Our Socialist Position

 

One who accepts the socialist position realises the implications of its philosophical materialist basis, has no place as a member of any religion. The superstition and submission taught by religion are in direct opposition to the principles of socialism. We affirm that the revolutionary nature of socialism involves opposition to any religious or superstitious belief. 

 When you support capitalism you find yourself having to do some very nasty things. Governing the capitalist system means accepting the position where a very small minority of millionaires and billionaires own and control the resources of society while the vast majority own nothing more than the ability to work. It means accepting and enforcing wage-slavery whereby the majority who produce must labour to make rich the minority who possess. It means accepting production for sale and profit rather than production solely for use. So that if profits are threatened food must be destroyed while the hungry starve and homes must be taken away from workers who cannot afford the rent or mortgage payments and work must be denied to those who cannot be milked for profit. Accepting capitalism means sending young workers to die pointlessly so that their masters’ profits, trade routes and resources can be protected or expanded. The moment you commit yourself to play any part whatsoever in the maintenance of the capitalist system you must accept its priorities and, regardless of moral aspirations, will be dragged into the depravity of excusing its callous indifference to human needs.

The Socialist Party objective is highly controversial, but it's very straightforward: the abolition of private property. It’s not that we oppose capitalism and would like to have some other arrangement of the property laws. It’s not that we hate money and prefer direct bartering of property. We oppose the concept of property ownership itself and everything it entails. Having no property does not mean that you lose your house, your wife, your children. Far from it. We need to reclaim our sociality and begin to relate to each other as equals. Many of us are making sincere attempts to do just that already. We will find our attempts under constant threat of sabotage by a world system that eats, sleeps and breathes property and slavery. The only way to effectively and permanently achieve equality in our relationships is to first reclaim, as a class, the means of production, to set up a system of decision-making in which we may all have a part and a system of supply and demand whereby all people make and do what they are able to make and do, and receive that which they consider themselves to be in need of. This way any limitations upon a person’s freedom are dictated only by the real needs of the overwhelming majority (for instance, our need to end climate change will interfere with a person’s freedom to emit CO2). The vested interests and indulgences of a wealthy minority can no longer take precedence. Capitalism will not solve your problems.

This is what is meant by socialism. We need the vast majority of the world’s people to understand it, want it and be prepared to work for it, in order to bring it about. Let us hope we do. The Socialist Party is made up of people who want to get rid of the profit system and establish real socialism – a post-scarcity society of common ownership. Our aim is to persuade others to become socialists and act for themselves, organising democratically and without leaders, to bring about socialism. We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not a reformist party with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.

The aim of the  Socialist Party is to replace the global capitalist economy with a world system of socialism, for it alone can abolish the contradictions of the capitalist system which threaten to degrade and destroy humanity. Socialism will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other but will present a united commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the development and strengthening of its own collective might.

 By abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, world socialism will replace the market and competition by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of competition and anarchy in production, devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces.

Shocking, Horrifying News.

Shocking is the best word to describe recent events in Canada.

First was the horrifying news of the graves of 215 Indian children in Kamloops B.C., which had opened a whole can of worms. 

Next, the brutal slaying of the Afzaal family,

 And on June 14, Ontario Premier Doug Ford's dictatorial restricting the amount of election spending unions are allowed. Ford's Progressive, (what a joke), Conservatives, used the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, ‘Notwithstanding’ clause, for the first time in Ontario's history to override the courts after a judge ruled their campaign law was unconstitutional.

 The last 30 years have seen the capitalist class chipping away at laws and freedoms the working class have fought long and hard for all over the world. Not for a moment was anything handed them on a silver platter. When they feel it's in their interest, the capitalists will abolish democracy; Germany in 1933 is a prime example. In the final analysis, there is only one form of democracy worth fighting for - a society where all will stand equal in relation to the world’s wealth and the tools of production.

S.P.C. Members.

$700,000 Fines to “Upper Crust” Just Pocket Change.

"Upper Crust'', a North York, Ontario, industrial bakery has been convicted for violating safety laws causing the deaths of two temporary agency workers in 2018 and 2019. 

A total of 5 temp. workers have been killed there and at its affiliate,''Fiera Foods,'' since 1999. 

In the latest two deaths, the company pleaded guilty and were fined $700,000. The major cause of the accidents was the companies did not give the temp. workers sufficient safety instruction. 

The son of the most recent temp. to be killed at Upper Crust, Enrico Miranda said, ''Fines like these are just pocket change to them. Worker abuse will happen unless someone from management will be criminally convicted.'' 

Don't hold your breath on that one pal. It seems things haven't changed much since the industrial revolution - and speaking of revolution...!

S.P.C. Members.

Vacant Houses

 There are 341,419 homes across England, Scotland and Wales that have been vacant for at least six months. Scotland and Wales have 47,333 and 25,701 long-term vacancies respectively.

Scotland counts the highest proportion of vacant homes, with 19 long-term vacant properties per 1,000 houses, and Aberdeen has the highest rate of unoccupied homes with nearly 3,000 properties.

 Over third of a million homes are long term empty... (estateagenttoday.co.uk)

End capitalism. Establish socialism

 Production and distribution are still to be left at the mercy of the industrialists and bankers whose aim is to make a profit. We realise that reforms and improvements can be occasionally won from time to time within the present system through the organised political and industrial action of working people, but we contend that no permanent solution can be won unless we change the whole social system from top to bottom, unless we change from the capitalist system for profit to the socialist co-operative system of production for use; in other words, production and distribution must not be left dependent the blind forces of the market. The economic foundation of the socialist system of economy is common ownership and control of the factories and all means of social production and distribution. But socialism cannot be imposed upon the people by a minority. It is a movement in the interests of the vast majority and will come into existence only when a majority of the people want it and are organised sufficiently to obtain and maintain it.

The Socialist Party knows that there must be a majority of the working class understanding and determined on achieving socialism before the real tasks of the socialistic revolution can even be begun. Given such a majority in possession of the machinery of government, with the powers and in the position of a ruling class, nothing but a possible capitalist revolt can stand between the workers and their object. Such a revolt would, in the nature of things, be foredoomed to failure, and need cause anxiety only to those who may be misguided enough to resist the forces of the State when the workers control those forces. We do not seek a majority out of any merely sentimental attachment to the idea of democracy. We need a majority because our aim is socialism, and socialism is democratic or it is nothing at all. Vain hopes to the contrary notwithstanding, there are not in existence any means by the use of which a minority can seize and keep the powers of government in modern democracies. Those who govern us on behalf of the capitalist class do so with the active support or passive consent of the great majority of the workers. To oust them the minority which aspires to power would need to overwhelm not just the capitalist few, but the mass of the workers as well.

And, if the further argument is necessary, what one minority could do, another minority could and would endeavour to undo. The knowledge of the numerical weakness of the revolutionary forces would naturally encourage the defeated capitalists to a new trial of strength. Prolonged civil war may sound fine to romantic urban guerillas, but socialism does not from choice select such difficult beginnings.

 

We want for society the property now owned by the employers, and we do not anticipate that they will yield it up with goodwill. We recall not with pride but with regret, the years when the workers of each nation willingly hated and fought the enemies of their respective sections of the ruling class. We urge not co-operation but the acceptance of the truth of our peacetime and wartime slogan “The enemy of the working class is the master class.”

 

Common ownership of the means of production is the means of nullifying capitalist competition and of introducing planned production. Socialism will be established will be common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution with production for use. But before it becomes possible two pre-conditions must exist: 1) the material conditions of potential abundance, and 2) a world working class who understand and want Socialism and know how to establish it. Since Marx’s day, capitalism has itself developed the first of these necessary pre-conditions. It is the task of Socialists, now as formerly, to speed the development of the second.

Capitalist society has two classes, the owners and the non-owners (the working class); the conflict of interests between them is the class struggle, which goes on all the time. It has two aspects, the political and economic. The latter is the daily struggle over wages and working conditions that all workers are in — usually in trade unions. But this is a restricted, mainly defensive struggle and most of those who wage it take capitalism for granted. When the consciousness of the true nature of things arises, the political struggle has to be engaged in: this is to gain control of the means of production and distribution, through the State, to abolish capitalism and establish socialism.

Therefore if you want to end capitalism and introduce common ownership, you should be taking part in the political struggle, in the Socialist Party.

Lead in the Drinking Water of Ontario’s Schools.

In 2019 nine Per cent of Ontario's schools were shown to have lead in their drinking water that exceeded safety levels. The provincial government said they'd fix it, but two years later it’s still the same. 

Lead can affect brain development, including lowering IQ and causing behavioural disorders. Younger children are particularly vulnerable to lead poisoning because they absorb it four times faster than adults.

 Tests conducted between April 1 2019 and March 31 2020, showed that the amount of lead was 20 times the national standard and of the 221 tests, 90 per cent were in public schools. 

Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof is active on the school council and has an 11-year-old son who started kindergarten at age 5. He is autistic and has intractable epilepsy. To quote the lady, ''A lot of this has to do with the fact that there isn't enough money put towards education and especially towards repairs. Schools are falling apart.'' 

That's standard fare: under capitalism, everything has a price tag, including workers lives.

S.P.C. Members

250 Years of Reforms and Capitalism Still Dumps Crapola on Us.

A recent report compiled by the Migrants Rights Network (MRN) lays bare the awful conditions migrant workers face in Canada, exacerbated by the pandemic. 

In Ontario alone 2,400 farm workers have fallen ill with it and health experts blame their shoddy accommodations. Half of them surveyed said they share a bedroom with four to eight others. The majority said they share a bathroom and kitchen with between six and 12 people and 65 per cent said the bunkhouse wasn't safe.

 In 2018 the Federal government urged certain safety standards, but these were never implemented. Employers said it would be, ''An excessive administration burden,'' meaning it would cost too much and therefore eat into their profits. 

Hussan, a director of MRN, complained that,'' Reforms won't even be ready at this rate for next year.'' 

The whole thing is similar to The Grapes of Wrath, which shows how much improvement has been made in 90 years. 

As for Mr. Hussan griping about needed reforms, we've had 250 years of reforms and capitalism still dumps a ton of crapola on us. It isn't reforms that are needed but revolution dumping of capitalism altogether.

S.P.C. Members.

Socialism - Real Independence

 The question of the demand by the Holyrood Government of Scotland for separation is one which really requires full and detailed treatment in order to make plain the correctness of the Socialist Party attitude of refusing to support either the independence or unionist side. 

While the problem of Scottish nationalism is, broadly, the same as the other problems of nationalism, it can only be properly understood by taking into account the extent to which many of the present generations are influenced by the events of past centuries, and by dealing with the arguments put forward by the various groups in defence of their actions and attitude.

The Socialist Party view is that the problems and conflicts, arising from capitalism do now prevent, and will continue to prevent, the large and small groups of peoples in the world from living together harmoniously. Neither the creation of small would-be independent nations nor the forcible incorporation of unwilling groups in larger States will work satisfactorily as long as international commercial rivalries keep stoking the fires of national hatreds.

One argument used in the past by left-nationalist advocates of Scottish sovereignty has been that until the national question is settled the workers will never be able to recognise their worldwide community of interest in the abolition of capitalism.

As against this, the Socialist Party points out that nationality problems never will be settled under capitalism. The efforts to do so under all the various treaties since the 18^th Century illustrate this. This in itself is a factor that militates against the spread of socialist knowledge.

Understanding our world

 As long as capitalism has lasted, not a single day has gone by without discontent and dissent somewhere in the world. But the enormous potential for revolutionary change has, for the past century, been channelled into fruitless reformism. The reformers have no alternative; they never did have a remedy for the ills of the profit system, and they never will, because capitalism is an inherently anti-social system that continuously throws up more problems and contradictions than the reformists can solve. Workers won the vote but instead of using it to end the profit system, they have used it to give capitalism a longer lease.

Understanding this society is not a difficult or an exclusive business. The knowledge is easily available and accessible for the Marxian analysis of capitalism, exposing its foundations, its development and its workings is as vital and relevant now as it was when it was first set down over a century ago.

There is every reason for workers to understand that capitalism cannot satisfy its people's needs and that it must exploit and debase the majority who do all its useful work. They can easily grasp the fact, because the evidence is all around them, that none of the political parties who appeal for their support to continue capitalism can effectively deal with the problems of the system.

From that understanding, it is a simple, logical step to the conclusion that only a democratic revolution to establish a society with a different basis, and different social relationships, will be effective. And this revolution cannot come about through leaders; it must be the act of a conscious, participating majority of the world’s working class. For most workers, this is suspiciously simple. They prefer submission, keeping their place in society. Capitalist mouthpieces have convince millions of people that unpalatable things are actually good for them. Things like class society with the profit motive rampant. Things like unemployment forcing workers out of their customary poverty and into deep hardship. Things like sexual and personal repression and Victorian moral values. Things like patriotism which is used to inspire ordinary, peaceable people to make war upon other ordinary, peaceable people they don’t know and have no quarrel with.

 

Shelter regularly announces that there is a “shortage" of homes, which is another way of saying that millions of people are without a decent place to live.

Now, this is not really a shortage. For a long time bricks and other building materials have been stockpiled and among the three million on the dole are many skilled building workers. This situation exists because, for one reason or another, it is not profitable to use the materials or to employ the workers. However desperate people’s needs may be, capitalism does not produce unless there is the prospect of profit.

Then there are those people whose housing problem consists of difficult decisions about which one of their homes they should live in at any one time. These are the people in whose interests production is carried out, the people who accumulate the profits without which there is no production, the people who live parasitically on the workers who suffer in the housing problem.

The Socialist Party stands on a unique and different basis, of working-class unity and democratic revolution. The solution to the chaos of the market system is like the problem it solves, worldwide.  We ask people not to vote for us unless they are fully conversant and in agreement with what we stand for. After all, socialism could only be established if a majority are prepared to take the necessary action democratically, and with responsibility. True democracy cannot be enforced or introduced by methods of secret infiltration. We are gradually building a separate political force that will be able to use the vote in a revolutionary way.  Unlike the politicians who have been elected to run the system of class division, we will not vanish from the scene. In the days to come, the Socialist Party will be working with all the force at our command to show the workers that there is an alternative to the corpse of left-wing reformism and the viciousness of naked capitalism. Each worker declaring a practical commitment to a class-free, world society of democratic control and common ownership represents another nail in the coffin of capitalism. 

Socialism - Sharing the common heritage of humanity

 

We live in a fearsome and threatening world with all these signs of a society gone mad. The peoples of the world go about their daily business, seeking to forget or ignore the grim dark shadows that hang over their lives. But capitalism will not allow them to forget or ignore its terrible realities. Some would deny that we live in a world of potential plenty and claim that the cause of world poverty and hunger is natural scarcity. That, in other words, some people starve simply because not enough food can be produced. Why in a world of potential plenty is so elementary a human need as food neglected for so many people?  In the present state of scientific knowledge and productive techniques, enough food could be produced adequately to feed the whole population of the world. The cause of hunger and malnutrition must be sought not in any lack of natural resources but in the way society is organised. It is this anarchical world market system of artificial scarcity and organised waste that is responsible for poverty and hunger in the world today. The law which governs production everywhere is “no profit, no production”. This means that if there is no profit to be made from producing and selling a good then that good will not be produced, even if people desperately need it. The present system of production is geared only to meeting profitable market demand. Their very real human need for food is not “effective”, to use the jargon of business, so they are badly fed and, in many cases, starving to death.

In the midst of an impoverished world, booming with wealth and productive power we possess the potential for abundance. But presently the ecological degradation of the planet helps to enhance the profit-making powers of the capitalists. Even the wealthiest capitalist nation cannot satisfy the basic needs of its working people, decent housing, adequate food and healthcare. So long as the rich continue to coin profits out of the sweat and blood of the toilers, they do not care how many are out of work, go hungry and homeless, and lack all hope for the future. Only a clique of capitalists stands in the way of abundance. The workers have to wrest control of the factories and other major means of production from the hands of the employing class and establish their own control over industry and society. Production for profit must be superseded by production according to a unified plan determined by the needs of the entire people and directed by the associated producers themselves. This is the socialist remedy for capitalist chaos and misery. Only socialism can transform our world into a secure and peaceful one.

 "The common heritage of all mankind” is a phrase applicable to the treaties about Antarctica and the Moon. These treaties declare that no state can establish territorial rights nor any individual private property rights over these areas — that, in other words, they belong to nobody. What is required is that this same principle should be extended and applied to the whole globe: all that is on the Earth should become the common heritage of all humanity. On this basis, there would be nothing to prevent the world’s people from organising the production and distribution of wealth simply and solely to satisfy their needs as individuals and as a community. Production would no longer be restricted by the law of “no profit, no production” nor any longer governed by the blind economic force which the world market represents. Instead, it would come under conscious, democratic social control and be oriented to what after all is its only rational end — satisfying human needs and wants. In these circumstances, production could be rapidly increased to levels that would ensure that every man, woman and child on this planet was adequately fed, clothed and sheltered. The mass hunger and deaths from starvation that characterise the world today would remain only as bad memories of what no doubt will be commonly agreed to have been a barbarous past. The Earth is the common storehouse of all humanity; the production of wealth solely for use not sale or profit; a world without arms — is this an unrealistic Utopia? Not at all. It is the only logical and rational way to run the world given the present high stage of development of the forces of production. Because a solution is so simple and obvious does not mean that it won’t work.