Author: alanjjohnstone
The Ideas of the WSM
Socialists know that it is difficult for our fellow-workers to recognise and acknowledge their servile status because wage-slavery is cloaked with many disguises. The absence of legal forms of slavery and serfdom serve to hide the true nature of modern slavery. And because the capitalist class with their media of indoctrination, it is indeed difficult to find the truth….
Practical Socialism: Its Principles and Methods
The concluding chapter of “Practical Socialism — Its Principles and Methods” (2006) by Pieter Lawrence It has been said that the Capitalist system digs its own grave; it does not! The only way it will be consigned to history is when a majority of people take political action to end it. But what the capitalist system does…
End a Divided World
As wage workers, the vast majority of us have endless economic problems to worry about — pay and prices, rents and mortgages, sickness, unemployment, old age. Even more worrisome can seem the large and perhaps overwhelming problems facing us as human beings: war, poverty and the compulsive destruction of our own planet. There are numerous…
No to Nationalistic Nonsense
“The revolutionary proletariat will have neither to keep its ancient nationalities nor to constitute new ones, because by becoming free it will abolish classes: the world will be its fatherland.” – Paul Lafargue Socialist history show that the ideals behind it has never fully left the consciousness of working people. We continue to suffer exploitation, in the workplace…
2021 May Day Statement
Once again we celebrate May Day, the international festival of the working class. These May Day celebrations are small in comparison to the great numbers and strength of our class. But throughout the world, in every major industrial centre, workers are uniting. Today is our day, the day when the solidarity of the working people is expressed…
A Ray of Socialist Hope
The World Socialist Movement (WSM) was founded to strive for a better world with an economy based on common ownership. Today, however, socialism has been equated with state wage-slavery. The absence of private companies or individual capitalists, being substituted by government ownership or control, is now viewed as “socialism”. The term “socialism” has long been associated with the USSR and although it was never socialist, we keep on…
The Hope of Humanity
“The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not you and I.” Karl Liebknecht Whoever travels across the world can see the magnificence of its beauty and will also encounter its bountiful natural resources in sufficient abundance to adequately supply the needs of all. It could be a paradise for people. But our planet is not a paradise for the…
One World, One Humanity
Society cannot exist without the working-class. It is the working-class which puts into operation the world’s formidable know-how and technology. Yet the riches collectively produced are appropriated by individual capitalists. Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. We are not reformers — we are revolutionaries.We mean by revolutionary the capture of political power by the working class as…
COMMUNISM, SOCIALISM: ANY DIFFERENCE?
The World Socialist Movement, like Marx and Engels, use the names “communism” and “socialism” to mean the same relation of production. Marx and Engels had used the two names alternately to signify the post-revolutionary democratic world system of “cooperative”, “communal”, or universal ownership. Why they preferred communist identity at the beginning of their studies and organization whilst socialist at the end remains well stated in…
One Humanity. A World Without Borders
We live on a planet which has the potential to adequately feed, house and provide clean water and decent medical care for every single man, woman and child. The resources exist to banish poverty and squalor forever. World socialism could end hunger immediately, and provide the conditions for material security for all within a very short time. Our capabilities are…