London
Saturday afternoons 6pm
3 July "Business
growth
in
conflict
with the environment"
-- Glenn Morris
17 July “Feeding
the
world:
profit
versus plenty"
- - Pat Deutz
31 July "Reforming
Capitalism or the Socialist alternative"
-- Vincent Otter
Socialist Party premises, 52 Clapham High Street, SW4 7UN (nearest
tube: Clapham North)
East Anglia
Saturday 10th July 2-5pm
The second of a series of 3 :-
Do You Feel Exploited?
Film and discussion (2 of a series of 3)
Showing a video-short by Kapitalism 101
The Workshop
53 Earlham Road
Norwich NR2 3AD
The third in the series will be on Saturday 14th August.
See poster for Film here
Manchester
Monday 26 July, 8.30 pm
Slums and slumps: housing under capitalism
Unicorn, Church Street, City Centre
Summer School
'Future Visions'
The Socialist Party's Summer School is being held at Fircroft College, Selly Oak, Birmingham,
over
the
long weekend 23rd - 25th
July.
The theme is 'Future
Visions'
- This year's weekend of talks and discussion looks to
the future.
But what kind of future? For centuries, people have imagined
utopias where advances in technology and attitudes create freedom for
all. Or, they have described dystopias, where society turns into a
nightmare.
Back in the real world, how will capitalism survive and adapt to
ongoing economic and environmental concerns? And what kind of socialist
society can we aim for as an antidote to this?
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Eichmann: Who
is responsible?
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It is impossible to
condemn too strongly the terrible brutality of the killing of millions
of people, Jews and others, of which Adolf Eichmann is accused. The
majority of people have reacted to the press reports with a demand for
his punishment. Learning of Eichmann's deeds, they take the
short-sighted view that to deal with him as an individual is enough.
But Eichmann is the end product of a vast process; he arose from the
inhuman conditions of capitalist society. The very people who condemn
him are content to leave those conditions untouched.
The working class, not only in Nazi Germany but in post-war
Germany—and throughout the world—blindly support capitalism. None of
them can escape responsibility for the consequences. For the power
wielded by the rulers of world capitalism is a reflection of the
political ignorance of the working class everywhere. It is absurd to
blame one man, when he is only the instrument of a policy supported by
millions. (…)
War is caused by the struggles between national capitalist Powers
over markets and economic resources. This can only be cured by the
abolition of capitalism. As long as workers support this system, so
will they be vulnerable to the racial theorist who, on nationalist
grounds, gets support for his programme of mass murder. The dictators
of yesterday, and the dictators and leaders of today, with their
frightening military machines, only reflect the preparedness of their
workers to ignore the bloodshed of two world wars and still to die for
capitalism.
It is futile to punish an individual whilst ignoring the vicious
conditions which made him possible. Eichmann was involved in some
terrible things—but the exterminations which he so methodically
organised are only a part of the greatest atrocity of all—the
capitalist system of society. As the movement for a classless world—for
Socialism—takes root and spreads, so will the possibility of inhuman
murderers like Adolf Eichmann decline and die.
(from the editorial, Socialist Standard, July 1960)
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Object
and Declaration of
Principles
This
declaration is the basis of our
organisation
and, because it is
also an important historical document dating from the formation of the
party in 1904, its original language has been retained.
Object
The
establishment of a system of society
based
upon the common ownership and democratic
control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing
wealth by and in the
interest of the whole community.
Declaration
of Principles
The Socialist Party of
Great Britain holds
1. That society as at present constituted is
based upon
the ownership
of the means of living (i.e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the
capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the
working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
2. That in society, therefore, there is an
antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle between
those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not
possess.
3. That this antagonism can be abolished only by
the emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master
class, by the conversion into the common property of society of the
means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by
the whole people.
4. That as in the order of social evolution the
working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the
emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all
mankind, without distinction of race or sex.
5. That this emancipation must be the
work of the
working class itself.
6. That as the machinery of government,
including
the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by
the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working
class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the
powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery,
including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of
oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of
privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.
7. That as all political parties are but the
expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class
is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of all
sections of the the master class, the party seeking working class
emancipation must be hostile to every other party.
8. The Socialist Party of Great Britain,
therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war
against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly
capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this
country to muster under its banner to the end that a speedy termination
may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their
labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to
equality, and slavery to freedom.
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Socialist Standard Online
edition
July 2010
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