Showing posts with label Socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Socialism. Show all posts

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Karl Kautsky


Once more the Inveresk Street Ingrate blogger has uploaded a Stephen Coleman talk on socialist thinkers , which can be downloaded via the link here .

The subject is Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Critique of Religion

Friday, August 10, 2007

Old and out of the way

Just how society treats our elderly is becoming cruelly more and more apparent . We had this report , a 108 year old woman having to wait a year and half for a hearing aid to improve the quality of her short remaining life and now we read about this care home evicting an 103 year old woman because she is requiring too much care , or so they say , in a squabble over how much she has to pay for the nursing care . Abbeymoor's owner, Mark Sutters, told the Nottingham Evening Post that the home could not continue to "subsidise" Mrs Collins's care.

Local authority and care services minister Ivan Lewis said " I am deeply concerned at the attempt by the home owner to use Mrs Collins as a pawn in a funding dispute. Whatever the difficulties, such treatment of a 103-year-old cannot be tolerated in a modern care system which has dignity and respect for older people at its heart."

Esme Collins was told to leave after 10 years at Abbeymoor nursing home in Worksop, because its owners refused to back down in a dispute over funding her care.

Age Concern has campaigned for the closing of a legal loophole that left the pensioner without the protection of human rights legislation.
"Forcing an older person to leave their care home can have a devastating impact on their physical and emotional health. We urge the government to act quickly to give the protection of the Human Rights Act to people living in private care homes to help prevent such situations."

Socialist Courier fully sympathises with such sentiments but to be perfectly blunt , it is just one very small example of the heartless nature of a society where everything has a price , even life and everything is valued in prices , even people . Events such as this will not stop until capitalism is superceded by a truly caring , sharing society such as Socialism

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The Big Dream


The Herald carries the story of Glasgow in 2020 with seven possible future scenarios envisaged by Demos, the think-tank, after spending 18 months speaking to 5000 Glaswegians , at a cost of £200000 . If a true reflection of peoples thoughts of the the future , it is grim reading but perhaps also incorporating a glimmer of hope .

The seven speculated future scenarios are :-

The Two Speed City


By 2020 economic and social divisions have become so entrenched that Glasgow is virtually two cities living side by side in blissful ignorance of each other. One half believes that ‘everyone is middle class now’, that talent and skill automatically rises to the top and that anyone who does not believe this is choosing to leave themselves behind. They use special toll roads, air conditioned walkways and luxury water-taxis carrying people about quickly and cocooned from the rest of the city.
The other half thinks that living in social housing estates and existing in temporary jobs or on state benefits are the way of life of the majority. The excluded have by and large opted out of voting, politics and notions of citizenship and have plenty of time to do nothing or stay at home wasting away their lives.

The Lonely City


The modernist city lives on in an atomised, individualised, hi-tech future. People are free to create their own lives on their own terms. They work, play and socialise through their computers not needing to interact with anyone who isn’t just like themselves. This is a city where people seek meaning, satisfaction and freedom through technology and consumption . Interactions with neighbours, people on the street and in shops have become an optional extra.

The Hard City

Trust and any sense of community have long since disappeared from the city. Government intervention extends into citizen’s lives as never before, enforcing curfews on entire families, banning smoking in the home, outlawing the use of petrol driven cars. Children who break rules at schools are interned in boot-camps outside the city, known as Ned-Camps. Teenagers are temporarily sterilised to prevent teenage pregnancy and ASBO kids are named and shamed during prime-time TV ad-breaks. Neighbourhoods can take part in street-by-street competitions text-voting out their favourite nuisance neighbour, who is then deprived of any rights to benefits or housing .Bigger and bigger sticks are needed to get people to respond and behave in the way government wants them to. Bigger and bigger sticks are needed to get people to respond and behave in the way government wants them to.

But the possibilities imagined were not all negative . People do want a better world for themselves and their children .

The Soft City

By 2020, the city’s problems of drug addiction, violence and anti-social behaviour had continued to grow unchecked but instead of masculine attitudes, behaviour and values -toxic masculinity - women campaigners and men prepared to align with the excluded and change. Women in 2020 form the vanguard of the new cultural epoch: setting the scene working in different, more co-operative ways, but many men enthusiastically sign up too, liberated from the pressures of machismo and competition.Football is no longer so important, but merely one sport amongst many.

The Dear Green City

Glasgow’s green revolution sees exercise bikes hooked up to generators in schools, offices and homes, while windmills and solar panels top most buildings. The city leads the promotion of clean energy and sustainable living: exporting eco-friendly energy to the rest of Scotland and the world.

The Slow City

By the early years of the 21st century, more Glasgow voices increasingly question the city’s preoccupation with shopping begin to suffer consumption fatigue, and slowly renounce the addiction and thrill of compulsive shopping. By 2020 many have abandoned preoccupations with wealth, conspicuous consumption and rewarding talent with money. Instead there is a widespread sense that there are more profound issues at stake: finding some deeper meaning to life, investing time and love in bringing up children, caring for neighbours, the vulnerable and the old.

Kaleidoscope City

Glasgow has exploded into a kaleidoscope of diversity and visible vibrancy. The city is known for its open doors policy to newcomers and its tolerant cosmopolitan atmosphere. Waves of newcomers have arrived and been absorbed: the Poles, the Bulgarians, the Romanians, the Somalis, the Iraqis, the Lebanese. Old divisions and identities are barely remembered by the younger generations and new Glaswegians .

We of the Socialist Party will add our own option for the people of Glasgow to choose


Socialist City

Men and women of Glasgow , in co-operation with the peoples of the rest of the world , taking charge and taking responsibilty for their daily lives through a net-work of inter-linked decentralised democratically-controlled committees , based on local neighbourhoods and places of work , rising to regional and then world-wide administrations , which will decide production and distribution requirements of society , based not on the ability to pay -but upon need . The abolition of money . The abolition of prices and wages . The abolition of private and State property. A Glasgow of free access .

Abundance instead of Scarcity .




Thursday, April 26, 2007

Nats Whae Hae?

Nationalism is anathema to socialists. Wage and salary workers have no country. We have more in common with people like ourselves in other countries than with the privileged owning class of the country where we happen to live and work. The world-wide working class has a common interest, to end its exploitation and solve its problems, to join together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the planet will have become the heritage of all, so that there can be production to meet needs and not for profit. One world, one people,where cultural differences will still be celebrated, but where we'll all be citizens of the world.

It is clear, then, why socialists don't take sides in the debate, aired in this month's elections to the Scottish Parliament, about whether it is better for workers there to be ruled from Edinburgh (as the SNP says) or from London with a little help from Edinburgh (as say the British Nationalists of the Labour, Liberal and Tory parties).

The SNP argues that the problems facing workers in Scotland are due to "Westminster rule". If only there was an independent Scotland, they say, separate from the rest of Britain, then there would be full employment, higher wages, job security, better state benefits, a healthy health service and all the other things politicians promise at election times. This view is echoed by the so-called Scottish"Socialist" Party and Tommy Sheridan's Solidarity (-with -Sheridan) party. But it is patently absurd.

This would be a purely political, not to say mere constitutional, change which would leave the basic economic structure of society unchanged. There would still be a privileged class owning and controlling the means of production with the rest having to work for them for a living. Just as now.

Maybe the pillar boxes would be painted tartan but that would be about all.

An independent Scottish government would still have to operate within the constraints of the world capitalist system. It would still have to ensure that goods produced in Scotland were competitive on world markets and that capitalists investing in Scotland were allowed to make the same level of profits as they could in other countries.

In other words, it would still be subject to the same economic pressures as the existing London-based government to promote profits and restrict wages and benefits. And as the government of Ireland,which broke away from the United Kingdom in 1922 and where things have never been any different. Not even the national state-capitalism proposed by the SSP and Sheridan would make any difference. As in Cuba, exports would still have to be competitive and popular consumption restricted to achieve this.

Since it is this class-divided, profit-motivated society that is thecause of the problems workers face in Scotland, as in England and in the rest of the world, so these problems will continue, regardless of whether Scotland separates from or remains part of the United Kingdom.

The SNP is promising a referendum in 2010. What an irrelevant waste of time and energy that would be, but it's their alibi. If they get to form the regional government of Scotland their excuse for not delivering (as capitalism won't let them) will be that their hands were tied and that their promises will only be able to be honoured after separation. Some of their naïve, lower-level members may believe thus, but we don't think too many other workers will be fooled. They will have switched their votes to them, not because they want a breakaway Scotland but as a protest against the Labour Party.

So, the SNP leaders will be the prisoner of their non-separatist voters and will have to settle down to life as regional politicians. Not that that will necessarily displease them if they get to be regional ministers. Which, as professional politicians, is probably their realistic aim anyway.

Our opposition to the SNP should not be interpreted as support for the Union or the Labour, Liberal or Tory parties that support it. We are just as opposed to them.

A plague on both their houses is what we say.

To adapt a slogan ,

Neither London nor Edinburgh, but World Socialism.

From May Socialist Standard

Monday, February 05, 2007

Why I Fight

I often get asked, generally by people who know me, why I keep fighting to change the world.
I will tell you what I tell them, because it is the right thing to do.


The world we live in kills, or allows to die, so many people unnecessarily. People who die for lack of food, in a world which can give each of 6 billion people on the planet an adequate supply of nutrition.
A world which has the capacity to give clean water and sanitation to all but does not.


A world which can give medicines and cures to so many people, but does not. Are you a relative of someone who has been denied medication for cancer, Alzheimer's, M.S. or a miriad of other diseases because of cost? well I fight for you. I argue the case where these medicines should be given.


I argue the case against spending so much money and using so many resources, (both material and mental) on killing people, when if, we used these resources to create the cures for the diseases that afflict us and put the minds of those especially capable of providing these cures, to these ends, rather than their antithesis, (taking lives),our lives could be enhanced beyond measure and our pain and grief at losing loved ones prematurely, ended, or at least eased. Knowing that the world we live in, had done its utmost to prevent the above.


But we do not live in that world. But that world is a possiblity. It is only a possiblity however, when the world and everything in and on it, is owned by us all collectively. When we all have a collective say in how this world is run, (real democracy) . Without recourse to leaders or minority interests, as is the case today.


You have the vote! Change the world.


I am trying to, what are you doing about it?


Yours Sincerely,
Steve Colborn
Written by a member of the Socialist Party from the N.E. of England to his local paper

Thursday, January 18, 2007

THE ROAD TO HELL- Revisited

Vic Vanni’s posting on this site has generated a lot of comment at the Socialist Standard MySpace blog

Vic doesn’t have a computer so he apologises for the delay of this response.
(Could Darren post this on his MySpace blog?)


Sorry, but I can’t reply to all of the responses to “ The Road to Hell” but there are some that I must comment on.

First, I want to make clear how much I admire Michael Moore. I’ve watched all his TV programmes, his movies and read some of his books. Many others criticise some of what capitalism does – we have John Pilger, Mark Thomas and others, but, like Michael Moore, they have nothing to put in its place, but Michael Moore is special.

He’s special because of his originality, humour and, above all, his courage. I would never have the nerve to beard the lions in their dens as he does, but it still isn’t enough.

I’ll begin with you, Hollywoodartchick.
I can agree with much of what you said but I’m a tad wary of “the coalition” you want to see built. The trouble with coalitions is that they are made-up of groups, which have different agendas and have only come together over some single issue or other. What is required is a united, worldwide movement determined to replace capitalism with the new society of common ownership and democratic control.

This movement would need to understand and desire socialism: Karl Kautsky was a master of Marxist theory but was, in his political activity, just another reformist, even so, he did explain this need beautifully
“Every conscious human action presupposes a will: the will to socialism is the first condition for its accomplishment”.
I wish I’d said that.

Phil, you think that consciousness doesn’t come in a flash but comes step by step.
You are right and I’m a case in point. I could never have made the leap from near political ignorance to any kind of understanding of Marx’s theories without being influenced by others along the way.

You see Michael Moore as a stepping-stone to a growing consciousness for many. I started in the British Labour Party and learned from some of the people I met there, but stepping-stones, if they are to be useful, should lead to somewhere worthwhile, but I would never have got there if I hadn’t stumbled across those who introduced me to socialist ideas. Getting that introduction is absolutely essential.

Next up is you, Carl. Michael Moore was your hero but is no longer because, despite his attacks on capitalists, he has supported politicians who are itching to run American capitalism. He is only following in footsteps of generations of “progressives” who usually justified supporting these politicians because they were “the lesser evil”. Of course, if elected, they would do whatever it takes to maintain and extend the interests of American capitalism. We only have to remember Kennedy, Carter and Clinton to see that.

Cindy, you’re kidding yourself if you think Michael Moore “knows very well how capitalism works”. If he does then he should at least know that profits can’t be “fair” or “reasonable” as he would like. They MUST be maximised, not out of greed, but because this is necessary for businesses to keep up with or get ahead of the competition.

Malcolm, your views are truly a gospel of despair. Their implication must be that capitalism will last forever because people have been brainwashed into accepting it. Capitalism can’t last forever, Malcolm, nor can anything else in the universe. It is just another stage in social development and, unless it destroys us all first, will eventually be replaced by the “full-blooded socialism” you mentioned. This, of course, would depend on what people like you and me do about it.

I’ve kept the best to the last.
Courtney, you have shown that you understand very clearly that humans are conditioned by circumstances, that it is the capitalist system (or any other property society) that makes we humans do the awful things we do to one another. I found your contribution most heartening. My thanks to you.

While I’m at it, my thanks once again to all who responded and if, as I suspect, I’ve stood on some toes then please visit us again. Finally, if any of you want to know more about us then log on to…. The Socialist Party

V.V.