Starmer's War
"Sir" Kier Starmer Leader of her majesty's loyal opposition is having a good war. He wants to be more aggressive towards Putin than Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He wants more sanctions and he wants RT Russia, a crude Russian propaganda channel broadcasting to the UK, to be shut down.
During the Second World War even socialists, on principle, opposed the Home Secretary, Mr. Morrison, suppressing the Communist Party's DAILY WORKER. At the time we said:
"The S.P.G.B. has its own, quite different, point of view. True to our basic principle we do not support suppression of opinion, however false we believe that opinion to be" (SOCILAIST STANDARD 1941 no 438).
Starmer sees himself as the new Clement Attlee. It was Atlee that led Labour into the Second World War, a war which spilt the blood of so many millions of working class.
Starmer's slogan 'Labour the Party of Nato' is an organisation that killed thousands in wars in Serbia, Yugoslavia, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. Starmer condemns anyone who criticises Nato as an aggressive force as a 'supporter of Putin'. Starmer does not want Nato criticised because it opens up the question just who and what does Nato set out to protect. Labour Party MPs, on pain of expulsion, are not allowed to attack Nato (INDEPENDENT March 1 2022).
Starmer claims it is "false equivalence" to make a comparison between the actions of Russia and Nato. Socialists make no equivalence. Nato is an institution defending the interest of Western capitalism. It can be criticised on its own terms historically and by its actions, without any reference to Russia. And Russia's land grab of Ukraine can be criticised by socialists without any reference to Nato.
All capitalist countries are in competition with each other and capitalism causes war. Starmer's own action of censorship of his parliamentary colleagues only shows how baseless the political concept of leadership is. Socialists do not have leaders telling them what think and how to act.
And it is not in existence to protect the working class. Nato is an offensive organisation that protects the profit motive, the capitalist class who make up its membership and the private ownership of the means of production and distribution to the exclusion of the majority of society. Workers have no country. They have no country to fight for. Workers have no trade routes to protect, they have no ownership of oil and gas, and they have no ownership of spheres of strategic interest.
Starmer wants to prevent anyone telling a different narrative to his own. He does not want any serious discussion about how we came to these present state affairs. He does not want questions asked about Nato, the historical context of past wars which Nato were involved in. He is no democrat.
Socialists do not take sides. We oppose capitalism: the capitalism of Starmer and the capitalism of Putin. Capitalism and war are inextricably linked. You cannot have capitalism without war. We take no sides in capitalism's wars. Only socialism can end war. And this is the struggle socialists have entered into.
Socialists have our own class interest and class struggle to attend to. Our propaganda is towards persuading the working class to become socialists and democratically and politically replace world capitalism with world socialism. That is, to establish the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by all of society.
In this we follow the advice of Marx and Engels. In the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO they wrote that although the class struggle is between a world capitalist class and a world socialist class:
"The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle maters with its bourgeoisie"
And that includes the political agents of the capitalist class like "sir" Keir Starmer, the Labour Party and the institutions which protect the private ownership of the means to life like Nato.
Starmer is an opportunist who thinks a slavish defence of Nato will give him the votes of the non-socialist working class. He wraps himself in the Union Jack. He will have no hesitation, like his predecessor Tony Blair, of sending workers to kill and be killed by other workers. He has no doubts if push came to shove he would press the nuclear button
He has all the credentials of becoming a future Prime Minister.
Object and Declaration of Principles
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 (ie 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 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 organise 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 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.