery to which it condemns humanity. It long ago built up the economic productive forces—industry, technology and a globalised economy—to the point where the potential exists to produce an abundance of all need resources. But that potential remains trapped by capitalism’s pursuit of profit. Scarcity continues to underpin capitalist class society, driving nationalism and racism. Socialism is about winning a world of freedom. socialism rests on the premise that it is possible for human beings to rationally and collectively plan and produce to satisfy our needs.

The abundance of production now possible, and which new technology constantly improves upon, will remove any need for rationing or artificial limits to consumption. Socialism shall satisfy all material needs without stint or favour, from the common storehouse, according to their desires. Everyone will be able to have what he or she desires in food, in clothing, leisure, education and travel. There will be neither rich nor poor. Money will no longer exist. There will be no buying and selling, because everyone will be able to obtain everything desired without payment. And nor will people hoard for future free access will always be guaranteed.

The Socialist Party is determined to work co-operatively for the commonweal. We believe that most of the ills that afflict mankind stem from  bad social organisation. We want the well-being of all. 

ANOTHER BANDAID FIX

Neither Westminster or Holyrood, Neither Sturgeon or Salmond

 

So Scotland in its quest for national unity now has another independence party to add to the SNP, the Scottish Socialist Party and Sheridan's vanity party, Solidarity. It now has acquitted and exonerated Alex Salmond's Alba Party, with two defected MPs, Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey.

Such political goings-on in no way changes the attitude of the Socialist Party members in our Scottish branches who still treat the separatist campaign for a sovereign Scotland as an anathema. We still view our goal as to end economic  exploitation, to join together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the planet will have become the heritage of all, so that there can be production to meet needs and not for profit. One world, one people, where cultural differences will still be celebrated, but where we’ll all be citizens of the world. World socialists reject allegiance to any State.

An independent Scotland, no matter who governs, would still have to operate within the constraints of the world capitalist system. It would still have to ensure that goods produced in Scotland were competitive on world markets and that capitalists investing in Scotland were allowed to make the same level of profits as they could in other  countries. In other words, it would still be subject to the same capitalisic laws as the existing London-based government to promote profits and restrict wages and benefits. There is no truly independent country in the world, because international capitalism has made sure of this.

It was disappointing that our fellow-workers should still be wasting time over a question like nationalism and secession. It has of no consequence to the working class. While capitalism continues the workers will not be any better off even if national sovereignty is achieved. Independence will simply mean a transfer of power to a new group of politicians, while the structure of state and society is but little changed.

Socialism and the Pandemic

 

The whole aim of socialism is that every human being, white, black, brown, or yellow, shall have equal opportunity to have access to the natural resources which nature has supplied and to the technology which mankind has created. The Socialist Party assert the equality of sex and 'race'. We say, “All people are born equal,” and accordingly strain all our efforts towards the abolition of the existing social regime. As socialists we recognise, of course, that the real freedom  cannot be achieved before the entire social problem is solved. We in the Socialist Party do not believe in forcing our ideas on anyone. We wish others to do their own thinking, and of course form their own conclusions.

 We socialists have always contended that capitalism should be abolished because it mismanaged the means of production so that a very few – those who own the means of production – reaped great profits while the masses of the people were deprived of a secure standard of living. We would often prove this assertion by demonstrating the tremendous capacities which the modern technology has; how it could satisfy the needs of everyone if it were run for that purpose; and how capitalism, instead, run the industrial machine for profits. We socialists say, if only the working people could run these industries themselves, they could produce enough to satisfy everyone’s needs. It remains the great and tragic paradox of our age – poverty in the midst of plenty. That is the greatest indictment of world capitalism. We are, for the moment, interested in the inefficiency which capitalism demonstrates, a situation has been brought to a climax by the recent dramatic events of the Covid pandemic. The capitalists have remained loyal to one all-important objective – they have continued in old, inefficient ways, in what is called “Business as Usual.” They continue to resist what is the inevitable necessity, the transition to an equitable economy in order to continue their tremendous intake of profits. It has enabled the capitalists to make more profits; and within the framework of the pandemic they are all determined to make as much profit as they can. Vaccine nationalism has been a grand opportunity for more profits. The undeveloped nations have been deprived of the use of vaccinations not because of the lack of foresight but rather the selfish profiteering interests and the competitive machinations of capitalism. Many  have said that this means that the pharmaceutical  corporations  are not really interested in winning the war against coronavirus but seek to create future customers for annual booster shots. The primary interest of the capitalist, we have said, is profit. As a result, the given group of capitalists – say, the drug manufacturers – are primarily interested in the profits for their group and, within their group, for their company. The capitalists cannot conceive of innovation and invention without profiteering. The acquisition of profits for the capitalist class is the main purpose of production (albeit, if the requirements of victory for the capitalist class as a whole dictates the subordination of the interests of a particular industry within capitalism, it may be expected that sooner or later such subordination will take place.)

Capitalism is a wasteful and inefficient system. It cannot plan on either a national or an international scale. It deprives the mass of the people of products because of its selfish profiteering. It causes workers to lose their jobs because of this selfish profiteering. And the very existence of disease in the world today is a damning indictment of capitalism  when most of the world’s resources are used for the mass murder of warfare instead of constructive purposes. Socialism could plan better, provide the people with all necessities  where there would be no shortages created by the greed of a few owners of the means of production, because the people would collectively own the means of production. Socialism would take the vast resources which are available and use them for constructive purposes. The inefficiency and economic inequality due to the impossibility of constructive economic planning under capitalism – all would be things of the past. In their place could arise the new society of peace and plenty. That is why socialism is the burning need of the hour.

Burying Capitalism

 Capitalism is utterly incapable of assuring the well being of the majority of people. In the midst of abundance, with a productive apparatus which could, well organised and directed, cover more than all the present requirements of humanity, capitalism dooms millions to misery. All the ruling classes of all countries are bandits no matter what the pretentious and hypocritical slogans they spout. Poverty continues to increase in the middle of abundance. Capitalist social relations, its national boundaries, are strangling the economic and social development of man. It is more than ripe for socialist reorganisation. Its prolonged existence can only add to unending horror and misery. 

Humanity can only be saved from the new barbarism that menaces it by socialism. The great tragedy is the fact that they themselves prevent the realisation of its mission of emancipation. Instead of dispatching the putrefied corpse of capitalism into the limbo of history, our fellow-workers unite to patch it up and preserve it. They have long since abandoned the class struggle and concentrate all their efforts toward bringing the working class into the service of capitalism through class collaboration. The world’s workers cannot advance without breaking the wage-slave chains that shackles them to capitalism.

The Socialist Party does not hide its aims. It makes known is principles to our fellow-workers irreconcilable opposition to the capitalists and class struggle against injustice, against exploitation, and against oppression. We want a new system based on economic prosperity for everyone. Innovations and inventions have resulted in an achievement of production without precedent in the history of mankind. Where abundance should prevail capitalism has caused poverty; people die of the cold and of hunger; women suffer, children  succumb to preventable illnesses. How is it that people have to undergo such tremendous sufferings in spite of the fact that we have abundance of natural resources - a very fertile soil producing rich harvests; below the soil great quantities of ores and minerals and above all, the labour power of millions of people? The capitalist economy that is responsible for the present exploitation and oppression of the people. It is the capitalist relation of production that is at work; everywhere the production is being governed by the capitalist owner and wage-labourer relationship. The fundamental law of capitalism is capital accumulation by investing capital either in land or in industry, that is, investment of capital for production and raising further capital by selling the produce in the market. In the capitalist system the capitalists invest capital in mills and factories and produce commodities which they sell in the market at a price higher than the money invested to earn profit. They earn this profit by exploiting the workers, by appropriating the surplus value created by the labour power. whatever be the condition of capitalism, advanced or backward, capitalist exploitation is the principal cause of all misery, it is the main enemy of the people. Under capitalism, the anarchy of production is determined by the fact that goods are produced for the market and not for use. The market is the regulator of production.

Under socialism, production and distribution will be determined by democratic social planning. Technology has the power to prevent poverty and privation but who holds the key to this technology? The capitalists and they are motivated solely by profit.

If the working class fails to destroy capitalism, it will suffer the penalty of its own destruction. We can see today the heavy penalty the working class pays when it fails in its task.