Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Every vote for the Socialist Party is a vote for the human family.


There is no need for the food we eat, or the clothes we wear, or the houses we live in, to be limited and rationed by the size of our pay packets. There is no need for the output of factories and farms to be restricted by having to make a profit. The productive resources are sufficient to make it possible to abolish buying and selling and thus money and to go over to free distribution of the things people need. The world's resources are not used to provide this plenty today because, being privately owned or taking the form of state and municipal capitalism, they are restricted by the limitations of production for sale at a profit. Modern technology cannot be used to serve human interests until the earth, and all that is in and on it, has become the common property of the whole of mankind. Trying to reform capitalism has proved time and again to be futile. It is this — capitalism and its restrictions or Socialism and its abundance — that we say is the issue in this General Election.  We make no apology for raising the issue of world socialism.

Millions remain unemployed. It is impossible to calculate the amount of useful wealth that could have been produced had not billions of workdays been lost because workers could not be employed for the profit of a few. What is certain is that in socialism all these workers in industry, transport, building and farming could have been co-operating to provide the things necessary for the well-being of the community: things like homes, hospitals, and useful goods of every kind. Instead, men and women are being forced by the profit system into idleness, living on the dole alongside millions of pensioners existing on their meagre state hand-outs. Many remain homeless and despairing.

These are the bitter conditions of life endured by those at the lowest end of the scale of poverty. For those with a job trying to provide for themselves and their families, the purchase of a home means mortgaging their lives for years to come. Not just the need for a home but every necessity is subject to the ability to pay. For the majority, life remains dominated by the relentless grind of wage-working and paying the food, gas, electricity, water and clothing bills, and repaying debts to banks and financial companies. As ever for workers, the market is an economic tyranny which breeds insecurity.

When we examine the policies of the Labour, Conservative and the other parties, we find the same old glib promises put out over the years. These parties are depressing and irrelevant. They take no account of experience and offer nothing but repeated failure. These parties stand for running capitalism and their differences are minor compared to their common aim of running the profit system. The Greens are right to denounce the degradation of the environment but in blaming this on "industrialism" and "bigness" they have yet to realise that this is inherent in capitalist competition. When on the brink of frightening dangers, it is obvious that a very different political approach must be taken. The time is long overdue for scrapping the entire system of capitalism. It is out of date. Its class interests and its priority of profits before human needs can no longer serve any useful purpose so far as the majority are concerned.

If we are to place the aim of European unity on a sound and practical basis then the idea that it can be realised under any system of Euro-capitalism must be abandoned. Nor can unity be established in Europe separate from the rest of the world. Unity can only stem from a common interest amongst all people to co-operate in the production and distribution of goods and services directly for need. This is only possible with the means of production owned and controlled by the whole world community. There can be an important place for a European Assembly as one part of a system of world democratic administration. Socialism would need such bodies at local, regional and world levels and the task of adapting the European Parliament would be straightforward. However, democratic procedures mean nothing unless society has real powers to translate democratic decisions into action. In socialism, this would come from the abolition of the uncontrolled and anti-social forces of the market and the disappearance of the profit motive. Socialism will remove all economic constraints on social action and will involve the abolition of all buying and selling. 

One of the myths of capitalism is that nothing can happen without the use of money. Part of this myth is that productive resources consist of money capital, but in the real world of production money never produced anything. Goods and services are produced by the mental and physical energies of men and women and it is only because goods are bought and sold that money is needed. Money is used under capitalism as part of the system of exploitation where workers receive as wages or salaries only a portion of the total wealth they produce. In reality, capital investment limits social action to what is profitable: with the abolition of the market the entire structure of production would be released to be used solely for the community's needs. We must stress the urgency of promoting the growth of the socialist movement. This is the only practical activity which is being directed at the solution of social problems. The constructive alternative is to help to build a world of common ownership, democratic control and production directly for human needs.

  The only barrier to the immediate establishment of socialism is that most of you, for various reasons, would not accept that it is really practical and prefer to keep capitalism in being in the vain hope that it can be made to serve human interests.  It is to you, our fellow workers, that this statement is addressed since it is you who in the end are responsible for the continuance of capitalism and its problems. Even though the politicians and their parties share the responsibility for keeping capitalism in being, it is no use your blaming their failures on dishonesty or incompetence since it is capitalism itself that sets the limits to what they can do. The governments you elect have to work to a set of priorities which lay down, as we have shown, that profit must come before human need. We suggest you stand aside from the petty squabbles of rival party-leaders which is about all conventional politics amount to and realise that if this world is to be improved it can only be by the actions of ordinary people like yourselves. First, however, you must understand what socialism means and how it can be established. When a majority of you are equipped with socialist understanding, you can use your votes to win control of political power so that class property rights can be ended and the means of production belong to the community as a whole.

The problems facing working people and their families are not caused, by migrants or refugees and will not be solved by the Fortress Britain rather than Fortress Europe. Even if all immigration was stopped and all (recent) immigrants expelled this would not make things better for the "indigenous” British. UK citizens are divided into two classes, on the basis of their relationship to the means of production – those who own them and those who don't –, whose interests are quite opposed. It is in the interest of those who own Britain to convince the rest of us living here that we share a common interest with them in them acquiring and protecting outside markets and investment outlets. To get us to support them is the role of the nationalism that is inculcated into us from birth and reinforced every day by the media. The semblance of justification for this is that, if employers are successful in this, then they can offer more and more secure jobs. In actual fact, however, those in one country who have to work for a wage have a common interest with wage and salary workers in other countries rather than with our employers. That is the socialist, anti-nationalist position which the Socialist Party maintains against all other parties.

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