Educate! Agitate! Organise!

"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

Marx got his socialism from the working class. He provided a scientific critique of capitalism aided by Engels, but so what if his background was originally a bourgeois one. His analysis still stands the test of time. It has led to an advanced capitalist society which is run from top to bottom by the working class. The only thing he got wrong, easily done given capitalism was in its infancy at the time, was the duration of capitalism. The ideological apparatus which served it via education systems, the misrepresentation by political parties utilising working class voting on the promise of reforms. A Citizens Income is being tried out yet it only to be a subsidy for employers who will eventually cut wages.

Capitalism in Britain exists in the context of political democracy, which means that political parties openly supporting capitalism have to be able to command a wide degree of popular support. The Tory Party, which in Britain is the party of Big Business and the rich, cannot just baldly proclaim that it exists to act in the interest of the few before everyone else's. They have to convince people that capitalism is in the general interest. Similarly, the Labour party have to resort to persuasive subterfuge to profess 'socialistic' intentions while actually being a business friendly, capitalism supporting party, to gain the power to govern over workers. Governments don't cause or cure recessions. It is an inevitable part of capitalism. Banks don't cause or cure recessions either. When trade is in a slump they may speculate more (gamble) to keep the pot boiling, in the hope trade picks up, but eventually, it bites them in the ass.

No, the emancipation of the working class is freedom from waged slavery, common ownership of all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, production for use, utilising technological and informational infrastructure to provide self-regulation stock control systems and free access for all within a delegatory democratic administration over resources and not people. A post-capitalist society and damn all to do with, nationalisation, or the state capitalism imposed by the feudal conditions of the , Russian experience.

Socialism cannot be given to -down, nor imposed by some putsch. It is then possible for it to be a peaceful one using the Achilles heel of capitalist democracy, in those countries where the ballot box is the norm.

This time, it won’t be a minority-led revolution like all previous ones, but the last great emancipation of the wage-slaves, by themselves and for themselves against the iniquitous minority ownership. Socialism/Communism are interchangeable terms for a post-capitalist society, where the means of production and distribution are owned in common, by us all and not the state. There are NO means of exchange, as it is a free access society and the absence of a leading economic elite, renders the state also, obsolete. Socialism is a majority led, post-capitalist, production for use, commonly owned, free access, society. Socialism can only be built upon the technological advances of capitalism. It has nothing to do with state ownership, dictatorial or otherwise, but is a commonly owned, production for use, free access, a democratic society run by us all. The only way that the working class – can protect themselves from the adverse effects of globalisation is to get together with their counterparts in other countries to replace global capitalism with global socialism where the Earth’s productive resources will have become the common heritage of all humanity.

Sanders’ or Corbyn's ‘socialist’ revolution is not on offer, nor in their power to gift to us. They are offering reform of capitalism, quite a different proposition. The task of making a socialist revolution is in the hands of the immense majority imbued with the knowledge that capitalism cannot be reformed and it needs to be replaced. For workers everywhere, the solution to their problems lies not in choosing a charismatic populist leader, but in collectively organising to get rid of capitalism and establish socialism. Capitalism is not made any nicer by voting for its continuation under a new government over you. Regardless of it being Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Purple or Tartan. Relegate capitalism to the 'Museum of Antiquity' along with money, nation states, wage slavery and war, by explaining what socialism is, rather than what apologists of capitalism say it is.

"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 Debs

Wee Matt