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The Socialist Party does not claim that we know the road to socialism in all its completeness. We do say, however, to know the direction this road takes and have set our political compass accordingly. The Socialist Party has managed to keep its gaze upon the destination - a free, socialist future. Our confidence has been strengthened by the fact that it has remained true to its course and to the interests of the workingmen and women at a time when it counts – during times of war when others claiming the mantle of socialist lost sight of the goal. We did not back-track from our principles, we did not vacillate, we did not retreat an inch. And that is how we shall continue. We stand out from our fellow-workers only in our socialist convictions to fight for socialism night and day, on all occasions and in all places. Our determination to wage class war for a new age, for a society free of war and oppression, of exploitation and inequality, for world socialism, assures us the right to call ourselves the Socialist Party.
Great threats hang over mankind, but at the same time, the chances for revolution are becoming clearer and nearer. Decisive battles to assure humanity of its future, to abolish war and misery, are approaching. It is up to all of us to transform the enormous economic forces of capitalism into prodigious prosperity for all people. Fellow-workers need to organise under the banner of the world socialist revolution to prepare for victory. We must rediscover the essentials of socialist ideas and restore them to its rightful place at the head of political activities. In the old days, socialists put promotion of Marxist ideas at the head of their activities and we need a revival of this socialist practice and form study circles to discuss world events and Marxism. The dawn of socialism, created by the people, for the people, is rising on mankind’s horizon.
The fight for socialism is a hard fight, and many will desert it. They retreat to a belief in the indestructibility of the capitalist world order, concluding that the revolutionary struggle for socialism is not worthwhile and condemning their fellow men and women as inadequate and incapable of achieving socialism. They see only the power of the present-day and bow down before it. Yet to save humanity from the chaos breaking out all over the world workers must know the road to the socialist future and take it resolutely. Marxism is for the workers’ movement what a map is for an explorer – a great treasure. Those disillusioned individuals who spread their demoralisation are aimlessly lost but keep offering short-cuts with bogus solutions. They dissipate our attention in all directions, approving and applauding whatever is the flavour of the day on the political menu.
The Socialist Party seeks to organise the workers, into one PARTY OF LABOUR to take the political power of the State out of the hands of the privileged few and place in into the hands of those who will use it to establish common ownership. Such is our aim: such is Socialism. Our method is the political organisation at the Ballot Box. The Socialist Party will assist in giving force, clearness and effectiveness to the working class movement and pledges itself to pursue, unfalteringly and undeviatingly, our objective – common ownership of the means of producing and distributing all wealth.
6 hours 5 min ago
"The International shall be the human race."
The message of socialism is it promises to destroy the political, social and economic disadvantages imposed upon mankind. Socialism has gotten a bad name. Labourites defined their socialism only in terms of nationalisation. In Russia, a society calling itself socialist was a monstrous tyranny, where the workers were exploited every bit as cruelly as anywhere else. The liberating element of socialism was dismissed as utopian. Many of our friends and colleagues remain aloof from the Socialist Party because the goal seems so far off and unattainable. For us in the Socialist Party, socialism is not some workers’ paradise in a distant and unimaginable future. We cannot forecast the date of the revolution. There are so many questions which it is quite futile to try to answer in advance by producing a detailed blueprint. There is, for example, no point in attempting to draw up any such plans. The reality of socialism will differ from any possible projection of it. But some of the seeds of the new society have been already sown and the struggle against the old one has already begun. The class struggle cannot be abolished or postponed under capitalism. When people take up the struggle for socialism, they need to know what they are fighting for, at least in general terms.
Socialists have no illusions about the speed with which they may be able to achieve significant progress in the fulfilment of our aims. But it is reasonable to assume that there is a constituency which can be won over to socialist cause and that this constituency will grow as capitalism shows itself increasingly incapable of coping with the unfolding crises which it produces. Socialists will use the existing constitutional process, by means of a combination of electoral and extra-parliamentary activism. Socialists will not concern themselves with getting this or that policy passed but with changing the apparatus of the state. The capitalists always defend their class interests. If workers do not fight as a class, the capitalists will always triumph.
The diagnosis of a disease does not cure the disease. The mere voicing of complaints changes nothing. Democracy and solidarity, freedom and equality must be the fundamentals of socialist education. We teach the co-operative commonwealth, in which there shall be neither master nor servant, neither rich nor poor.
The Socialist Party, part of the World Socialist Movement, invites you to join its fight for working-class emancipation and socialist freedom. World socialism is the recognition of the reality of the modern world. It proceeds from the fact that the economy of modern society is a world-unit requiring international cooperation and division of labour for the further development of the productive forces. The class struggle arising from the class division between workers and exploiters within the countries requires class unity of the workers on a global scale. From its very beginning, socialism has called for the collaboration of the workers in the different countries in order that each might contribute their strength to world cooperative action. The Communist Manifesto called for common efforts of the workers in all countries for the common goal of workers' emancipation. “To escape its wretched lot,” wrote Bakunin “the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The two first are drink and the church, the third is the social revolution.” And the social revolution, we never weary of declaring, is at hand.
Just as the petty states, principalities and duchies divided Europe under feudalism has given way to centralized national states such as Germany and Italy in order to create a broader arena for the development of the productive forces, so, in the same way, the artificially divided national states have to give way to the federation of states as we see with the European Union trading bloc. In the future course of development, this must lead eventually to a world federation operating as a one world economy without class and nationalistic divisions. Socialists are the champions of this idea of internationalism, renouncing the ideas of nationalism. Forsaking popularity, the Socialist Party has always stood against patriotism, xenophobia, and national chauvinism and can show an unsullied record opposing all wars. Our fellow-workers have to live in the class-ridden system with its state power, and their wills are restricted by the limitations imposed but nevertheless, within their own organisations they can build a community of democracy – The Socialist Party, honestly striving towards equality and liberty. We do not rely upon the politics of parliamentary legislation. We do not trust our economic security to the good intentions of the possessing class. We have our own political weapons that we control. The working class must achieve its own salvation. It must develop its own social intelligence. Our aim is simply the education of the workers in the interests of the workers. This movement on behalf of independent working-class education is world-wide. Our aim is making fellow-workers completely conscious of what they want and evoking in them the thought that corresponds to their impulses. If once the thoughts of the labouring masses have mounted to the level of their impulses, then will their will be soon determined and their power irresistible. Socialist education will be the midwife of the social revolution. Our ways and means are: to arouse the interest, concentrate the intelligence, stimulate the will. Without these three precepts, nothing can be done. With them, all difficulties will vanish.
9 hours 5 min ago
Protests have raged on South African campuses in recent weeks as students demand free university tuition for all in a nation still riven by inequality and racial divisions. Bishop Ziphozihle Siwa, the head of the South African Council of Churches, says that the students’ grievances started well before they were born, even before he was born -- when the racist apartheid regime drew a hard line
15 hours 28 min ago
Taken from an article in the New York Times
“My father was Muslim, and since religion in India is patrilineal, my presence in the Brahmin household should have been an unspeakable defilement. But it wasn’t. I belong to India’s English-speaking upper class and, in the eyes of my host, I was exempt from the rules of caste. As we approached the village, he did make one small adjustment: He
15 hours 28 min ago
“I’m not arguing there are no decent people in the Tory Party...But they’re like bits of sweetcorn in a turd; technically they’ve kept their integrity but they’re still embedded in shit." - Ian Banks, The Quarry
Our type of revolution is a democratic one, using capitalism's Achilles heel of democracy to remove ownership and control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, as commodities for a market for the profit of the few, 1-5% of the global population, from a parasitic minority class and making ownership and control, common for all of us wealth producers 95-99%, by producing for use with free access and wages and prices abolished. Real socialism in other words.
Most people have not heard of this, so you can't know want they want. Socialism is a post-capitalist society so it will seem alien at first. Just as capitalism must have seemed strange in feudal times. But nothing will stop an idea which time has come. The task of creating the socialist, post-capitalist, production for use, free access, a commonly owned world is that of the working class itself. There is no short cut to this. A post-capitalist revolution does not have to be violent when it is the conscious act of the immense majority. Most revolutions have been minority led ones.
Capitalism itself cannot be reformed or tamed to work in the majority interest? Capitalism can only exist upon the backs of an army of wage- slaves. It is impossible to create a fairer society and retain capitalism and the wages system. If you are born poor you will most likely die poor. Poverty is both absolute and relative.
Socialism-communism (they mean the same thing) is a post-capitalist, production-for-use, money-free, price-free, society without elites and with free access to the collective produce. Government ceases to be over the people a part of class society and becomes the people’s democratic administration over resources as part of a classless, elite free society run by us all. Nothing to do with state ownership or corporate or private ownership. Nothing to do with central control either. It utilises the technological advances of capitalism to produce for use to satisfy all human needs, using self-feeding loopback informational tools for stock measurements and control with direct inputs, at local, regional and global levels to allow calculation-in-kind, as opposed to the economic monetary calculation of capitalism, only necessary to satisfy profit taking. If you want a real democracy you will need to abolish the wages system, get rid of capitalism and usher in administering structures using recallable delegates where necessary.
We absolutely reject vanguardism. We get from capitalism to socialism by making the case for socialism and not selling them a reformist duck. The same old muddled Labourite, reformist claptrap masquerades as socialism, while retaining wage slavery for the many, and riches arising out of the exploitation of the many to produce a surplus for the few. There is no such thing and never will be such a thing as a communist state. The state management of the capitalist economy is state capitalism. The nation state is a capitalist entity. Workers have no country. Socialism has never existed to fail. You are simply restating capitalist propaganda about post-feudal attempts to kick start capitalism in the absence of a large enough capitalist class the state stepped into the breach. Effectively those examples of Leninism were state capitalist developments. The previous Labour governments were in the interests of the working class and you have a blind spot in this regards, through your misplaced loyalty to friendly sounding, pro-working class sentiments, which belie the actual actions of Labour, as a pro-business political party.
The old Soviet Union had damn all to do with socialism and was a state capitalist society.Did it have waged slavery? Yes.Did it have capital? Yes.Did it have elites? Yes.Did it have delegatory democracy? No.Did the workers own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth? No
Socialism will be a society where wealth is owned in common by us all, in conditions of democracy with a superabundance of the necessities of life arising out of production for use rather than the production of commodities for sale to satisfy a market. All wealth comes from the workers. Workers run capitalism from top to bottom. The capitalist class are superfluous to modern production. Capitalists don’t invest to give anthing back to society. This is a conceited ideologically reinforced by-product. They invest to accumulate and will quite happily disinvest and make redundant their waged-slaves if profit is not forthcoming. The investments may not even be made by them these days, but by other highly paid worker managers on their behalf. The needs of capital to make a profit to accumulate ever more capital puts a brake on production to satisfy needs, as production is turned off when profits cannot be realised. Capital is just dead labour, it is useless unless used to exploit workers for their surplus value. It can’t build bridges, make widgets or man lifeboats. It is even useless as shit paper. It will feature in a museum of antiquity in the future where children will wonder at how stupid we all were, producing all of the wealth in society but being rationed out our access to it, with these useless pieces of paper and coins.
It is time workers realise that workers have no country and a world to win. They have more in common with workers worldwide, than with any home grown or global capitalist. Get off your knees and get rid of capitalism.
Wee Matt
Our type of revolution is a democratic one, using capitalism's Achilles heel of democracy to remove ownership and control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, as commodities for a market for the profit of the few, 1-5% of the global population, from a parasitic minority class and making ownership and control, common for all of us wealth producers 95-99%, by producing for use with free access and wages and prices abolished. Real socialism in other words.
Most people have not heard of this, so you can't know want they want. Socialism is a post-capitalist society so it will seem alien at first. Just as capitalism must have seemed strange in feudal times. But nothing will stop an idea which time has come. The task of creating the socialist, post-capitalist, production for use, free access, a commonly owned world is that of the working class itself. There is no short cut to this. A post-capitalist revolution does not have to be violent when it is the conscious act of the immense majority. Most revolutions have been minority led ones.
Capitalism itself cannot be reformed or tamed to work in the majority interest? Capitalism can only exist upon the backs of an army of wage- slaves. It is impossible to create a fairer society and retain capitalism and the wages system. If you are born poor you will most likely die poor. Poverty is both absolute and relative.
Socialism-communism (they mean the same thing) is a post-capitalist, production-for-use, money-free, price-free, society without elites and with free access to the collective produce. Government ceases to be over the people a part of class society and becomes the people’s democratic administration over resources as part of a classless, elite free society run by us all. Nothing to do with state ownership or corporate or private ownership. Nothing to do with central control either. It utilises the technological advances of capitalism to produce for use to satisfy all human needs, using self-feeding loopback informational tools for stock measurements and control with direct inputs, at local, regional and global levels to allow calculation-in-kind, as opposed to the economic monetary calculation of capitalism, only necessary to satisfy profit taking. If you want a real democracy you will need to abolish the wages system, get rid of capitalism and usher in administering structures using recallable delegates where necessary.
We absolutely reject vanguardism. We get from capitalism to socialism by making the case for socialism and not selling them a reformist duck. The same old muddled Labourite, reformist claptrap masquerades as socialism, while retaining wage slavery for the many, and riches arising out of the exploitation of the many to produce a surplus for the few. There is no such thing and never will be such a thing as a communist state. The state management of the capitalist economy is state capitalism. The nation state is a capitalist entity. Workers have no country. Socialism has never existed to fail. You are simply restating capitalist propaganda about post-feudal attempts to kick start capitalism in the absence of a large enough capitalist class the state stepped into the breach. Effectively those examples of Leninism were state capitalist developments. The previous Labour governments were in the interests of the working class and you have a blind spot in this regards, through your misplaced loyalty to friendly sounding, pro-working class sentiments, which belie the actual actions of Labour, as a pro-business political party.
The old Soviet Union had damn all to do with socialism and was a state capitalist society.Did it have waged slavery? Yes.Did it have capital? Yes.Did it have elites? Yes.Did it have delegatory democracy? No.Did the workers own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth? No
Socialism will be a society where wealth is owned in common by us all, in conditions of democracy with a superabundance of the necessities of life arising out of production for use rather than the production of commodities for sale to satisfy a market. All wealth comes from the workers. Workers run capitalism from top to bottom. The capitalist class are superfluous to modern production. Capitalists don’t invest to give anthing back to society. This is a conceited ideologically reinforced by-product. They invest to accumulate and will quite happily disinvest and make redundant their waged-slaves if profit is not forthcoming. The investments may not even be made by them these days, but by other highly paid worker managers on their behalf. The needs of capital to make a profit to accumulate ever more capital puts a brake on production to satisfy needs, as production is turned off when profits cannot be realised. Capital is just dead labour, it is useless unless used to exploit workers for their surplus value. It can’t build bridges, make widgets or man lifeboats. It is even useless as shit paper. It will feature in a museum of antiquity in the future where children will wonder at how stupid we all were, producing all of the wealth in society but being rationed out our access to it, with these useless pieces of paper and coins.
It is time workers realise that workers have no country and a world to win. They have more in common with workers worldwide, than with any home grown or global capitalist. Get off your knees and get rid of capitalism.
Wee Matt
15 hours 28 min ago