Socialist Party of Harvia

The Socialist Party of Harvia or SPH is a Harvian political party. It was founded in 2010, shortly after the independence of the Harviam Islands from the United States. The two members thus far are George Adams, current PM of the Harvian Islands, and Harry Walton. It is one of the moderate sized parties in the Estates. The party has two Estates Members, out of eight.

The Party of Unity merged with the Socialist Party of Harvia on 29 September 2010. A few weeks after the founding of that Party of Unity in -September 2010- the only party member, Harry Walton, joined the Socialist Party of Harvia, and thus merged his party in the latter one.

Values and society
The SPH defends the integrity of the civil freedoms but also wants more attention and financial support for social issues. According to the party, discrimination should be regarded as a crime. Nonetheless it defends progressive values and is tolerant towards the legalization of abortion and gay rights. The party also defends a strong social security and accessible education and healthcare, wants to raise spending on education and cultural subsidies and considers a non-commercial broadcasting system as a possible tool for the education of society as a whole.

Economy
Economically it wants to find a balance between growth and social justice and defies the neoliberal market dogma. Social security and progressive taxation must be maintained and large capitals need to be taxed at a high rate. The SPH seeks to use nationalized industry and a state bank as tools to guide the economy and financial markets. It also wishes to stimulate consumption of ecological and local products by taxing the import of foreign products. The line of government control is in the party program extended to the environmental issues as the party wants more government involvement in crucial sectors like transportation and energy. It considers quota on fishing and farming as good measures to protect society from high prices and ecological disasters.

Notable members

 * George Adams
 * Harry Walton
 * James Stanton

Ideology of the SPH
The ideology of the SPH is New Harvian Socialism, based on regular socialism.

Introduction on socialism
Socialism is an economic and political theory based on public ownership or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.

In a socialist economic system, production is carried out by a public association of producers to directly produce use-values (instead of exchange-values), through coordinated planning of investment decisions, distribution of surplus, and the use of the means of production. Socialism is a set of social and economic arrangements based on a post-monetary system of calculation, such as labour time or energy units.

Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society. They generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system of exploitation. They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential, and does not utilise technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public. Socialists characterise full socialism as a society no longer based on coercive wage-labour. Reformists and revolutionary socialists disagree on how a socialist economy should be established.

Modern socialism originated in the late 18th-century intellectual and working class political movement that criticised the effects of industrialisation and private ownership on society. Utopian socialists such as Robert Owen (1771–1858), tried to found self-sustaining communes by secession from a capitalist society. Henri de Saint Simon (1760–1825), who coined the term socialisme, advocated technocracy and industrial planning. Saint-Simon, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx advocated the creation of a society that allows for the widespread application of modern technology to rationalise economic activity by eliminating the anarchy of capitalist production. They argued that this would allow for economic output (or surplus value) and power to be distributed based on the amount of work expended in production.

Some socialists advocate complete nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Socialists inspired by the Soviet model of economic development have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production. Others, including Yugoslavian, Hungarian, East German and Chinese communist governments in the 1970s and 1980s, instituted various forms of market socialism, combining co-operative and state ownership models with the free market exchange and free price system (but not free prices for the means of production).

Libertarian socialists (including social anarchists and libertarian Marxists) reject state control and ownership of the economy altogether, and advocate direct collective ownership of the means of production via co-operative workers' councils and workplace democracy.

Contemporary social democrats propose selective nationalisation of key national industries in mixed economies, while maintaining private ownership of capital and private business enterprise.

Socialists Bibliothéque
The SPH publishes books as well as pamphlets. Some of them are socialist classics. The other publications of the SPH Socialists Bibliothéque include books by Harvian socialists. The SPH Socialists Bibliothéque owns the exclusive rights to all this Harvian books.