Get off your knees.

 

RISE UP

Another compilation of comments from the Guardian by Wee Matt

It is not a question of despising the rich, but addressing from whence their riches came. It is a social and political question of whether this allocation of privileged access to wealth, whether through inherited plunder of continents, or the slave trade, or modern waged slavery, by gun or by guile should continue. The Socialist Party doesn't think the capitalist class are scum, although some of them might qualify for this description. Many of them will be decent and honourable people. They are just playing the fortunate hand which they inherit and their education and so on equips them more than adequately to do this. They are schooled to think that this is the best of all possible outcomes, whether laissez faire trickle down or Keynesian re-distributive methods, with a modicum of state regulatory oversight for the greatest possible good for society. The dominant ideology of any society will be that of the ruling class. The raison d'être of capitalism is to accumulate or die within an intensely competitive environment.

 Their self-interest is a class interest even if some do not see it in those stark terms. It is the impersonal anarchy of the competitive global market system which determines embarkation upon ventures with outcomes such as "business by other means" war, mass lay-offs and redundancies, pressure upon labour costs to drive down subsistence levels of the wage slaves in order to render a leaner fitter business model for the purpose of further competition with advantageous outcomes over competitors.

Attempts to reform this will eventually and inevitably, lead to corrections upon the business friendly but welfare subsidised models and a return to the austere conditions of the rapacious austerity model, which will restrict the development of reform, however public spirited and well-meaning the governmental administrations, which arise in response to this. This is not to oppose reforms as such, they are a part of the class struggle after all and gave us the NHS and so on, but to oppose 'Reformism', as being any political solution to the problems of capitalism (war, poverty, waged slavery, inequality etc.) and capitalist accumulation, which can only be at the expense of the wealth producing working class. It is essential that the working class recognise it is in their immediate 'class interest' 99% to take control, of the means of producing and distributing wealth.

 No more money, banks, bankers, politicians and governments lording it over people. This would mean houses built to live in, food to eat, clothing to wear, medicine to treat the sick, rather than for sale on a market with a view of profit. Poverty is relative and absolute. It is an essential component of capitalism. How else will we agree to be wage slaves? Exploitation takes place at the point of production regardless of how well or poorly educated we are. Regardless of the size of the wage or salary.

 It is in the ultimate interest of humanity and the planet and environment, the 100% that this occur, although we do not expect the 1% to see this immediately, but no matter, they are superfluous to the production of wealth. We collectively run capitalism from top to bottom and nothing will stop an idea which time has come. All wealth springs from labour and should return to labour. It is a matter of class interest. We need to become more aware of the forms that conspicuous consumption by the rich take in the new century. It is not a question of envy. All this wealth is derived from the exploitation of the working class, the wealth producers, but who do not own. 

Capitalism and its inevitable concomitants of war, poverty, and planetary despoliation is well past its sell-by date.  Time to establish a post-capitalist production for use, free access world for all of the world’s people. We need to abolish wages and all prices and have production for use, with free access and common ownership. Dissolve all government 'over' the people and elect yourselves to govern over resources. We want the people to empower themselves. We do not seek followers but 'thinkers'.

 Miniscule we may well be, as we want people to educate themselves to aim for socialism for themselves, rather than lead them into being followers, as the Left-wing and capitalist supporting parties seem to do. We tell people 'don't vote for us as a 'protest' vote, only as a recognition of your understanding of the case for socialism.

 Britain's oldest socialist party, the S.P.G.B., has no leaders and all their meetings are open to the public, including Executive Committee meetings. The E.C. act as housekeepers, but do not run or govern the party. Only the members can make policy by individual Party poll. It is effectively ruled by the members, who have to satisfy the party they know what socialism is and is not, before they can join, as each member's vote carries equal weight.

"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.’ Marx and Engels

The Socialist Party is focused upon the solution of socialism, free from the tyranny of markets, waged slavery and private, corporate or state ownership of resources, and 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, rather than a perpetuation of the same old repeated reformist non-solutions. Within Labour and Left parties,you won't have any socialist policy, but a recipe for reforms of capitalism. However well-meaning they are bound to fail. Capitalist politics are designed for the reproduction of capitalist rule.

 To change this we need to move into a post-capitalist narrative, in preparation for a (re-callable) delegated democratic, free access, post capitalist future. Socialism will be a system which would not have money, other than as a curiosity for decorating the living rooms, or in showcases in museums of antiquity, for children to learn how we wealth producers (labour) kept ourselves enslaved within a waged system in which the wealth producers (labour) received a waged ration of the collective produce and the idle parasite class (capitalists) received the bulk of the wealth produced. We collectively 'make' or build, everything. Why do we, the workers, the 99%, 'have to' buy anything, when all wealth comes from labour?

 No form of capitalism can be made to work in the interests of all. It never could be so. It is critically dependent upon the maximisation of exploited labour, from which all wealth derives, including the state, the armed forces, to protect the spoils and engage in competition with other capitalist nations and alliances, for raw materials and to plunder resources to the brink of war and beyond. It is a utopian fantasy that there is such a thing, as a 'fair days pay for a fair days work' or even a 'right to work'. Capitalism nevertheless put in place the technology and the necessity for an educated skilled workforce to run it, within its restricted remit of, production for the profit of the minority.

 But workers now run capitalism from top to bottom and are more than capable of running the new society without elites. So the capitalist class are superfluous to the production process, a mere parasite class, redundant in the process and we can take it all over and have a production for the use of all, free access society with no need to compete with and against others, thus ending the rat race of war and all the other aspects of capitalism. The biggest catastrophe for the labour movement, (as opposed to the Labour Party,) is that the workers elected a capitalist party to reform capitalism, rather than electing themselves to remove capitalism with its inevitable war and poverty. You do not need leaders. It is a capitalist political snare.

"I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands."- Eugene V. Debs

 Workers already run capitalism from top-to-bottom. We can run the new post-capitalist, commonly-owned, free-access society without any hierarchies. Capitalism is not forever. However the fact of it ,is that our unmanageable market-system its instability-prone outcomes, propels capitalist apologists to try and justify its excesses within parameters which ensure its continuation and reproduction. This drains many of their critical capacity to envision the post-capitalist future potential of the whole human species. Competition for markets, trade routes and raw materials with its attendant ever present threats of war, big and small, gluts, depression, booms and busts, redundancy and overwork, poverty actual, absolute and relative, in the midst of potential of plenty. Production for profit of the few, can be swiftly be replaced by production for use by all.

 Freedom from the anarchic tyranny of markets, in conditions of waged slavery for the profit of a few, replaced by production for use by free workers, to satisfy the needs of humanity. Rationed access by prices, for the producers of wealth, replaced by free access according to self-determined needs. Privileged ownership by individuals, corporation, states replaced by common ownership by us all. Government 'over' us to protect the privileges of the few and limit our democratic impulses within those which best serve the continued dominance of privilege, rather than the democratic freedoms of a delegated administration over things and resources by true social equals. If you are born poor you will die poor, generally speaking and relatively speaking, with few exceptions. If you are born into the parasite capitalist owning class, you will die richer than when you were born, with few exceptions.

Capitalism cannot be regulated, reformed and cured of its booms, busts, wars, and inequality of outcomes, as it thrives upon those, as essential for its existence. We have not experimented with socialism/communism. But ‘They’ have experimented with either developing capitalism in a state capitalist format, (successfully being seen as a threat, to the other older capitalist models, not in any ideological sense but as competing trade or competing geopolitical threats to the dominant existing ones) or experimented as a Utopian/Owenite style meddling/tinkering with capitalism, in the social democratic interventionist regulationist models of the Labour party or Scandinavian parties, in the hope of achieving more equitable outcomes. Nor can it be captured by vanguardist elements in Jacobin/Lenin leaderist style revolutions, (leadership is a capitalist political principle) as this folly will only repeat previous systems of elite class dominance over the mass of populations.

 But capitalism can and must, be superseded by a new society, emerging with its technological capacities for production intact, with the immense majority in favour, consciously opting for a real functioning democracy of social equals, in relation to the ownership and control of societal outputs of production. Of course we can delegate specialist functions rather than spend time nattering, but the delegates must be instantly recallable.

 The world’s workers not only produce all of the world’s wealth, but we run capitalism from top to bottom. We manage it and make decisions on behalf of the minority capitalist class. We are more than capable of running the new society, utilising its informational technology, in conditions of common ownership of the means of production and distribution and collective common ownership of the resulting output of production for use, within a genuine democratic framework of genuine social equality, with free access to the collective produce. Those post- capitalist conditions of real social and economic freedom for all, will ensure a flowering of humanity, the advancement of creative and scientific solutions, such as the world has never seen. We have a world to win.

The socialist model is not Utopian but a matter of class interest. The last great emancipation will be that of the wage slaves, as we have a free access world to make and win. As William Morris explained:

“One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.”

The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise. Stand tall, Look around and Demand change – Your survival depends on it.  

Wee Matt

Edinburgh Br.