Socialist Party Manifesto
Foreword
The MHOC's left has been divided between those who would attempt to ameliorate the effects of capitalism, and those who too readily resort to rhetoric and idealism. In response to this quagmire, the Socialist Party was formed. Instead of attempting to apply balms to soothe the inevitable dehumanising effects of capitalism, the Socialist Party has a clear, fixed aim of establishing an equitable and fair economic system. Rather than becoming mired in unending semantics and unworkable policy, we will fight to implement a sustainable and achievable path to socialism.
Ultimately, we seek a post-capitalist economy brought about through the expansion of the public sector to include all essential services and vital industries, the democratisation of the private sector through models such as cooperatives and the restoration of the working class’s right and ability to forge progress for themselves. Unlike some other parties of the left, we believe there is no reform, no band-aid for capitalism that will ever make it an acceptable or tolerable way to organise our society. This is a goal that will take many, many years of work to achieve, over this time we must not forget the essential programs used to lessen the damage of capitalism on the poor and vulnerable in our society for fear of being labeled ‘moderates’. While others may disregard the immediate crisis in their dogmatic fervour, the Socialist Party will not.
This progression must be achieved through consensus and democracy if it is ever to be lasting or maintained without totalitarianism. Our manifesto represents the first essential steps towards this ultimate goal. A lucid vision for next parliament, and a no less clearer vision for years ahead.
Economy
The Socialist Party firmly believes that capitalism is unsustainable. Sooner or later it will catastrophically collapse. If our society is to survive this we must begin a transition away from it now, so we can control our own future, not leave it at the hands of volatile international economic forces.
However, there is only so much Parliament, as it is now, can do about this. Capitalism cannot be entirely legislated away. Instead the Government must not only focus on bringing major industry into state hands, so they can be more easily transitioned into the new economy, but allow workers in other sectors to be at the forefront of their own progress. An overhaul of union regulations and internal democracy is essential for this to happen.
Ultimately we must build an economy that works for society, not a society that endlessly works for a bigger and bigger GDP, while seeing little of the rewards.
Therefore, we will:
- Repeal the anti-trade union laws.
- Legislate to ensure that worker control, syndicalism and co-operatives are able to become an essential part of our economy.
- Implement state-led nationalisation of vital industries and services. Ensuring fair and efficient resources can be supplied to all people with a view toward making these industries sustainable, environmentally-responsible and democratic.
- Facilitate nationalised or co-operatively led alternatives to the private sector where a state monopoly is not required.
- End the overriding view of the status of GDP as the measure for state success. We will help implement an economy and society which values leisure time, happiness and human needs over simple increase in wealth, an increase progressively only enjoyed by the already wealthy.
Tax and Spending
The Socialist party pledges to change the current tax and spending regime so that it fulfills the demands of a transitioning economy. We need to move away from the trickle down low tax economics which have failed us over the last 30 years and back towards a system that fully funds services, redistributes wealth and is based on people paying based on their ability and receiving based on their need. This reorganisation will be required to fund the changes needed to progress towards a post-capitalist society, but taxation, like many current structures in our society, could ultimately be allowed to wither away once the transition is complete.
Therefore, we will:
- Introduce tax incentives for co-operatives and worker controlled companies/workplaces.
- Raise the top rate of tax back up to 90%.
- Substantially increase inheritance tax.
- Take a severe stance on tax havens, including use of sanctions.
- End the Government’s indifference towards towards tax evasion and avoidance by wealthy individuals and corporations.
- Reform the whole tax system to make tax avoidance harder, making the system as a whole simpler.
- Increase VAT on luxury goods.
- Substantially reduce VAT on essential items.
- Work through EU and other International Institutions to increase the financial transaction tax scheme in terms of % and subscribed members that the first MHOC Government joined.
- Abolish the patronising and ineffective tax incentives for married couples.
Welfare
The Socialist Party does not believe that the soothing of capitalism's violence is the end goal, however in our current economy and world it is vital that those most vulnerable be protected and allowed to succeed and thrive. We must not allow high-minded theories on the macro state of our economy and the fate of capitalism to forget the immediate crisis of poverty. The United Kingdom has created a vast amount of wealth, and is one of the richest countries in the world. The Socialist Party believes that this wealth which has been created by society should benefit society. We must reform the Welfare system to reflect this key belief and prevent the ongoing persecution of the poor and vulnerable.
Therefore, we will:
- End the use of sanctions.
- Replace 'Job Seekers Allowance' with 'Unemployment Pay'.
- Increase Unemployment Pay in line with the minimum wage.
- Make entitlement to Unemployment Pay dependent on proof of unemployment only.
- Re-introduce Emergency Housing Fund.
- Require that employers who sack workers contribute to their Unemployment Pay.
- Turn ESA and Disability benefit into top-up benefits to Unemployment Pay rather than stand alone.
- Initiate a pilot program of Universal Basic Income.
Health
Free, universal access to healthcare is one of the most fundamental rights, and greatest successes of the left in the UK. It must be protected. However, this does not simply mean opposing the right's attacks, we must also recognise that the NHS is in crisis and must be reformed and rebuilt if it is to survive. Complacency would lead to collapse just as surely as the implementation of a right-wing agenda.
Therefore, we will:
- Reverse Tory and Labour privatisations such as the internal market in England and Wales.
- Finally give the NHS the funding it needs to provide high quality care for all.
- Target funding at long and medium term development of best practice, IT systems and new treatments, all of which must be done now if the NHS is to have a long term future beyond simply lurching from crisis to crisis, winter to winter.
- Re-integrate the social and health services and similarly restore the latter's funding, so no longer are hospital beds filled by patients awaiting appropriate home care and no longer are the disabled and elderly forced into hospital because they couldn't get the preventative care they needed at home, saving the NHS millions.
- Restore the focus of nursing as carers, not admin staff or doctor substitutes. We must also encourage more people become nurses if we are to meet the massive increase in staffing levels that is required.
Housing
The right to decent quality, free housing is among the most important things any Government could provide. For too long, the ideological dogma of the right and timidity of the left have deprived us of this. For too long has housing construction been allowed to plummet by Labour and the Conservatives for fear of angering property owners. However, while we pursue these long term goals, we must not forget the increasing number of renters, forced out of the housing market by other parties' complacency. The UK has some of the weakest renters' protections in Europe. This must be fixed immediately, before it becomes a crisis.
Therefore, we will:
- Repeal the Right to Buy provisions that ban councils from using house sale profits for construction.
- Commit huge Government investment to new, affordable housing with the eventual aim of free housing for whoever needs it.
- Transform renter protections, including limiting the amount landlords can increase rent and restricting how and when tenants can be evicted. The Government must also ensure a certain quality of house and maintenance is provided.
- Return rights to squatters to help deal with the immediate, looming problem of homelessness in the face of second, third and fourth homes, of housing as an investment, not a home. This is an illogical, inefficient distribution of resources characteristic to capitalism.
- Repeal the illogical bedroom tax, that tries to force people into smaller homes that simply don't exist due to the appalling housing construction rate.
- Introduce controls on property purchases in certain housing markets, such as London's, to put a halt to their dramatic, dangerous overheating.
Education
The Socialist Party believes that the sort of education that our society provides its citizens shapes the future economic, social, cultural and political outlook of that society. We all experience the negatives and positives of the education we provide for our children in common. We must not, as has become common in the modern political environment, forget about the rights of society in the sole pursuit of the rights of the individual. Society has a right to protect itself from the dangerous effects of inequality, and it is one we must not forget. If we allow a powerful elite to exploit our education system for their own self interest then we all suffer. If we allow our education system to be reduced to a conveyor belt for our economic system we all suffer. If we allow our schools to become a place in which expression and exploration are stifled then it is society at large whose creative abilities are castrated.
Therefore, we will:
- Bring all schools under the control of their local Education Authority within a year to restore democratic control of our children’s education.
- Replace tuition fees with a progressive tax.
- Reform the admissions system so that every school’s population is as representative of entire country as possible.
- Create a more balanced national curriculum that allows pupils to discover their true interests and talents, while also learning more about the real world in addition to traditional subjects.
- Institute a more flexible approach to exams that allows children to choose a method that they are most suited to.
- Reduce the amount of exams pupils have to take.
Energy and Environment
Capitalism has done great damage to our environment. Uncontrollable use of fossil fuels and consumption of the world's resources will lead our entire society into ecological disaster if we do not revolutionise the way we produce and live. Capitalism does not have the means to avert this crisis, we must look to something new.
Therefore, we will:
- Nationalise much of the Energy Sector so we can get to grips with our fossil fuel usage and make real progress towards clean energy sources. This will also end the fuel poverty plaguing our society, greatly exacerbated by the corporate greed of the energy cartel.
- Dramatically increase funding for research in clean energy, production processes and transport.
- Complete the nationalisation of public transport, not only to provide the essential right of all to free transport, but so it can be quickly and efficiently transformed to make use of new, cleaner technologies.
- Prioritise social, environmental and community wishes over financial interests in future usage of land such as brown field sites.
Equality
Our society has been built on hierarchy and inequality. We see that the capitalist class society enforces and maintains oppressive powers structures and relies on an unfair and unequal relation between man and woman and an outspread racism that expresses itself in imperialist wars and discrimination. Therefore, we recognise that any successful feminist and anti-racist movement must have a foundation in the struggle against capitalism. But just as equality movements must be anti-capitalist, so must anti-capitalism learn from feminist and queer movements. There is much from feminist theory in particular we can use in our efforts to end class society, particularly that if any effort to end any inequality or discrimination is to be successful, as intersectionality theory teaches us, it must be an effort targeted at and mindful of oppression in all its forms. An overwhelming focus on class to the neglect of everything else will never yield the harmonious society, free of division, that we seek.
Therefore, we will:
- Encourage the deconstruction of our current attitude to gender, where both men and women are expected to play certain roles and behave in certain ways, and are shamed for failing to do so.
- Fight to end inaccurate and divisive binary oppositions such as straight or gay, man or woman.
- Legislate to tackle discrimination in the workplace and public life.
- Require all schools to provide the necessary support for minority pupils, and that all pupils are equipped to deal with their own differences and of those around them, as modern society demands.
- Challenge all divisive and hateful rhetoric pushed by the right, as the left establishment have failed to do.
- Bring in equal rights for non-binary individuals to put an end to legal and societal discrimination. This includes but is not limited to marriage equality and workplace discrimination in the workplace.
- Advocate a transition from the use of the term LGBT to that of GRSM (Gender, Romantic and Sexual Minorities) to foster inclusivity and public awareness.
Defence, Trade and Foreign Policy
The UK's foreign policy has eternally been focused on imperial British interests at all and any costs. Interventions such as Iraq, to install friendly governments and propagate Western power, foreign aid used only as a tool of bribery to create favourable conditions for UK corporations. But also have the policies of much of left and right have been simplistic and ill-considered. Walling ourselves off, eschewing any and all aid for the rest of the world, does a great disservice to the developing countries that we have built our prosperity on the backs of, and the regions we left war-torn and strife-ridden in the previous century. We must forge a new foreign policy with the interests of the poor and oppressed of the world, whose hard work for little pay continues to fuel our global capitalist system, at its centre.
We must also not forget the EU, that currently dictates so much of the UK’s policy on this issue. We respect the result of MHOC’s recent referendum decision to remain in the EU, but remain highly skeptical of the EU’s ability to address its democratic deficit and institutional neoliberalism evidenced in its pushing of austerity, meddling in its member states’ budgets and negotiation of nightmarish trade deals such as the TTIP behind closed doors.
Therefore, we will:
- Fight to reform trade deals to end the exploitation of the developing world.
- Oppose all intervention that has only our own selfish interests at its heart.
- Push for reform of the EU’s processes to become more democratic and to change its ties to institutions like the IMF and the behaviour of the ECB.
- Reform the military and reduce its budget to a more appropriate size.
- Push for nuclear disarmament, unilateral or otherwise, to make the world a safer place for us all. The longer any state holds nuclear weapons, the more likely they are to fall into terrorist hands. Terrorists who do not care about our retaliation, who are immune to our deterrent.
- Focus on trade agreements with worker co-operatives and nations displaying dedicated commitment to them and workers' rights, and giving favourable deals in such instances.
- Ensure that our trade partners and allies protect the universal human rights that everybody deserves.
- Support democratic and humane governments and institutions around the world, to ensure that all people are represented and not oppressed.
- Withdraw all military personnel, equipment and facilities from our bases in Cyprus and Brunei.
Democratic and Constitutional Reform
The Socialist Party believes in the need for greater democratic control of the state by the people. There is currently a democratic deficit in which power and influence are determined by the weight of a person’s wallet rather than the weight of their argument. The Socialist Party will seek to end this and increase political participation and knowledge in all corners of the United Kingdom.
Therefore, we will:
- Fight for a more proportional electoral system.
- Support regions’ and countries’ rights to determine their local governments’ powers and even independence from Westminster through referenda.
- Devolve more powers to local authorities.
- Reform competition legislation so that the whole national media can't be used to push the agenda of a few elite.
- Improve ethical standards for the media to ensure the voters are as well informed as possible, which is essentially to any democracy.
- Create a completely state funded party system.
- Reform the House of Lords into a fully elected or guild upper chamber.
- Improve regulation of lobbying and ban second jobs for MPs.
- Lower the voting age to 16.
- Create Compulsory education about politics in the UK from the age of 11.
- Lower the pay of all politicians in line with the average London wage.
