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Fake Socialism

We are not and never have been connected with Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin. We are not related in any way to The Scottish Socialist Party, The Socialist Worker's Party, Or The Socialist Labour Party. We've never had any connection with the Communist Party, or any of it's offshoots. We have always been opponents of nationalisation and the idea that capitalism can be reformed away. We are a party that consciously does not have leaders and our members are all members of the working class.

Since 1904 we have published The Socialist Standard , which comes out monthly, and all of the above facts can be checked to have been consistently true as presented in that publication. We're not trying to get a boy scout badge in telling you all this, but merely to tell you exactly who we are as there is so much manipulation, dishonesty, and downright erroneous thinking connected with all the above parties that we would not wish to be associated with them in any way.

This isn't because we're a bunch of goody two shoes, but because we want to see the back of capitalism and the establishment of socialism and often look on in weary frustration as we see the same failed ideas and solutions being proferred for the working class to swallow. In fairness to the above parties, the mainstream capitalist parties also pedal failed ideas and solutions too. Over the year's some of them have used vague socialist mouthings to snare worker's votes, too.

When capitalism is cut to it's essentials there are certain features that are always present:

Any system having this combination of features is capitalist, no matter what it decides to call itself. This is why The Socialist Party at the time of the Russian Revolution, and ever since,was able to clearly state that Russia had not achieved socialism and wasn't going to as it maintained all the features of capitalism mentioned above. The fact that private capitalists did not have monopoly ownership but a centralised state did was merely a case of changing the boss. It is no surprise that the new capitalist class in Russia and the former Eastern Bloc is partly made up of former communist party nomenklatura, as they had been the priviledged class creaming off all the wealth made by Russian workers. There is more recent evidence that a lot of the nomenklatura "retired" by investing their amassed wealth in property, and now live off the proceeds of their Swiss bank accounts.


From 1906 we always pointed out that the Labour Party would fail in trying to achieve socialism by reform, and in 2000 there is no doubt at all that capitalism has reformed the labour party instead as we predicted. nationalisation was for long enough the cry of the labour party and was often seen as socialist. Of course, this is nonsense. And, as in Russia, merely swopping who's boss isn't socialism and it isn't common ownership of the means of production either.(If common ownership existed it was a very strange version as most Russians lived in poverty and under state terror in a country they supposedly "owned")

Tommy Sheridan and Arthur Scargill both call for nationalisation. They must hope you have short memories or that time has added a sepia glow to the nostalgic views that older people have. It is ironic that Scargill, perhaps forgetting the miner's strike of 1984, is advocating nationalisation given that the mining industry was a nationalised one (and what wonderful employers they turned out to be!).

Sheridan, at a recent radical book fair held in Edinburgh outlined his view of socialism which was nationalisation - with the maximum and minimum permitted wages of worker being in the ratio of 4-5:1, he added that this lessening disparity of income was realistic as a society where equality of income existed wasn't realistic.

Besides making him a socialist who doesn't believe in socialism, the society he mentions retains every feature of capitalism mentioned above, and therefore could only ever be a bastardised capitalist society. Even limited equality can not be achieved, while retaining the profit motive -It is economically impossible!


While the trotskyist Scottish Socialist Party is courting the "Old Labour" 'socialist' vote, it has also put forward a whole raft of reformist demands that on paper might seem to be appealing. The only problem is that there is no plan to actually achieve these demands - for the reason they are pretend demands. Trotsky himself called these kind of demands "transitional demands" -the idea being to look at everybody else's demands and make bigger demands so they sound great. Occasionally they might achieve a demand which will make them seem sincere, however the idea isn't to achieve these demands - it is to not achieve them!

This is the Troskyists' master plan to make workers dissatisfied, so the latter will become revolutionary and flock behind their political leadership. In other words the workers are to be the infantry led by the trotskyist generals. And in the worker's state achieved who do you think will be giving the orders and who do you think will be forced to follow them? The resemblance to the dead-end and failed Russian model will be most striking.

Anyone wanting to pursue socialist ideas should be very careful to check out what the parties on the left say and should also check out how democratic these parties aren't! Ask them questions about the above points and find out as a member just how little say you will have compared to the self appointed leaderships! You might ask them why we can be so open and democratic, and they aren't. In fact ask them what socialism is and how society will be organised - if they were socialist they would not be shy about telling you all the details, would they?

The Socialist Party is not on The Left - we wish a society with none of the capitalist features outlined earlier, one typified by real common ownership. Air is commonly owned. It is free. Everyone has equal access to it. Because it is commonly owned no-one has a monopoly on it, and we all just perceive it being there and do not think of ownership of it at all. Thus it will be with everything!

Capitalism can only exist if the mass of the working class support it. Currently they/you do, one way or another. Like the emperor with no clothes, when a majority of people realise that their problems are not resolved by maintaining it, when they stop accepting it and prefer a saner, more human alternative, then we can start seeing and acting on the obvious.