Bread and Circuses

 Abolish the wages and prices system. There is no such thing as a fair day’s pay. Wages are only ever a rationing of access to the massive wealth collectively produced. Wage workers are exploited at the point of production for the surplus value which they produce in order for the parasite capitalist class to amass huge profits. Businesses such as Celtic football club are no different in this respect regardless of the founding ethos. Sectarian divisions in Scotland and elsewhere have workers at each other’s throats rather than pursuing their common interest, which is getting rid of the parasitic capitalist system and establishing a free access, moneyless, government less, social system. Such are the modern versions of bread and circuses. Establish common ownership of all wealth production and distribution rendering boardrooms obsolete.

"When sport is considered only in economic terms and consequently for victory at every cost, it risks reducing athletes to mere trading material from whom profits are extracted” Pope Francis

The State is the governance and control of the vast majority by a dominant minority class in its interests. Working people have no country. It is in the interests of the vast majority to do away with this ownership and control of the earth's resources by this parasitic minority, whether control is exercised through national, regional, or global coercive, i.e. governing apparatus. The fact that this government is by assent through the chimera of the elective process, into which the rich buy privileged input, doesn't remove the domination of the vast majority and their compulsion into conditions of wage slavery in order to profit the capitalist class. We have more in common with workers in England, Poland, Bangladesh etc. than we will ever have with the parasite class who wish to exploit us. Instead of opting for government over us for a pittance of a wage or salary, opt for the whole world to be owned in common and controlled democratically without governments, nation states or politicians. It is your world to be won, make common cause with your fellow worker, don't slavishly settle for anything less.

It would be nice if struggles for national independence could magically result in a classless society, but that's, unfortunately, not the way societies progress. Scottish capitalism is not only tied to the British capitalism but also to international capitalism. Any kind of Scottish state that didn't offer benefits to corporations would see capital flight and a serious drop in its economy -- the Scottish socialist economy is a myth. Nationalism just replaces one set of bosses with another, and also helps to divide the working class. As if an "independent" Scotland would be any less affected by the world slump or being sacked by a Scottish boss be more agreeable. Will a social revolution come about through constitutional moves towards independence? No! All moves towards independence have entrenched the power of the Scottish elite. The SNP have been bank-rolled by millionaires like Tom Farmer and Brian Soutar. National independence is a chimera. Scottish independence is a distraction from building working class solidarity against capitalism. Nationalism is, at best, a dead-end and, at worst, reactionary. The socialist objective is to liberate humanity, not liberate nations.

The phrase ‘Nation-State’ itself assumes that the states into which the world is divided are the political expression of pre-existing ‘nations’. In fact, it’s the other way round. It is the ‘nation’ that is the creation of the state. States inculcate into their subjects the idea that they form a community with a common interest and that the state represents that interest. The result is that people come to refer to themselves and other subjects of the same state as ‘we’ and ‘us’.

Real socialists do not speak of ‘we’ and ‘us’ in relation to so-called ‘Nation-States’ in which they happen to have been born or live. We know that, in every state, there are two classes with opposed interests: the class of those who own and control the means of production and the rest, the vast majority, who do not and, to live, have to sell their mental and physical energies to those who do for a wage or a salary.

It is not difficult to believe that the political scum of all parties, very public stance against eastern European (aka Roma) immigration is fuelled largely by a desire to appeal to the populist vote and is a demagogic tactic aimed at seducing the Far Right. Each year we are reminded by the government of the day to remember the Jewish Holocaust, yet the Roma Devouring stays forgotten. August the 2nd is the Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, marking the start of the liquidation by the Nazis of the ’gypsy’ camp at Auschwitz. The silence of British politicians was deafening. Our rulers have a long history of camouflaging the failures of capitalism, particularly in times of economic slump, by seeking out scapegoats.

Wage and salary workers in one state have the same basic interest as their counterparts in other states. We are all members of the world working class and have a common interest in working together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the globe will have become the common heritage of all the people of the world and used for the benefit of all. In a free access socialist society there is no need for a capitalists, or their policing governments, as the capitalists produce nothing and only bring exploitation to the table. Workers produce all wealth and are rationed in their access to it by wages. They build the houses produce food, clothing, shelter, anything you care to name. The Great Money Trick chapter in the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists describes the robbery. Capitalism is a system of organised scarcity. Governments of all stripes attempt to manage this, but the fact is the system manages them. We can't have the 'fairer capitalism ' of social reformers. It is an anarchic market system which will waste human resources as soon as it is necessary for shoring up profits. Production is always choked off before human needs can be satisfied. Indeed the satisfaction of human needs isn't the purpose of capitalism. Profit is. Capitalism can't be reformed any meaningful way. We all must seize hold of our personal responsibility to work for its demise and replacement with a world of free access, wage-less price-free socialism, without competition, governments or nation states eye-balling each other up over control of resources on land under sea and elsewhere in space. Only with a world of common ownership and democratic control of all wealth, food, clothing, housing, fuel and all resources based around the tenet of, "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” can humankind become truly human. The fact that present society is not one of conscious motivation, directed towards social ends, but of profit motivation, places grave restrictions on its productive powers and hence consuming powers. As Marx points out,

"... It is not a fact that too much wealth is produced. But it is true that there is a periodical over-production of wealth in its capitalistic and self-contradictory form. . . . The capitalist mode of production for this reason meets with barriers at a certain scale of production which would be inadequate under different conditions. It comes to a standstill at a point determined by the production and realisation of profit, not by the satisfaction of social needs." Capital, Vol. 3.

This is why Marx indicted capitalism as a system of organised scarcity. Only you can end it and establish a classless society with politicians redundant along with their mentors. Capitalism cannot meet the needs of the majority of us, the workers (or proletariat) of the world, no matter how progressive it might become in the future.

It is not 'our' welfare state but the capitalist class' welfare state. It was set up to maintain the reserve labour force for when an economic downturn occurred. Cradle to grave provision happened out of political expediency to buy off discontent. Especially after the war. Its cost is a burden on the capitalist class. If you work for a wage or salary your tax is deducted from the employers wage bill, what you receive is the bottom line. The nominal National Insurance and other contributions workers’ pay are a con in order to gull you into the impression it is 'your'' welfare state. Your target is the capitalist class who have collectively reneged on the promised provision, the employers who have a done deal on pensions, often in lieu of wage settlements in the past and now protest their unaffordability. Your discontent should be channeled into making common cause with workers of all lands and none to remove the parasitic capitalist class, who produce nothing but live off the fat of the land everywhere. Abolish the wages system and establish a global, free access socialist system where production is for use, without rationing of access by prices, wages or private ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth. Let all wealth be owned in common and controlled democratically without elites, by the whole population.