Hope replaces fear, abundance replaces poverty

Nowhere in the world has socialism been established. The aim of the Socialist Party is to establish socialism. Our  aim to make the working people the masters of their own destiny, to win political power, and build socialism. Socialism means no privileged elite, only the right of working people themselves to manage their own affairs. It means creating a worldwide brotherhood and sisterhood. In capitalism, a few, by virtue of the ownership of the means of production, has control over the whole productive process and possesses corresponding privileges, together with the control of government. The rest of the community possesses nothing but a minimum of personal possessions, the ability to work, and some hard-won political rights. A conflict of interest is inevitable. Society rests at present upon the basis of private ownership, of the common means of living society is divided by interest, association, education, outlook, and psychology into at least two classes—the owners and non-owners of the means of producing the essentials of life. Because the owners possess the essentials of existence they are able to dictate terms to the non-owning mass. Because the owners are few and the non-owners are many they can only conserve their monopoly by manipulating the minds of the masses as well as the machinery of political administration. All the capitalist politicians, their spokesmen and defenders, do everything they can to persuade the working class not to form a political party of their own. They do not limit themselves to persuasion, but put direct obstacles in the path of such a step.

The  struggle to end the exploitation must begin as a struggle to undo in the mind of the worker that our masters are intent to keep enslaved, to ensure we are content with our wage-slavery and attempt no resistance.  Involved is educating working people in the principles of socialism,  teaching the workers the need for unity and solidarity in their inevitable class struggle against the bosses, their State, and their system. Socialism means workers imposing their will upon a system controlling all economic life. Socialism means that your bread and butter are secure no matter what you think. Socialism means that you are free and entitled to speak your mind. Workers must become a class for themselves. They must acquire a clear understanding of their real position under capitalism, of the nature of capitalist society as a whole, and of their mission in history. They must act consciously for their class interests. They must become conscious of the fact that these class interests lead to a socialist society. When this takes place, the workers are a class for themselves, a class with socialist consciousness. Workers require a clear, thoroughgoing understanding of capitalist society, their position in it, and the need to replace this society with socialism.

To help to imbue the workers with this class consciousness, or socialist consciousness that is the specific function of the Socialist Party which is composed of those workers who already understand the nature of capitalism. Our aim is to develop the same understanding among all the workers, so that they no longer fight blindly but with a clear and scientific knowledge of who their class enemy is, of what the working class itself can and must do in society to change things in the interests of the working class as a whole. 

The Socialist Party makes clear to the workers the full meaning of their fight. It shows how even the local struggles, against one capitalist, are really class struggles against capitalism. It combats the open and the insidious ideas of capitalism so that the working class as a whole may be better equipped to fight its enemy. It aims to improve the position of the working class, to strengthen it, to clarify it and supply it with the most effective weapons in the struggle. To put it briefly, a revolutionary socialist party is needed to win the working class to the principles of socialism. Socialism will never come by itself. It must be fought for. Without an organised, conscious, active revolutionary socialist party, the triumph of socialism is impossible. What is a socialist revolution? The socialist revolution is simply the overthrow of capitalist despotism and its replacement with the brotherhood and equality of all peoples of  humanity. Socialism is world socialism, or it is not socialism at all. A  class-free socialist society cannot be established within the framework of one country alone. Just as socialist economy could not exist side by side with a capitalist economy in one country, so a socialist nation could not exist side by side with capitalist nations in one world. one or the other would have to win in the end.

The Socialist Alternative

 

The words socialist and communist are changing their meaning to provide a smokescreen for reformers. Some “Marxists” suggest that socialism mean a “first stage” in the development of communism, an invention to camouflage their conservative gradualism. Marx described socialism as the society of the free and equal, emancipation of all mankind. The process of production, freed from private and State oppression, without class friction will yield abundant wealth. Social peace will reign, for, the capitalist class and State bureaucracy being abolished, there can be no antagonism of classes and will give the producers freedom at work and at leisure, freedom for self-expression in their handiwork, and instead of the deadening machine drudgery of the wage-slave for the capitalist, there will be the joyful creation of beautiful things by free men and women for the use of the whole community. A sane society would no more think of rewarding someone because nature had endowed the person with higher intelligence, than it would think of rewarding another because nature has gifted him or her with good looks. All will be looked after’

Socialism  is a word that has been so misused for so long that it is worth re-stating that its meaning is that the means of production are owned and controlled by society so that what is produced can be shared out according to people’s needs. The economic laws of capitalism, expressing relations based on the exploitation of man by man, cease to operate. The law of surplus-value, the basic economic law of modern capitalism, disappears as does the law of capitalist accumulation, the law of competition and anarchy of production, together with the categories which express capitalist relations; capital, surplus-value, capitalist profit price of production, wage-labour, the value of labour-power, etc. Socialism means, first and foremost, the abolition of private property in the means of production in the interests of the majority. Socialism means a class-free society,  a society where a privileged minority of the population are not in a position to enjoy wealth, while the majority live only on their labour to produce it.  It means an end of rent, profit, and interest on stocks and bonds, an end of “surplus value,” an end of the exploitation of labour. The whole structure of socialist society makes any accumulation derived from the exploitation of the work of other human beings impossible from the first. The kinds of jobs created by socialist society are non-exploitative. 

We say that we live in a class society. We don’t mean by this that some people have different life-styles from others, live in posh areas or have snobbish attitudes and accents. Class is the material reality on which our society and all others in the world today are based. The vast majority of people  work to produce profits for the few, whether they assemble cars or televisions in a factory, type figures into a word processor or check out groceries at Sainsbury’s. Or else they sweep streets, dig coal or scrub floors for the ‘public sector’ so that the system can keep going, with the rich making as much profit as possible and the needs of the poor supplied at the lowest possible cost. This is the working class, and without its labour the lights would go out, food and water would be cut off, communications would break down and society would cease to function.

At the top, a tiny minority of people own most of the wealth and exercise most of the control. They decide when factories will close, when prices will go up, when capital will be moved around so as to browbeat governments into doing what they want. Some belong to families who have held wealth and power for generations, others insist that they have ‘worked their way up’ and are ‘still very working class’. But they are all part of the ruling class, and their wealth gives them power. Governments must look after their interests, and keep everyone else quiet enough for the system of power and profits to go on working.

The essence of the future free world community is not a change in the ruling personnel  that  working people get to  direct their work themselves, collectively. The fundamental change is not a change in the passive realm of consumption as so many environmentalists tell us, but in the active realm of production to build a well-planned world economy. Those on the left who  persuade themselves that a government are going to run society in the interest of the Brotherhood of Man and the Co-operative Commonwealth deceive themselves.

 A capitalist political party is one that is controlled by capitalists; that makes laws and administers government in the interest of the capitalist class. A capitalist political party is one that elects men and women to office to protect the capitalist class while they steal the wealth produced by the working class. A leopard may be recognised by its spots. So with the pro-capitalist parties. Also beware of so-called “reform parties” with attractive propositions for fooling the workers. They will offer us anything to get into office, but they won’t promise to give up their profit-making system, nor abolish the private ownership of capital or capitalist class rule, both of which are the curse of the working class. Reformist parties advocate capitalist political schemes for fooling the workers.  In order to rescue the people from the clutches of the capitalist class, the reformists say we must have public ownership and then the private capitalist will no longer squeeze us with the profit system. The public will be its own capitalist. It will squeeze itself. We do not try to justify the situation in the former USSR and its satellites, or present-day China or Cuba, which claim to be socialist societies but where it is quite clear that men and women have not been liberated. None of these are societies where the working class is in control; they are ruled, and harshly ruled, by a class of bureaucrats whose aims are at the bottom the same as the aims of our own ruling class: to exploit working people, accumulate capital and compete with one another internationally. 

In Defence Of Socialism

 

The pandemic has  the world to the brink of chaos, and and compels us all to ask—what now? The time has come when big changes are necessary. The pandemic has shown more and more clearly capitalist society’s inability to fully serve the needs of the people. While  poverty and unemployment have been the lot of the common people, the billionaires and the big corporations have made fortunes out of the misery of coronavirus.  The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer.

 World socialism, with planned production to meet the people’s needs, would make it possible to realise the practical things that people want—such as a shorter working day with increased leisure, a decent standard of living, and a solution of the housing shortage.  The planet’s productive resources—the land, factories and transport—are now owned by a small class of rich people. These rich capitalists draw their incomes, not from their own labour, but from the labour of working people. The workers produce wealth far in excess of the wages they are paid, whether these wages are high or low. The surplus they produce above their wages is not paid for, but is taken as profit by the capitalists. The wealth is produced by those who work by hand and brain, far in excess of the wages they are paid. The surplus goes to the capitalist owners or shareholders as profit. This is capitalist exploitation, the basis of all forms of rent and interest, the source of all capitalist wealth. Capitalism makes mockery of its argument that rent, interest and profit are deservedly earned by the enterprise and the risks taken by capitalists freely competing with one another. Capitalism makes a farce of democracy, leaving overwhelming economic, political power and ideological power in private hands while keeping control out of the hands of the people. People are divorced from the process of decision making. Governments come and go, but the capitalist state goes on. The capitalists attack all the essential rights and liberties that have been won over many years of struggle by the working people and the drive to dictatorial and authoritarian rule is deepening in many countries.

The capitalists use their profits to pile up new profits. The constant aim of the rich owners of capital is to increase their profits at the expense of the working people. They keep wages, social security benefits and pensions down. They install new technology  that displaces labour, to reduce their wages bill and make still larger profits. Always there is poverty in the midst of plenty.

The World Socialist Movement has always aimed to take the means of production and distribution out of the hands of individuals and the government, and to transfer them to the ownership of the people as a whole, so that they can be used for the common good, the foundation on which working people can build a new life. With socialism we know we shall be in a position to gain ten times the result achieved by capitalism without the social cost we pay now for the tenth part. The capitalist system is inevitably marked by gross inequality.

Social ownership, production to meet the people’s needs instead of production for private profit, opens the way to a better life.  Common ownership means an end to the chaos and wasteful competition of production for profit. Planned production and distribution ensures the development of new productive resources to provide what people really want. Socialism therefore means the opportunity to live our own lives free from the fear of poverty. Socialism does not mean the levelling down of living standards. It does not bring bureaucracy and tyranny. On the contrary, socialism draws more and more people into planning and making their own future, and frees their creative energies for great economic, social and cultural advances. A socialist society means above all a better future, a real opportunity for everyone, where there are neither masters nor servants but only people working collectively together to share in a happy, prosperous life. Our planet has great resources for the benefit of all. The essential problems facing  people stem from the nature of modern capitalist society. Only when this system is replaced by socialism, by the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution can global problems really be solved.

We don't need capitalism

 

We live under an age of pain, misery and corruption. Many workers don’t think of themselves as being part of a class with political power. They feel isolated and in competition with other workers—and sometimes even see them as their enemies because of their skin colour, religion, national origin and so on. Socialists look towards our fellow-workers because they hold tremendous potential power by producing all of the wealth in society.  Realisation is  growing in  the midst of the chaos of a world in crisis of the utter failure of the capitalist system to bring justice, peace and equality to the masses of working people, let alone true democracy and freedom from want. Capitalism’s inability to solve the most fundamental problems of humankind is increasingly being revealed. Capitalism is incapable of acting in any other way but in its own interests and against the interests of the rest of humanity and the planet itself. 10%, the capitalist class, enslaves the other 90%. The capitalists own and control the politicians, the media, the police and the military. It is a system that has outlived its usefulness. The profit motive is the engine that drives capitalism. And the system itself fuels this engine by consuming the wealth of the world and accumulating more of it. Where do the profits go? The wealth goes into the pockets of the 10% t of the world’s population, the capitalist class. Nothing stands in their way of the accumulation of more wealth. 

Socialism based on fulfilling human needs and wants instead of profit, is able to turn the tables, and make all efforts to prevent natural disasters from having such a devastating impact. A socialist world will be able pull all of its resources together—with no mind to profit—to minimize human suffering and look after the welfare of all survivors. What a relief and pleasure it will be to live in a world socialist society that will consider the health, safety and welfare of people and the planet first and foremost, without having to satiate the greed of private capital ever again. Capitalism has no solutions to offer for the problems it creates. In reality, the development of new technology would allow for a different kind of life. Under capitalism, the economy is organised to guarantee bigger profits for the few. Automation and robotics, for the capitalists, means a reduction of the number of jobs available and not a reduction of the length of the working day.

Marx defined socialism as “an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social labour force.” That is, a communist society is a society without classes, a society in which production won’t be ruled by the desire for ever greater profits for a tiny ruling class but by the needs of the whole society in the greatest possible harmony with nature. Money will no longer exist. Neither will the state. There will not be a minority accumulating all the wealth while the vast majority lives in poverty, forced to work just to survive. A socialist society will allow people to live a life free from all forms of oppression, one in which the time spent at work is reduced to a minimum and “free time” is spent not merely on the reproduction of one’s labour power, i.e., on the necessities of life that enable us to return to work the next day, but on actually living our lives. The goal is to establish a democratically planned economy and a society where the slogan “Our lives are worth more than their profits” is a reality. This is what we fight for.

Feel alone? You’re not.

 

Nothing but a radical transformation of basic social relations can prevent the worst possible outcomes of the present climate crisis. Some environmentalists call upon people in developed countries  to accept a lower standard of living  in order to deal with the global warming emergency. But demanding that working people change their lifestyles is unlikely to convince our fellow-workers  when capitalist austerity is already cutting living standards. But the real factor is that the huge carbon emissions in developed countries are beyond the control of individuals but arise from the military presence, the modes of  transport, and the system of industrialised  agriculture. We need to focus on sustainable ecologically sound production methods where the economy is democratically and rationally controlled by the people, organised to provide the greatest possible public benefit.

Time and again, the  labour movement has taken up the struggle to reduce the work-week and improve workers’ conditions. Workers have strived for a world where people have more control over their lives, and one that builds the bonds of solidarity by uniting the interests of workers. This is the class struggle,  the daily war that goes on between capitalists’ search for profit and workers’ search for a decent living. We cannot, of course, make things right factory by factory or city by city because, after all, we are talking about changing the entire economic system which is the root of the capitalists’ drive for profit. There is no shared interest between the workers and management. The working class’ struggle for survival and an improved standard of living is a constant threat to the employer’s search for profits. The two classes in our society are the owning class, which owns the factories, banks, stores, etc., and the working class which, of course, works for them. The interests of the owners are individual profit based on ripping off the workers through the basic fact that all their profit comes from our labour. The interests of the working people are social equality, a decent standard of living, fulfilling and safe working conditions, control over our job, and above all, unity that cuts across racial, national and sexual divisions in our class. We create a surplus which goes into the pocket of the owning class and gets recorded in the annual reports as profits. 

The capitalist class fears unity within our class more than anything else. A united class, clear on its goals, is unstoppable, and the capitalists realise this. This is why they constantly seek to promote divisions in our class. The old are pitted against the young, men against women, native born against immigrant, black versus white workers. And as our class fights among itself, the capitalists gather tremendous profits, and more importantly, maintain the stability of their system through division in our class. The capitalist political system of “lesser evil” politics is designed to funnel workers into a downward spiral of powerlessness by voting for the least-bad candidates among all the capitalist candidates. It is not a democratic system at all. 

There is a class war being waged against working people by the capitalists. In every country, in every corner of the world, workers are being forced into war, racism, bigotry while the capitalists accumulate more wealth. Workers are divided and live in constant fear of poverty and death at the hands of the capitalist class. We are made to feel powerless against an allegedly indestructible power structure. But the opposite is true. A united working class dwarfs the capitalists. Through unity and solidarity across the globe—we could overthrow this unjust and murderous system of capitalism. In order to achieve this workers must organise independently of the capitalists; that there can be no collaboration between the workers and the capitalists. This is the only way to create a world that can answer the needs of all of humanity and all life on the planet. Through the power of a united working class we can establish a truly democratic socialist society without borders, exploitation and oppression. There is no such thing as a kind and gentle humane capitalism. That is an oxymoron. For the economic system of capitalism to survive, it MUST increase its rate of profit by any means necessary. And, in the current world economic crisis, the only way to do that is to squeeze the wealth out of the working class ever harder by waging war, driving down our wages.

 We live in a world where pollution of the air, water and soil is increasing. That pollution is the direct result of the crazy, profit-motivated system we live in. And so long as that system is allowed to continue, pollution will continue and increase. Our environment is being systematically plundered for the natural resources capitalism needs to fuel their private-profit industry. Capitalism is destroying the planet. It cannot be reformed, reshaped or restructured—it must be abolished. And the only way that can be accomplished is for the entire working class  to unite behind that goal.

Workers power is the answer. Working people are the overwhelming majority of the population and the ruling capitalist class is only a handful. They hold a monopoly over the media and the institutions of culture that create “public opinion”, as well as all educational institutions. In the final analysis, however, capitalists rule by military and police force and violence. Workers need to break definitively with capitalist parties, all of which are dedicated to preserving and advancing the capitalist system of social, economic and political injustice. Socialism, the ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the working class, and the removal of profit from the system of production, is the aim of Socialist Party. 

Socialism will end class oppression and exploitation for all time.  A socialist party with the support of the overwhelming majority—does have the power to end capitalism and replace it with a socialist system that puts people and the planet first.