West London Branch Meeting

8pm, Tuesday, 19th February

Committee Room, 
Chiswick Town Hall, 
Heathfield Terrace, 
London W4 4JN

Our enemy is capitalism.  In order to fight the enemy and win, we have to understand the enemy.  Capitalism dominates our economic system.  Under capitalism, a handful who own the factories, the mines, corporate farms, and the banks control the wealth that the majority of the people produce.  It is this system that we are fighting. Workers cannot rely on the capitalist system, capitalist governments or any piece of legislation propose by politicians to solve the evils of the private profit system. Capitalism has already proved itself unable to give the people either economic prosperity or peace. The struggle for a livable planet is a life-and-death issue.  Corporate greed has polluted our air, destroyed the environment, poisoned our waters, and filled our food with dangerous chemicals.  Our survival necessitates the common ownership of production and the elimination of the blind consumerism that causes us to squander so many of the world's resources needlessly.

The salient feature of capitalism is that the means of production are in the hands of the capitalists. In producing the social product of society labour only receives a portion of the product in wages, the remainder becomes, as Marx said, surplus value expropriated by the capitalists. Workers sell their labour power in exchange for wages. Capitalists must ensure that the labour power they buy creates more exchange value than they first paid for it in order to make surplus value. Owners of the means of production turn themselves into capitalists by consuming labour power in the process of production. This is the origin of all property under capitalism. Capital is brought into being in the unequal exchange on the market between the owners of money and the sellers of labour power. Workers can only live by selling their labour power, by being exploited. If there is no exploitation there is no capitalism. There can be no profit without exploitation and hence no capitalism, Profits are the only incentive to produce. Thus, production ls only undertaken to continue the accumulation of capital. The entire labour process is directed not primarily for human need but for profits. Capitalism is a system which has a compulsion to expand production and raise productivity - but only for profit.

The Socialist Party understands that capitalism is a system centered on accumulation and profit, a system of inequality, injustice, and war. We want a social system where social wealth is not in the hands of a few billionaires, but is controlled by the people. We seek economic and political democracy. Human needs cannot replace profit as the driving force of society unless the people control their workplaces and their communities. The world working class shares an objective interest in ending capitalism. To combat exploitation, the working class needs to struggle for its own interests. Capitalism organises globally. Capital competes intensely for growth and profits. Under capitalism you either destroy the competition, or are destroyed yourself.  This drive sends businesses around the world, seeking cheaper raw materials and friendlier investment opportunities. Capitalism continuously seeks cheaper labour costs.  This is why we see so many factories closing down, out-sourcing or and moving off-shore. The State – the government and the legal system – were set up and developed to serve the interests of capitalism, to uphold the rights of property over of the people. Capitalist politics is a system of coercion. Poverty and inequality is built into its operation.

The Socialist Party works to develop a new vision of socialism. We believe in a socialism where fulfillment will be found in the relationships among people and not in the consumption of things.  Only conscious socialist planning by all of society can make this a reality.  We intend to build a party which can truly represent the interests and aspirations of the workers of all lands. The Socialist Party represent the conception of socialism of the future. We seek a world in which the exploitation of man by man shall cease, when the evolution of human society to new and higher forms shall become possible to all mankind, when prosperity and peace shall be shared and enjoyed by all. It is the capitalist system which produces disaster and misery. Comrades, in this twenty-first Century we urge that there be no pessimism. Let there be no sense of frustration. The future is ours. And there are those of us who were never more optimistic, never more certain, never more determined to achieve the goal of socialism than we are on this day in the year 2019.