Obituary: Malcolm Rae (2026)

Obituary from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Malcolm (Mac) Rae, who has died at the age of 95, had been a member of the Socialist Party since 1982. He had been an apprentice car mechanic and later a colliery plant fitter, who could ‘fix’ anything (vacuum cleaners, electrical appliances, furniture) and would do it not just for his own family but for friends and neighbours too.

He always had a scientific mindset with no truck for religious ideas, and his experience of work and looking at the world around him convinced him as a young adult that the way society operated was not in the interest of the vast majority of people. So when he came into contact with the Socialist Party, he quickly found agreement with our case for a completely different way of organising social and economic affairs which would assure equality and security for everyone instead of poverty and insecurity for so many.

From then on, as a member of South Wales (previously Swansea) Branch of the Party, he became an active advocate himself for our ideas with wide personal knowledge and understanding that made him an acute and an astute participant in any kind of discussion or debate. His ongoing wish was to see the vision he supported live on until its aims are achieved.

Our sympathies to his son Ian, daughter Kim, and their families.

South Wales Branch

What is socialism? (2025)

From the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the years, the word ‘socialism’ has been used to mean many different things – in particular to describe the aims and principles of many different organisations and the policies of many different governments and regimes. Nowadays, in the UK, socialism is associated in most people’s minds with small left-wing organisations or at a stretch even the Labour Party, or with countries like China, Cuba, Venezuela and the former Soviet Union.

We have always denied that socialism means any of these things. Since our foundation in 1904, we have always defined socialism as a world-wide, democratic, moneyless society in which everyone will have free access to all goods and services according to their needs. We have further maintained that socialism can only come about through a majority of people consciously choosing it, ideally through voting at the ballot box.

However, before our definition of socialism and the way it can be achieved can be meaningfully understood, we must explain our view on the present system of society and why we consider it must be abolished and replaced.

Present-day society

The present system of society, based on minority ownership and buying and selling, is commonly known as capitalism. It exists all over the world, in China, Cuba, Venezuela and Russia for example, as well as in the UK, America and Europe. It has not always existed, and it will not exist for ever. It is not an evil conspiracy but a type of social order which has been necessary for the progress of mankind. It has developed science and technology to a previously undreamed-of degree, done wonders for global health, united the world in communications and educated more people than ever before to a high degree of knowledge and adaptability.

But capitalism has not fully applied its advances for the full benefit of the majority of the population, and it cannot. It has not united the world politically. Wars go on all the time essentially due to the competition within or between nations over resources, raw materials and trade routes. The threat of a big war which would wipe us all out still remains. Nor has it used the sophisticated knowledge and technology it has created to ensure useful, dignified and happy productive activity for the majority. In fact it has put a curse on work. Work for most people is equated with something unpleasant in life.

What capitalism has done is to create a potential abundance of wealth capable of satisfying everyone’s needs, but without being able to realise that potential. This is because it is not geared to distributing wealth freely but to the rationing of it by means of the market and the wages system.

It operates by exploiting the majority of the population. By exploitation we do not mean that the majority earn starvation wages or live in 19th century conditions, though some do, especially in the global South. What we mean is that those who work are a source of wealth that is taken from them, that they produce a greater amount of wealth than they get back in wages or salaries. Unfortunately, most people do not see this, misled as they are by the culture of acceptance in which they grow up, their education and the media they are exposed to. They tend to see the world as a place in which we should all count ourselves lucky if we are given a chance to earn enough to enable us to exist from day to day.

The fact is that the world’s wealth is produced but not owned by that large majority who, in order to live, are obliged to hire themselves to an employer for a wage or salary. So while no one would deny that, in most countries, conditions of life have vastly improved over the last century, it is still, for example, the case that millions of children live in poverty even in 40 of the world’s richest countries.

The working class

This large majority of people who produce most of the wealth but own none of it to speak of we refer to as ‘the working class’. To many people class is defined by such things as upbringing or education or occupation. These may be useful classifications for some purposes, but to socialists the working class is composed of all those who through economic necessity are obliged to sell their energies to an employer in order to live, ie, the vast majority of the population. The working class is therefore a class of wage and salary earners and as such includes not only manual workers but also people who are often referred to as ‘middle class’ such as office workers, civil servants, engineers, doctors, teachers, etc.

The interests of the working class are diametrically opposed to the interests of the other class in society, the employing or capitalist class, comprising those who own enough to live (land, shares in companies, farms, offices, etc.) without needing to sell their energies to an employer. Another possible arrangement for capitalism is one in which the state, via its bureaucrats, takes over capital, wholly or in part, in order to exploit workers. This can consist either in selective nationalisation of certain industries or complete state control. We call this state capitalism.

Socialists have no personal grudge against capitalists either as individuals or as a class. We simply point out that their interests will always be opposed to the people they employ. In short, society today is a class-divided society.

Reforms

Apart from the continual battle inherent in the capitalist system between employee and employer over pay and working conditions, capitalism also produces a host of other intractable problems. Among these are wars and the threat of war, unemployment, poor housing, homelessness, anxiety, loneliness and unsatisfying work, all of which add up to a society in which there is much strife and dissatisfaction and, for many, a generally insecure and frustrated existence. Suggestions for reforms to improve things come continually from the political parties involved in running the system. But once brought in, reforms rarely have the beneficial effect claimed. At best they tinker at the edges of problems and can even create new problems requiring further reform. And of course they may be reversed when a new party comes to power.

Well-meaning individuals often say that you can have socialism as your long-term aim but still campaign for reforms in the meantime. We say that this is merely putting off the day and channelling energies that could be usefully employed in bringing socialism nearer into activities whose results are uncertain and which may have the effect of bolstering capitalism rather than help get rid of it. So we do not consider it our function to campaign for reforms or seek support on the basis of reforms.

So far it has been comparatively easy for the dissatisfaction of workers to be channelled in a reformist rather than a socialist direction. Some people might even say that there is not that much dissatisfaction among workers at all, that on the whole they are quite happy with things as they are. But perhaps what they should say is not ‘happy’ but ‘resigned’. What most people want is a quiet secure life for themselves and their families, but capitalism tends to deny them this. Their plans are constantly being put in jeopardy by crises, job reorganisations, new government policies, disruption of various other kinds, and, depending on which part of the world they live in, wars and day-to-day violence.

Socialism comes from capitalism

What makes us think workers will ever take action? Well, there is certainly no guarantee, but capitalism has already created a large, organised, highly trained working class which carries out by itself all essential productive, administrative and educative activity throughout most of the world and which has an increasing interest, because of its subordinate social and economic position and its conditions of work, in challenging the status quo. Capitalism has also produced, and carries on producing, the material conditions necessary for the establishment and practical organisation of a united world-wide society, ie, rapid world-wide communications and a potential abundance of goods and services. In addition many of the problems of modern capitalism (pollution, climate change, threat of war, terrorism, recessions, etc.) are world problems that can only be approached on a world scale even within the present system and that tend therefore to spread a consciousness of the need for world solutions generally.

We know that none of this means socialism is just around the corner. And socialists at present are a tiny minority. But, as we have pointed out, capitalism is a system of constant agitation and rapid change in which nothing is constant or sacred and which itself has provided, and will continue to provide, fuel for the spreading of socialist ideas.

How to get socialism

Because socialism will be a fully democratic society in which the majority will prevails, though with full rights of dissent for minorities, it follows that socialism can only be set up democratically, ie, when a majority have come to want and understand it. Socialism cannot be handed to people by an elite which thinks it knows what is good for them. Such a minority revolution could only fail and lead to minority rule, as happened in Russia, China and those other countries which are often called socialist (or communist), but which we call state capitalist.

And being a majority revolution, socialism has no need to initiate violence. The street-fights-and-barricades vision of revolution belongs to a romantic past and anyway could not possibly stand up to the might of the modern state. In any case, in most of the economically advanced countries of the world where workers are the most numerous and highly trained, capitalism has been forced to give them certain elementary political rights, in particular the vote. This means that, when a majority decide they want socialism, they can organise themselves as a leaderless democratic political party and use the ballot box to send their delegates to legislative assemblies with a mandate not to form a new government to oversee the capitalist system but to abolish capitalism and its whole machinery of minority rule.

Sceptics may ask: will the capitalist class allow this to happen? Our reply is: what can they do against a politically conscious majority from all sections (including police, army, etc.) of the working class?

What socialism will be like

What will socialism be like once established? Well, we obviously cannot provide a blueprint for it, as the precise details of its organisation will be democratically worked out by the majority who decide to establish that society and to live in it. But we can make certain general statements about its nature.

We can say that it will mean the end of buying and selling and of all the other financial and commercial institutions like money, prices, wages, banks and insurance.

We can say that, with the disappearance of such factors as financial cost and competition, it will mean people planning production democratically and using the highly sophisticated technology in existence to provide for their wants and taking freely what they need from the abundance of resources made available by that technology.

We can say that it will mean voluntary cooperation, work as pleasure not toil, and all human beings as social and economic equals.

We can say that it will mean complete democracy in all departments of life with freedom to choose one’s activities and occupations and without people being pushed around by decisions from above or by any kind of arbitrary authority.

We can say that socialism will be world-wide – it cannot be anything else. ‘Socialism in Britain’, for example, is a contradiction in terms, and anyway the world is now so closely united in terms of communications, fashions and the rapid flow of ideas that, if people in one country were ready for socialism, the rest of the world could not be far behind.

The establishment of this world community founded on common ownership and democratic control is the only solution to the major problems of modern life. It may seem some way off, but if you agree with us and help spread socialist ideas, you will bring it nearer. And if you join the Socialist Party, you will find yourself a member of a unique political organisation, one which is completely democratic, has no leaders and no secrets, and in which all members have an equal say; one, in other words, that foreshadows the way in which socialist society itself will be organised.

South Wales Branch

Newport Radical Book Fair (2024)

Party News from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month marked 185 years since the historic Chartist uprising in South Wales. It was celebrated by the Newport Rising Festival, a series of commemorative events in and around the city. One of these was the Newport Radical Book Festival held at the Corn Exchange and advertised as ‘a free entry book fair featuring radical publishers, campaign groups, and activists running stalls selling new and used books, posters, stickers, pamphlets, zines and merchandise, plus workshops and talks’.

The South Wales Branch of the Socialist Party had a stall there run by a group of branch members. Among publishers, groups and other organisations in the hall were Resistance Books, Eco-Socialists, Stand up to Racism, the Bristol Radical History Group and the Carmilla Distro Anarchist Queer Collective. In engaging with visitors and other stall holders, we found more than a little interest and sympathy among them when we put to them our view of how capitalism fails the vast majority of people and the need to replace it by a society of free access to all goods and services. Visitors took away with them a significant amount of the literature we had brought with us, with Socialist or Your Money Back, our book of collected articles from the Socialist Standard, particularly popular. We were offering copies of this handsome volume left over from when it was published at the time of the Party’s 100th anniversary free of charge, but several visitors insisted on offering payment – £10 in one case, which we managed to bid down to £5, and £20 in another case with the ‘purchaser’ insisting on the ‘donation’.

This Saturday event was for us an alternative to the weekend street stall the branch normally runs in Cardiff city centre. But the difference here was palpable. At the street stall, we are the ones doing the approaching trying to get members of the public interested in our ideas and our wares and all too often meeting with apathy. At the Newport Radical Book Festival we found, quite differently and refreshingly, that a fair number of those attending were already broadly sympathetic to what we had to say and were prepared to enter into discussion and exchange ideas with us. So a day well spent.

South Wales Branch

Just Stop Capitalism (2023)

From the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the ‘Just Stop Oil’ public meeting advertised at my local University, the speakers argued for ‘direct action’ to halt the use of fossil fuels. To a rapt, mainly student audience they listed a series of direct action campaigns, for example Civil Rights, Anti-Apartheid, Occupy, Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain, which Just Stop Oil was following in the wake of. Supporting their campaign was, they insisted, the only way to deal with climate change, to save the environment and to save the world.

The first thing to say is that single-issue actions like this are nothing if not commendable for their concern for human welfare and their sincere intentions. They really are trying to make the world a better place. But can a campaign like Just Stop Oil hope to succeed in its objectives? And, if it does, how much will actually be changed? It may be said that some of the previous protest activities mentioned by the speakers have had some impact on society and on social attitudes and it is possible that the changes advocated by Just Stop Oil, if adopted, might help to alleviate climate change. However, sad as it may be, that will not happen with the aim of saving the world but only if the system of production for profit which rules the world sees it as necessary for its own survival and entrenchment.

This same rule applies to all the ‘single issues’ that groups of people get together to try and resolve within the system we live in. This is a system which exists to make profits for the small minority who own and control the bulk of the wealth with the vast majority owning nothing but their energies and skills which they need to sell to survive. So all the time, effort and energy expended by the speakers at the Just Stop Oil meeting will have one of two inevitable outcomes. Either they will be unsuccessful because, whatever the rationality of their arguments or the sincerity of their cause, the system continues to privilege the use of fossil fuels rather than other forms of energy as a way of making profit. Or they will be successful in the sense that the use of oil may be moderated or even halted because the capitalist system itself dictates the necessity of doing this for its own survival. But whichever of these outcomes prevails, the system which has produced this problem and produces the manifold other problems which beset humanity will continue and the end of fossil fuels will just be the latest in a list of never-ending reforms that capitalism has always needed to implement to facilitate its operation.

A wider view of how society works than adopted by single-issue campaigners is needed. One that focuses not on individual social or economic change but on a complete change from a society of production for profit to one of production for need based on common ownership of the world’s resources and free access to all goods and services. So don’t just stop oil, stop capitalism.

South Wales Branch

Obituary: Tim Hart (2021)

Obituary from the October 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tim Hart discovered the Socialist Party only after he had retired, when he saw an advert for it in a newspaper. He was originally from Sussex but at that point was living in South Wales and soon became a member of Swansea Branch (now South Wales Branch) of the Party. He quickly became convinced by the Party’s case and also took a keen interest in its history and development. He often said he only regretted that he’d come so late to his political home and the clear, rational understanding of the world it gave him. He’d been involved in various causes and organisations but inevitably became unsatisfied with the illogicalities and inconsistencies of their ideas and actions and above all with their ‘single-issue’ approach to things according to the particular issues and circumstances of the day. He found the ‘all-round’ approach of the Party – the way it took on capitalism as a whole and not just its symptoms – a far more satisfying way of looking at the world.

Once in the Party he quickly became involved in various activities, including being its Assistant Treasurer, a member of its Executive Committee and writing articles for the Socialist Standard. So interested did he become in the Party’s history that he had plans for making sure that knowledge of all its activities and publications could be made available electronically for future record and reference. A project that he had in mind but didn’t come to fruition was to interview some of the Party’s longest-standing members, so that the interviews could then be published in the Socialist Standard.

Yet, though he espoused the Party’s ideas for the explanation they gave him of history and the current world, he never lost his ‘doubt everything’ mindset and was never anything if not fiercely independent. In his life he had changed jobs and occupations a number of times (e.g. banking, management consultancy, law, teaching, landscape gardening), often because he found it impossible to tolerate the submission to authority and frequent abuse of power inherent in employment. And indeed, even while agreeing with the fundamental tenets of the Party’s case, he differed, for example, from the Party’s view that the liberal democratic type of capitalism represented an advance on the more ‘backward’ one-party state forms, considering them all at bottom equally authoritarian and oppressive. He also had a more draconian view of the climate crisis than usually expressed by the Party, considering that it was probably too late now, whatever action was taken, for the environmental situation to be rescued.

He was a kind person to have a discussion with and you always knew that anything you said, whether he agreed with it or not, would be responded to in a comradely and tolerant way. He was a keen swimmer and cyclist, activities he continued with even during his short final illness. He was also a marvellous grandad to Luke and a devoted father to Elaine and Della, to whom we convey our sincere condolences.

Howard Moss

South Wales Branch

Election results (2021)

Party News from the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood 4 candidates in last month’s regional and local elections. In Wales we contested Cardiff Central constituency in the elections to the Welsh Assembly (now called The Senedd), the same we had in the 2019 General Election, with ten others standing for capitalism in one form or another. Some 43,000 election manifestos were delivered free by Royal Mail to households there. In Kent we stood two candidates for the County Council, as we had done four years ago, and one in a by-election for Folkestone town council. As there is no free postal distribution for local elections, some 20,000 were distributed commercially and by members of Kent and Sussex branch.

The results are:

Cardiff Central: Labour 13,100; LibDems 5,460; Conservative 3,788, Plaid Cymru 3,470; Green 1,552; Abolish Welsh Assembly 440; Propel 268; Freedom Alliance 156; Reform UK 151; Socialist 82; Gwlad 65.

Folkestone East: Labour 1324; Conservative 1132; Foundation Party 561; LibDems 361; Socialist 89.

Folkestone West: Conservative 2105; Labour 1782; LibDems 541; Independent 264; Reform UK 127; Socialist 55.

Folkestone Town Council Central Ward: Conservative 1119; Labour 916; LibDem 255; Independent 218; Socialist 61; Independent 44.

Election Communications (2021)

Party News from the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

  In the elections on 6 May the Socialist Party is contesting the Cardiff Central seat in the Welsh Assembly and two wards in Folkestone in the Kent County Council elections. Some 43,000 election manifestos will be distributed in Cardiff by Royal Mail while in Kent about 26,500 electors will be offered the choice of voting Socialist.

Welsh Parliament Cardiff Central 6 May 2021

‘Great Resets’

The pandemic has led to much thrilling talk about Great Resets and rethinking the future. Wales’s 6th election since devolution is taking place on 6 May. Do you think that’s going to cause a Great Reset or even much change at all?

You know very well it won’t.

And why not?

Because most of the candidates don’t want change. Instead they will be wittering on about how they propose to fix the faulty system we live under – capitalism – so it’s maybe a tiny bit better for you and yours. But every politician says this. In every party. In every election. And they never really fix anything.

The reason they can’t fix capitalism’s problems is because capitalism IS the problem.

If you want to vote for these hopeless ‘fixers’ on 6 May, go right ahead. If you expect change, don’t hold your breath.

But one of the candidates isn’t saying any of this. Brian Johnson of the Socialist Party of Great Britain says you can’t fix capitalism, because it only works for the tiny minority who possess most of the wealth. And if you can’t fix it, you certainly shouldn’t vote for it.

Especially as there’s an alternative.

Capitalism has revolutionised our science and technology so that we can now produce a global sufficiency of the basics of life. That means we could abolish buying and selling, take the world back from the rich, and run it collectively as a communally owned resource.

It’s not ‘human nature’ that’s causing poverty, inequality, wars and global warming. It’s the fact that we have a 21st-century planet being trashed by an obsolete 19th-century economic system that gives all the power to the tiny minority.

Universal free access would be simpler, cheaper, faster, smarter, a genuine Great Reset.

Vote for Brian Johnson if you like the idea of real change.

Alternatively, there’s always your trusty ‘fixers’.

Further information and offers of help: botterillr@gmail.com Phone: 02920-615826.

 

Folkestone Council Elections 6 May 2021

We can do better than this!

The residents of Folkestone know all too well the powerlessness of life under capitalism. The system that demands that nothing is made, built or planted unless someone, somewhere can profit from it.

The construction of monstrous blocks of ‘high end’ apartments along Marine Parade – with the harbour next – have nothing to do with solving Folkestone’s housing crisis, and everything to do with raking in huge profits for developers. Developers are not paid to care about the homeless, those living in sub-standard accommodation or the young struggling to afford rocketing private rents at a time of rising unemployment and economic crisis.

But it’s easy to blame developers. They are as much at the mercy of the profit system as the rest of us – although their wealth cushions them from its worst effects. Doubtless they would much rather build beautiful homes that fit the scale of Folkestone and meet the needs of local people. But that’s not why houses are built under capitalism.

Now imagine a society where all of us, not just in Folkestone but across the world, actually own the resources of the world. Where we decide together what we build based on people’s needs, not just the demands of the profit system. Then what could Marine Parade, the harbour and Princes Parade look like?

In this election only the Socialist Party stands for the total abolition of the profit system and its replacement by a global society based on the common ownership and democratic control of all the resources of our amazing planet.

It’s time to consign capitalism to the dustbin of history.

Further information and offers of help: Email: spgb.ksrb@worldsocialism.org Mobile: 07971 71556

Party Election Results (2020)

Party News from the January 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here are the results of the two seats we contested in last month’s general election: 

• Cardiff North: Lab 25605 (61.2%) Con 8426 LD 6298 Brexit 1006 Gwalad 280 Ind 119 Soc 88 (0.2%).
• Folkestone and Hythe: Con 35473 (60.1%) Lab 14146 LD 5755 Green 2708 Ind 576 SDP 190 YPP 80 Soc 69 (0.1%).

Kent and Sussex Branch report: The last time we contested Folkestone and Hythe, in 2015, our candidate got 68 votes. 2015 was of course in the pre-Corbyn Labour Party period, but then we also had TUSC (ex-Militant SPEW coalition) on the ballot paper. Not an easy comparison, but if people were tempted by leftist reformism or Brexit issues, 2019 was probably their year to be so. Labour almost doubled their vote in this period. During this campaign we distributed 56,500 leaflets via Royal Mail, 5,000 copies of the first edition of the local ‘World News’ flyer to Folkestone Harbour and other selected parts of the constituency including Cheriton, Sandgate and Hythe, and inserts in last weekend’s i-newspaper (among 160,000 in the southern region).

Of course it’s not really the votes that are so important at this stage, but the fact that for an outlay of under £1,500 we got our leaflet delivered through 56,500 letter boxes, plus our propaganda free several times in local newspaper columns and candidate interviews on BBC TV and the Academy FM Community Radio Station.

In Cardiff, which we were contesting for the first time, we distributed 45,500 via Royal Mail with more leaflets and literature distributed at street stalls in the constituency. An advertisement was inserted in the South Wales Echo and our candidate, with all the others, answered set questions on Wales Online (tinyurl.com/t3tu3uq)

Manifestos: The Socialist Alternative (2019)

Party News from the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

CARDIFF

What is this election about?

The wide view

Our world contains massive resources – raw materials, systems of manufacture, communications technology, sophisticated transport. Enough to give everyone a comfortable and fulfilling life.

It’s also beset by perennial problems – wars, never-ending poverty, economic and other kinds of insecurity. The profit motive of society means that life is becoming more and more commercialised and people are increasingly isolated from one another with drug abuse and mental illness on the increase. Capitalism – and governments – are proving incapable of dealing with climate change and other threats to the environment. The standard of living may have risen for some but the quality of life deteriorates.

Why don’t we change our world so that we can have the benefit of the resources without the problems?

How can we do that?

   We can do that by holding the world’s resources in common and using them directly to serve everyone’s needs instead of just producing ad nauseam to create ever greater profits for a tiny minority. This is genuine socialism – a moneyless society of free access to goods and services. Forget about the other uses of the word.

So, we vote you in and you create this wonderful world for us. How can we trust you to do that?

   You can’t and neither can we. The new society we’re putting forward can only be created when a majority of people like you actively decide to do it. You can use us, the Socialist Party, as an instrument of the democratic revolution we are advocating, but you yourselves must be in control of what happens.

But isn’t this all fantasy politics? People are too selfish to put everything at risk for the sake of pie in the sky?

  Stick to the case you know best – yourself. Are you too selfish to realise that your on interests (as well as those of the people around you) can be advanced by making an alliance with others and pursuing joint interests? Are you sufficiently open-minded to consider alternatives to our present social arrangements? If you want to prove you can do this, one way is to take advantage of the free subscription to our journal, the Socialist Standard, offered on this leaflet.

Hasn’t socialism been tried and shown not to work?

   No. Small political minorities have tried concentrating resources in the hands of the state, but that has just continued the profit system in another, often more oppressive, form. That isn’t socialism. Instead we are talking about a world where we all democratically decide how to use those resources directly for our own mutual benefit and in a way which minimises the impact on the environment.

  This is all a long-way off. In the meantime shouldn’t ‘progressive’ organisations sink their differences, defend working people against attacks on their living standards and eventually work towards a socialist society?

It’s true that we all have to live in the here and now, but how far off the socialist society we advocate is depends on when people are prepared to take democratic action (i.e. vote) to establish it. More than a century of attempts to reform capitalism have shown that none of its major problems can be removed. So it’s clear that if we do nothing about socialism ‘in the meantime’, the meantime lasts forever. And we are putting off perhaps for all time the greatest advance that human society could ever make.

So does this election matter? Does Brexit matter?

  This election is about one way or another of organising the profit system, capitalism, so it doesn’t matter which of the major parties is elected. Nothing will change. Brexit is a small detail in that system, so it doesn’t matter that an arrangement has been made to manipulate that detail in the interests of the tiny minority who hold most of the wealth. What does matter is how many voters understand the case we are putting for a real social upgrade – a world community without states or frontiers based on participatory democracy – and show their preference for that by casting their vote for the Socialist Party candidate, Brian Johnson.

We are talking about a society of material abundance, without buying and selling, where everyone has access to what they need without the rationing system called money.

We are talking about a rational and sustainable society where people are the Earth’s custodians, not its destroyers, where they contribute the knowledge, skills and effort to maintain it.

This is a system that will make 21st century capitalism look like the Dark Ages. Hardly anyone dares conceive of a society after capitalism, so powewrful is its hold on the collective mind. But we do and that is why we are putting the debate out into the open.

Capitalism will do all it can to discredit the idea of world socialism. Don’t let it succeed. Take a first step by voting for our candidate, Brian Johnson.

FOLKESTONE

Profit or Needs, not Leave or Remain, is the real issue

This election, we’re told, is about Brexit. Whether ‘we’ will be richer or poorer, freer or more subservient if we stay in or leave the European Union, with or without a deal.

But does anyone seriously expect that Leaving or Remaining will end child poverty? Homelessness and food banks? Collapsing health and social services? Unemployment – or the mass insecurity of zero-hour-contracts? War and forced migration? The destruction of the Earth’s wildlife and natural resources? The threat of disastrous climate change?

The Brexit ‘debate’ simply obscures the real issue: a failed economic system where nothing is produced unless a profit can be made from it. Where human needs are everywhere subject to the inhuman demands of market forces. And this system will continue to rule our lives whether our new leaders are based in Brussels or London, Belfast or Edinburgh.

The Socialist Party stands for putting an end to this profit system. For replacing it with a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the world’s natural and industrial resources.

We live in a world of potential plenty, where we could meet our needs by freely cooperating on the basis of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.’ There is no need for anyone anywhere in the world to go without what they need to live a happy, healthy and fulfilled life. What prevents this is the ownership of resources today by a privileged few and production for sale with the aim of making a profit.

 The parties committed to running the market system – and that includes the Labour Party and the Greens – are making empty promises. A vote for them is a wasted vote as this system operates on the basis that making profits must always come before meeting needs, whatever those in government might want or have promised.

We are standing here to give you a chance to show that you reject the profit-driven market system and want a classless society of equal men and women geared to directly satisfying people’s needs.

To show this, vote for the  Socialist Party candidate, Andy Thomas, and then come and join us, not to mend the present system but to bring a movement strong enough to end it.

Write The Socialist Party, 74 Linden Crescent, Folkestone, Kent CT19 5SB

Email spgb.ksrb@worldsocialism.org


How you can help
South Wales branch will be holding an election stall on Saturday 7 December from 1 pm to 3pm in Queen Street (Newport road end) in central Cardiff. There will also be leafletting elsewhere in the constituency. More information and offers of help contact Richard Botterill, election agent, at botterillr@gmail.com

Kent and Sussex branch will be meeting on Sunday 1 December from 2pm in The Muggleton Inn (Wetherspoon), 8 High Street, Maidstone, ME14 1 HJ (first floor) to discuss the campaign. Offers of help with leafletting and other activities in Folkestone: email spgb.ksrb@worldsocialism.org or write to The Socialist Party, 74 Linden Crescent, Folkestone, Kent CT19 5SB.

The Socialist Party also has leaflets for distribution outside the two constituencies saying that socialists will be casting a write-in vote for «World Socialism». Copies for distribution available from spgb@worldsocialism.org or write to the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN or phone 020 7622 3811.

The coming general election (2019)

Party News from the November 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

If, or more likely when, the the touted general election comes, the Party will be contesting two seats: Cardiff Central in Wales and Folkestone & Hythe in Kent.

Further information from Head Office or from the branches running the campaign, South Wales and Kent & Sussex respectively.