The Problem is Not the Tories … it's Capitalism (2015)

Party News from the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The problem is not Austerity... that’s just a turn of the screw. We have always been rationed by the size of our pay cheque and the poor have always been poor. It used to Soup Kitchens; now it's Food Banks. Meanwhile the rich go on getting richer. We can't hope to end poverty and inequality – whether in Britain or throughout the planet – until we get rid of production of wealth for the exclusive profit of a few.

The problem is not Trident... it's war. Getting rid of Trident makes barely a dent in the global killing machine fuelled by capitalism's wars over our bosses' markets and resources. A campaign against Trident alone leaves the cause of war –capitalism – untouched.

The problem is not Zero-Hours Contracts ... it's wage-slavery. Unions should fight for the best deal they can get. But let's not kid ourselves that the system of employment can ever be geared to our needs..

Some argue that we need to just focus on defeating the Tories. Or that we need to try and make capitalism work. Or that, to establish ‘progressive politics’, the Labour Party needs a leftwing leader or that Scotland needs to separate from England. We were once told us to put our trust in Tony Blair; now it’s Jeremy Corbyn or Nicola Sturgeon who’s the great hope.

The fate of the Labour Party is an irrelevance. The rise of the SNP is a side show. Real political change has never come through leaders, and it never will. We have the potential to make real change rather than just tinker at the margins. So, let’s start to end capitalism. Otherwise it’s the same old same old.

As a poet once said. 'You are many – they are few'. We can make a democratic revolution – but only based on real understanding of how capitalism works against our interests, and how reforms of capitalism will always be offered in order to distract us. You just cannot challenge capitalism and reform it at the same time.

Demos and rallies may make us feel like we are 'doing something', but it’s an illusion. The real battle is over ideas: the ideas in the heads of those who do all the work but get little reward. That's why the rich and powerful spend so much time trying to suppress and ridicule any idea of an alternative

The world is rich enough. We can have a world where free access to wealth replaces the market where useful work is to be enjoyed rather than endured, and where no individual can monopolise access to wealth. Armed with knowledge, humanity can finally start to demand the possible.

— adapted from a leaflet issued by our Glasgow branch.