Capitalism with Equality?

Though it has no Canadian content, I came across a little goodie, too good to ignore.

 Ireland's most prestigious golf club, Portmarnock, has after 127 years admitted women into membership and have hailed this as a ''Wonderful victory in the battle for equality.'' 

Of course, it is; every woman can afford the £2,000 membership fees as sure as they can afford the fees for a round of 27 holes for £259 or 36 for £345. 

It’s also wonderful, that some armies allow women to fight and kill in the interests of their bosses. 

When they speak of equality, they mean equality with men under capitalism, a system where equality doesn't exist.

S.P.C. Members. 

Working Class Students Get Stuck with The Bill.

Canadian undergraduate students can expect their tuition fees to be at least $9000 in September. Graduate students in professional faculties will pay more, saddling them with debts for years to come. Unsurprisingly, politicians are in disagreement about it. Doug Ford, cut fees 10% for the 2019-20 year, but abolished a system of grants and told the universities to make up the difference. The federal NDP is advocating loan forgiveness up to $20,000, dependent on family income, plus future negotiations with the provinces to achieve free post-secondary education. Trudeau's comment was a typical politician’s speech, ''The issue for me is not that every family needs free tuition, and knowing that the government has a limited amount of thing that it can spend on before it starts raising taxes in a way that nobody wants, and you have to make choices - is it better to give more support to those who really need it, or give a minimal amount of support to everyone, including the wealthiest who don’t necessarily need it?” The upholders of capitalism can argue all they want, but the bottom line is working-class students still get stuck with the bill, a shit-load of debt, and no guarantee of a job.

S.P.C. Members.

Socialism is the theory of social harmony.

 

Ursula Le Guin

The State in a class-divided society can be nothing other than an instrument in the hands of the class owning the property and means of production in society. All talk of reconciling class interests is simple deceit. It is impossible to reconcile the interests of the slave owner and the slave, the exploiter and the exploited. The Socialist Party aspires and works at home and abroad for the elimination of class exploitation and the abolition of the poverty, misery and suffering which increases so long as the private property system continues, who aims at making this country and all its wealth the common property and heritage. A patriot and nationalist is an enemy of the people, a tool of the small class which holds the great mass of the people in subjection and slavery to rent, interest and profit.

The Socialist Party strives to end capitalism in their own countries, to unite with other socialists in other countries and to unite all the forces as the means to ending capitalism throughout the world. Socialism alone can guarantee the peace of the world because it removes the economic causes of war. When the people of the world socially own the world and its wealth there will be no possibility of groups of vested interests fighting to secure the world’s resources for private gain. 

The Socialist Party opposes a social order in which it is possible for one person who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.  All things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all. The time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when we shall have the universal commonwealth—the harmonious cooperation of every land with every other. The dawn of a better day for humanity is coming. The people are awakening. Let the people everywhere take hope.

What, then, are the objections to the Socialist Party? First, socialism is impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, socialism stands for the overthrow of capitalism, hence it must be repudiated as dangerous. Such criticism is formed by hearsay or mistaken interpretation. A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.

The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to build and sustain a new society. In the light of this conception, socialism is indeed practical. More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish; more than any other idea, it is building a sustainable new world.  The Socialist Party urges men and women to think, investigate, to analyse every proposition. For example, the Green New Deal is no harbinger of a new social order. It hides behind the mask of “radicalism”. Socialism’s economic arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributive associations - free access - applying the best means of producing with the least waste of human energy and nature’s resources.

The State is a huge machine for robbing and slave-driving of the poor by brute force. Unfortunately, there are still people who continue in the false belief that the government maintains social order and harmony, that its purpose is to protect people from crime, and that it prevents the con-man from fleecing his fellows. The State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every law, stealing in the form of private property laws, killing in the form of war and it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation. Everything is blamed on human nature. How man horrible crimes have been committed in its name.  The greater the charlatan, the more definite the insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. 

Socialism really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; liberation from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles of government. Socialism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; a society that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. This is not a Utopian fantasy but the conclusion arrived at by men and women the world over. Socialism does not stand for uniformity; it does, however, stand against everything that hinders human growth.

Socialism is Coming

 

The Socialist Party calls upon the workers to muster under its banner for the purpose of advocating this revolutionary change and building class consciousness among fellow workers. We, the working people, are well capable of assuming control and continuing to administer and operate the essential industries and social services, without any masters above us.  It will be our fellow workers who will make the people's ownership, control and administration of the new social structure a reality. Despite  threats to workers' lives, despite the growing poverty and misery that workers are subjected to, a world of peace, liberty, security, health and abundance for all is within our grasp. The potential to create such a society exists, but that potential can be achieved only if workers act to gain control of their own lives by organising, politically and industrially, for socialism. 

 It is the division of society into property owners and propertyless people which lies at the root of the crisis of the capitalist world. Millions of workers  extract raw material from the earth. They own neither the land nor the machinery they use, nor the products they raise.

Millions of other workers manufacture the raw materials into finished products. They own neither the machinery they use nor the products they manufacture. These are the property of the capitalists and the landlords.

The vast majority of people in society to-day are thus at the mercy of the private owners. They cannot organise the distribution of the wealth which they and their comrades have co-operated to produce, because they do not possess this wealth. It is the property of the private owners.

Here is to be found the fundamental reason why the socially necessary goods are obtainable only in the market-place as commodities. The private property owners have no other means for the disposal of the goods others have made for them. They cannot give the goods to society, for that would be an abandonment of the right of private property to extract profit. They cannot distribute the goods according to the needs of the people, however vast and urgent those needs may be, because private property production is governed by the law of production for profit irrespective of the needs of the people. The criterion of all capitalist enterprise is—does it make a profit? When it ceases to make a profit it goes bankrupt—it is finished and the workers are cast on to the scrapheap of unemployment.

For the capitalist there is no other way of disposing of the goods produced other than through the exchange market, the laws of which are not need nor beauty, nor quality. It is a transaction between individuals exchanging property, however repeated, however multiplied, however varied. One can have exactly according to his means to pay. If you have £1 or its equivalent you can have £1’s worth of goods. If you have nothing, then you can exchange nothing.

 The Socialist  Party calls upon all who comprehend the critical nature of our times, and who are increasingly aware that fundamental change in our society is needed, to join us in the effort to put an end to the existing class conflict and all its malevolent results by placing the land and the instruments of social production in the hands of the people as a collective body in a cooperative socialist society. Help build a world in which everyone will enjoy the free exercise and full benefit of their individual faculties, supported by all the technology of modern civilisation.

 It is at this great moment in history when  crisis-ridden capitalism is showing its inability to solve the immense problems confronting humanity, that great progressive movements will arise all over the world. Great possibilities are urging our fellow workers forward when mankind can plan the rational control of production and distribution for abundance for all, as the basis of a class-free and peaceful society. 

 Some dismiss socialism as the alternative to capitalism because of its failure to so far as yet  to succeed.  If socialism were really to replace capitalism, why hasn’t it already done so? It would be futile, of course,  to deny the fact that socialism is still to be established anywhere. But it is not proof that socialism is impossible, nor that our efforts to achieve socialism in the future is hopeless.  Such pessimism destroys the confidence of the working class in itself, spreads cynicism, paralyses action, holds back the advance to socialism, indeed it can lead to its capitulation  The capitalist class is no longer a progressive class. It cannot lead mankind forward. It can only drag it backwards. Based upon private property, it has long-since fulfilled whatever progressive role it had to play in the development of society. Capitalism now fetters the productive forces, drags society into degradation and catastrophe. The policy of class collaboration does not help mankind to building a new social order, but its sentimental pleadings and petitioning for “better treatment” maintains the psychology of the slave bowing to the masters. The servile intellectuals of the ruling class atomise and alienate the workers, highlighting their waverings, their backwardness, the competition amongst them for jobs, and cite these things as the reason for their lack of hope in the people. They spread their pessimism like a poison into the workers.  We need to see political clarity grow, casting out of fear and the development of the firm conviction that socialism offers the way out of the crises and paves the way to the next great evolution of society.

Socialism - the solidarity of the humanity

 

The world is in crisis. Few can deny that the world today is in constant upheaval with widespread turmoil and conflict. Yet, after decades of new deals, fair deals, wars on poverty, civil rights legislation, government regulations, deregulations and a host of other reform efforts, capitalist millions who need and want jobs are still unemployed despite the official claims that unemployment is at historically "low" rates. Millions more are underemployed, working only part-time or temporary jobs though they need and want full-time work. Millions aren't earning enough to maintain a decent standard of living for themselves and their families despite the fact that they are working.  Racism is on the upsurge; so, too, is contemptible discrimination against migrants generally. 

In most nations infrastructure continues to crumble. The educational system is a mess and getting worse. The health care system still fails to meet the needs of millions. Slum housing abounds. Even the foregoing cannot give a full picture of the wide-ranging plague of social and economic problems modern-day capitalism is imposing on society.

 Working people stand perilously poised on the brink of yet another nightmare. Capitalism has caused a climate emergency. Widespread pollution of our environment continues. 

It is impossible to contemplate the horrors of capitalism and remain neutral unless one is emotionally numb.

For workers, capitalism has meant widespread unemployment, accompanied by homelessness and demands for high rents by landlords. At the same time, the exploitation of those with jobs has become more intense. Mass poverty escalates while multi-million fortunes are accumulated by the big capitalists and landlords. 

The Socialist Party adheres to Marxism as its basic worldview. Against this insane capitalist system, the Socialist Party raises its voice in anger, protest and condemnation. It declares that if our society is to be finished with for once and for all with the economic, political and social ills that for so long have plagued it, the outmoded capitalist system of private ownership of the socially operated means of life and production for the profit of a few must be replaced by a new social system. That new social order must be organised on the sane basis of common ownership and democratic management of all the instruments of social production, all means of distribution and all of the social services. It must be one in which production is carried on to satisfy human needs and wants. In short, it must be genuine socialism.

Capitalism is a system of commodity production (that is, the production of goods for sale and not for direct use by the producer) which is distinguished by the fact that labour-power itself becomes a commodity. The major means of production and exchange which make up the capital of society are owned privately by a small minority, the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie), while the great majority of the population consists of proletarians or semi-proletarians. Because of their economic position, this majority can only exist by permanently or periodically selling their labour-power to the capitalists and thus creating through their work the incomes of the upper classes.

 Under capitalism, social production replaces the individual production of the feudal era. It is based on the ever-greater socialisation of labour. However, although production is social, ownership is private. The working class produces the commodities which constitute the wealth of capitalist society, but it does not own them. They are appropriated by those who own the means of production – the capitalist class. 

The contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation is the basic contradiction of the capitalist system, impelling its development and giving rise to the motive force of capitalist society, the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

It also manifests itself as an antagonism between the high level of organisation in the individual factory or enterprise on the one hand, and on the other, the anarchy of production prevailing in the social economy as a whole. Anarchy of production is the tendency of capitalist producers, in general, to produce to the maximum without regard to their competitors or to the capacity of the market to absorb their production.

Technological development under capitalism, stimulated by competition, together with other conditions favourable to the concentration of capital, leads to the steady growth of larger enterprises at the expense of many small ones. At the same time, it reduces the employers’ demand for human labour, which lags behind the supply, resulting in the development of a large pool of unemployed, a ’reserve army’ of labour, and intensified exploitation of those in work. The existence of such a reserve army enables capitalism to expand rapidly in ’normal’ times, providing a ready-to-hand supply of extra labour in boom times which can be laid off whenever it suits capital.

By replacing private ownership of the means of production with social ownership, by transforming the anarchy of production which is a feature of capitalism into planned proportional production organised for the well-being and many-sided development of all of society, the proletarian socialist revolution will end the division of society into classes and emancipate all of humanity from all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another.

Thus, fundamentally, capitalism is a system of exploitation of the working class (the proletariat) by the owning class.  Governments cannot get rid of the evils of capitalism or solve the problems of the working class. Rather, it intensifies them. Only socialism, which results from the class struggle of workers against capitalists, can solve them.

Social Revolution and Socialism

 

We’re fighting an information war. Arm yourself with knowledge to be free. The Socialist Party came into existence in 1904. Since that time the Socialist Party has expanded and has become firmly established. The principles upon which it was founded, and has consistently adhered to, have won it the recognition of being the only genuine socialist party in Great Britain.

The Labour Party and the other left-wing organisations are parties of social reformism. Their election platforms are made up of capitalistic reforms, calculated to catch the votes of the petty bourgeoisie and the capitalistic-minded workers. Although they claim to have for their object the ultimate establishment of a new social order, their immediate aim is reforming the present social system. Their appeals are mainly made to those workers who desire to improve their lot within the confines of the capitalist system.

The Socialist Party is not a reform party. Its purpose is the abolition of the present social order, the ending of the exploitation of workers by a parasitic class. It appeals for the support of the workers as propertyless wage slaves. It points to the necessity for the conquest of political power from the capitalists and the reorganisation of society upon a class-free basis. The Socialist Party has pursued the policy of reaching as large numbers as possible with a sound education of socialist principles.

The economic principles, or laws, as laid out by  Marx, furnish the workers with the requisite knowledge to fight effectively. In a capitalist society, that which the worker sells — labour-power — his or her physical and mental skill, takes on the character of a commodity. Certain economic laws govern the capitalist system, which is a commodity-producing one. A knowledge of those laws is imperative if the workers are going to participate in the struggles against their exploiters. A knowledge of history is useful to the worker. The mode of interpreting history, as taught by the Socialist Party, the materialistic conception, the Marxian mode, clarifies historical research. It is only through studying history from an economic and class viewpoint that the real facts reveal themselves.

The State upholds the power of the owning class, the capitalists, and represses (when necessary) the producing class, the workers when they resist the rule and robbery of their masters. The State, or government, is the real organized force that confronts the masses of the people, the exploited.

The internationalism of socialism is much more than the globalisation we hear so much of in the present day. There are many forms of internationalism such as world trade agreements. Ours will the harmony of humanity towards which all mankind should strive, developing solidarity and mutual aid, ending borders, recognizing our shared fate and committing ourselves to work together for the common good.

Global warming is accelerating, bringing the world close to the edge of the abyss.  Record-breaking extreme weather events caused by a climate catastrophe are happening with a regular frequency that, until recently, even the pessimistic climatologists believed were still two or three decades away in the future.  

It appears that the world is losing the battle against global warming.  We are in deep trouble and it is time to panic. Irreversible tipping points are ominously closer than the experts thought. Is it conceivable to what we are already experiencing will shock and awaken people to a recognition of the horrors that capitalism is creating?  Is what we are seeing happening right before our eyes going to trigger people to take the logical course of action and jettison the capitalist economic system. Perhaps there is a clue in how the politicians responded to the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Too little, too late. Preventative measures were politically inexpedient and effective actions were backed away from. Scientific advice was either rejected or twisted. There will no doubt be similar denialism regards the worsening environmental destruction. Responsibility will be shifted and a better world rejected. It is overlooked that it is the small, very affluent minority, most of them in the rich countries, who are overwhelming the culprits in the criminal environmental crisis. They divert the blame onto the lifestyles of the rest of us.

Men and women, as free equals, must work together to achieve our goal: the abolition of wage slavery and thus prepare the ground on which better and happier humanity can and will grow. In the socialist social system, the production and education of healthy and capable people will take precedence over the production of dead goods. 

War is not due to the arbitrary actions of certain sociopath personalities nor the racial hatred of the peoples, but rather due to world economic, i.e. world capitalist profit needs. Class-conscious working people fight capitalism as the mortal enemy of the socialist liberation of the working class.