Time Is Running Out

Capitalism is presented as a ‘natural’ and ‘eternal’, formed like mountains and the oceans by forces beyond human control, that it is an economic system ultimately resulting from human nature. However it was not established by ‘natural forces’ but by intense and massive violence across the globe. At its root, capitalism is an economic system based on three things: wage labour (working for a wage), private ownership of the means of production (things like factories, machinery, farms, and offices), and production for exchange and profit. While some people own means of production, or capital, most of us don't and so to survive we need to sell our ability to work in return for a wage, or else scrape by on benefits. This first group of people is the capitalist class and the second group is the working class.

For the majority of us, most of our lives are dominated by work. Even when we are not actually at work, we are traveling to or from work, worrying about work, trying to recover from work in order to get back to work tomorrow, or trying to forget about work. Or even worse, we don't have work and then our main worry is trying to find it. Paradoxically, while millions of people are overworked, barely able to cope with high workloads and long working hours, millions of other people are jobless or work on part-time contracts and desperate to work. And while automation, mechanisation and productivity continually increases, working hours and working lives don't fall. In fact, in most places they are rising, as retirement ages are put up and working hours are increased. For many of us, we don't care about the work we do, we just need money to get by and at the end of the month, our bank balances are barely any different from the month before. We spend our days checking our watches, counting down the minutes till we can go home, the days till the weekend, the months till our next holiday.

Even those of us who have jobs in areas we enjoy, we do not control our work. It controls us, we experience it as an alien force. Most of us do not control what time we get to work or what time we leave. We do not control the pace or volume of our work, what products we make or what services we provide, or how we do it. For example, nurses may love helping people. But may still be frustrated by bed shortages, insufficient staffing, punishing shift patterns and arbitrary management targets.

And then much work, which may be extremely difficult, boring and dangerous for workers and destructive for the environment, is not even socially useful. Globally, millions of people every year are killed by their work, while scores of millions are made ill and hundreds of millions are injured. From built-in obsolescence causing products to break down making people buy new ones, to entire industries like sales and marketing existing only to persuade people to buy more products and work more to buy them. And much other useful work is squandered in supporting socially useless industries.

Why is it like this?

The reason is simple: we live in a capitalist economy. Therefore it is this system which determines how work is organised. And our work is the basis of the economy. Money - capital - is invested to become more money. And this happens because of our work. Our work adds value to the initial capital, and the value we add comes to more than our wages. This surplus value results in the growth of the initial capital, which funds profits and expansion. Capitalism is based on this simple process – money is invested to generate more money. When money functions like this, it functions as capital. For instance, when a company uses its profits to hire more staff or open new premises, and so make more profit, the money here is functioning as capital. As capital increases (or the economy expands), this is called ‘capital accumulation’, and it's the driving force of the economy. The wages we get roughly match the cost of the products necessary to keep us alive and able to work each day (which is why, at the end of each month, our bank balance rarely looks that different to the month before). The difference between the wages we are paid and the value we create is how capital is accumulated, or profit is made. This difference between the wages we are paid and the value we create is called "surplus value". The extraction of surplus value by employers is the reason we view capitalism as a system based on exploitation - the exploitation of the working class.

The lower our wages, the harder we work and the longer our hours the bigger this surplus value is. Which is why employers in the private and public sector continually attempt to make us work harder and longer for less pay. For this reason our jobs are made dull and monotonous, as then unskilled workers can do it cheaper. The products we produce or the services we provide are also often substandard to cut costs. Mass unemployment functions to keep wages of overworked employed workers down. As workers who are not afraid of being replaced by the unemployed can demand higher wages, better conditions and shorter working hours. Enterprises which extract the most surplus value and so profit and expand the most, succeed, while those which don't, fail. So if a company or an industry is profitable, it grows. Regardless of whether it is socially necessary, whether it destroys the environment or kills its workers.

In order to accumulate capital, our boss must compete in the market with bosses of other companies. They cannot afford to ignore market forces, or they will lose ground to their rivals, lose money, go bust, get taken over, and ultimately cease to be our boss. Therefore even the bosses aren't really in control of capitalism, capital itself is. It's because of this that we can talk about capital as if it has agency or interests of its own, and so often talking about 'capital' is more precise than talking about bosses.

Both bosses and workers, therefore, are alienated by this process, but in different ways. While from the workers' perspective, our alienation is experienced through being controlled by our boss, the boss experiences it through impersonal market forces and competition with other bosses. Because of this, bosses and politicians are powerless in the face of ‘market forces,’ each needing to act in a way conducive to continued accumulation (and in any case they do quite well out of it!). They cannot act in our interests, since any concessions they grant us will help their competitors on a national or international level. So, for example, if a manufacturer develops new technology for making cars which doubles productivity it can lay off half its workers, increase its profits and reduce the price of its cars in order to undercut its competition. If another company wants to be nice to its employees and not sack people, eventually it will be driven out of business or taken over by its more ruthless competitor - so it will also have to bring in the new machinery and make the layoffs to stay competitive. Of course, if businesses were given a completely free hand to do as they please, monopolies would soon develop and stifle competition which would lead to the system grinding to a halt. The state intervenes, therefore to act on behalf of the long-term interests of capital as a whole. The primary function of the state in capitalist society is to maintain the capitalist system and aid the accumulation of capital. As such, the state uses repressive laws and violence against the working class when we try to further our interests against capital. For example, bringing in anti-strike laws, or sending in police or soldiers to break up strikes and demonstrations. The rich, throughout history, have found ways to subjugate and re-subjugate the masses. And the masses, throughout history, have always woken up to throw off their chains.

Raising the minimum wage is no solution, as it doesn't get anywhere close to solving the root problem. If our work is the basis of the economy, and the basis of growth and profits, then ultimately we possess the power to disrupt it, not to mention ultimately take it over for ourselves. It is entirely reliant on us, the working class, and our labour which it must exploit, and so it will only survive as long as we let it. By taking direct action like stopping work - striking - we stop the gears of production, and prevent profits from being made. In this way we can defend our conditions and leverage improvements from our bosses. By organising together we do not only improve our lives now but we can lay the foundations for a new type of society. A society where we don't just work for the sake of making profits we will never see or building a so-called ‘healthy’ economy but to fulfill human needs. Where we organise ourselves collectively to produce necessary goods and services not for exchange but for use. Where we get rid of unnecessary work and make all necessary tasks as easy, enjoyable and interesting as possible. A socialist society. We need to free ourselves from this wage slavery which robs our pay-checks every month and keeps us in debt and forever in the rat-race and on the tread-mill just to survive. Talking about class in a political sense is not about which accent you have, or if you go to the ballet or opera rather than the football match but the basic conflict which defines capitalism – those of us who must work for a living vs. those who profit from the work that we do. By fighting for our own interests and needs against the dictates of capital and the market we lay the basis for a new type of society - a society based on the direct fulfillment of our needs. Is such a society possible? You bet it is... there is simply no other way we will make it as a species but our time is running out.

The Worker’s Weekend (1972)

From the April 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

From Monday to Friday the weekend is the time most of us look forward to. This is the time for living it up or taking it easy, and so well is this recognised that numerous books and songs have been written and films made which deal with this theme. Indeed “the weekend” has become one of the most important social institutions in modern society. Life without Saturday night and Sunday morning would be unthinkable for most people and yet the weekend is only one more institution which, like any other, is evolutionary in character and must eventually disappear.

Just as the legal and political institutions of a society must correspond to the needs of that society (more accurately, of its dominant class) then so must the institution of leisure. The weekend can only have any real meaning in capitalism: it didn’t exist in feudalism and certainly won’t exist in Socialism.

In feudalism production was largely agricultural so time off work was partly governed by the seasons of the year. Even so, the Church made sure that many holidays (holy days) occurred in winter when work in the fields was often impossible anyway. And the idea of today’s summer break would have been ridiculous in medieval times as summer is when work is most needed in agriculture. Modern industrial society requires its work to be carried on throughout the year as the market knows no seasons and it has the artificial means (factories, mills, etc.) to do this. Indeed, lost working time in capitalism is usually caused by purely social factors — slumps leading to redundancy are an obvious example.

The Church, as the most powerful social and political institution in feudalism, decreed when and how many holy days should be observed. In medieval England and, right into the 17th century, the Catholic countries of Europe there were over a hundred holy days a year on which no work could be done and Church courts inflicted fasts and penances on those who broke this law. Further opportunities for leisure were provided by the many Fairs at which the known world displayed its wares. Eileen Power describes in Medieval People how Bodo, a Frankish peasant in the time of Charlemagne, and his family looked forward to these Fairs although their real purpose was to provide essential trading outlets in an age of poor communications. Obviously they have little relevance to modern society and have been replaced by the airborne travelling salesman, the tele­phone, and the manufacturer’s prospectus.

Medieval holidays took place irrespective of the day of the week they fell on. The Church was powerful enough to see to that. And they didn’t follow the mechanical two consecutive days-out-of-every-seven pattern like today. Rather they occurred in conjunction with important social, religious, and trading events like feast days and Fairs. In capitalism holidays have to coincide with the demands of industry — whereas May Day traditionally fell on May 1, today it has been relegated to the first Sunday in May. In other words, times for living it up in feudalism happened when there was an excuse for it. They were times for dancing and drinking, sport and lechery, with the clerics wailing that more sin was committed on holy days than on any other. We can confidently say that medieval leisure (or recreation) was geared to the productive forces and social relationships of feudal society.

Meanwhile, as the merchant class grew in strength and power it could see that the medieval system of holidays was incompatible with its need for an ideology fostering the regular working habits required by the new manufacturing system. The cry that England’s allegedly weak competitive trading position was due to the “misspending of our time in idleness and pleasure” occasioned by holidays and absenteeism is not the pro-­duct of the mid-20th century but of the early 17th.

With the triumph of capitalism over feudalism and the consequent further weakening of the Church’s power, the holy days were steadily eliminated until by the 1830s they had almost vanished. Holidays for much of the new-born working class meant, apart from Sundays, only Christmas Day. The same trend affected office workers too. The Bank of England closed for 47 holidays in 1761, 40 in 1825, 18 in 1830, and 4 in 1834. In Italy, where the Church is still powerful, the remaining Church holidays are coming under fresh attack and legislation is being prepared to rearrange these for the convenience of industry.

The long term effect of such harshness was that many workers used Sunday to drown their sorrows in and the resulting over-indulgence in alcohol produced widespread absenteeism. The shrewder of the employers saw the way to combat this and even rejuvenate the workers by providing more recognised holidays. The 60 hour week in the 1860-70’s produced the Saturday half holiday and by 1878 the term “weekend” was in use. Next came secular holidays unconnected with religious festivals and with dates specially picked to suit industry. In the 1890’s came summer holidays when whole industries closed down for a week with many workers spending the time away from home. The weekend which we now take for granted -Saturday and Sunday off-was not widespread until after world war two (this writer, employed in engineering, didn’t get it until 1948) and was due to the improved bargaining position of the workers caused by full employment.

Leisure as we know it today is the product of a modern industrialism which compels a division of labour within the factory and at the same time gathers all the work of the plant into a unified production process. Similarly, whole industries with their many plants and diverse component units become an integrated network. All these industries are linked together on a global scale so that all the workers directly or indirectly engaged come under this single dominating influence to which they must co-ordinate their use of time. This is why we have the weekend and why we all take our holidays together-to fit in with the requirements of those who as a class monopolise industry – the capitalist class.

Obviously, the way we spend our leisure has changed with the passing of centuries. In feudal times recreation was associated with participating in physical activity such as sport, dancing, etc. Today it means paying to watch others do this, going to the pub, or, more likely, watching TV. But there is an important similarity between the two ages in that both were societies in which men’s labour was controlled by a ruling class, so they usually hated their work. Up to the present day work and recreation have been strictly segregated and considered to be mutually exclusive.

But must this always be so? After all, there are some people, even in capitalism, who enjoy and even live for their work. This is especially so when they have some control over what they do and when the work is useful and stimulating. This will certainly be the case in Socialism, a society of production for use with everyone owning and controlling the means of production and distribution in common. People will be able to indulge in work that is engaged in from choice because of the enjoyment and satisfaction which it brings and is not subject to the compulsion imposed by the wages system. What people today call work may well be regarded as leisure or recreation in the future. So even our very concept of leisure changes along with changes in the economic basis of society. Certainly no regimentation of leisure such as today’s weekend represents will be tolerated in a free society like Socialism.

If the reader looks around him today he can see that this is not so far fetched as it may seem. Already there is an evolution away from the weekend idea. The increase of rotating shift-work has made many workers dissatisfied with fixed leisure time by giving them a taste of something different. Also, the growth of “Flexi-time” where workers may report for and depart from work within certain limits is an indication of their desiring and achieving more control over their own time. These developments should mean that workers hearing the socialist case aren’t required to mentally bridge such a wide gulf between the practices of capitalism and of Socialism. Our task as propagandists is made easier by developments within capitalism which erode fixed ideas about the world.

Vic Vanni

Shift work is unhealthy

Shift work has been associated with a host of health problems. The evidence is clear that getting enough sleep is important for health, and that sleep should be at night for best effect”

Shift workers getting too little sleep at the wrong time of day may be increasing their risk of diabetes and obesity, according to researchers. The team is calling for more measures to reduce the impact of shift working following the results of its study.

Changes to normal sleep meant the body struggled to control sugar levels. Some participants even developed early symptoms of diabetes within weeks.

Participants in the study started with 10 hours' sleep at night. This was followed by three weeks of disruption to their sleep and body clocks. The length of the day was extended to 28 hours, creating an effect similar to a full-time flyer constantly getting jet lag. Participants were allowed only 6.5 hours' sleep in the new 28-hour day, equivalent to 5.6 hours in a normal day. They also lived in dim light to prevent normal light resetting the body clock. During this part of the study, sugar levels in the blood were "significantly increased" immediately after a meal and during "fasting" parts of the day. The researchers showed that the hormone that lower levels of insulin - the hormone that normally controls blood sugar - were produced. Three of the participants had sugar levels which stayed so high after their meals they were classified as "pre-diabetic". They also highlighted a risk of putting on weight as the body slowed down. "The 8% drop in resting metabolic rate that we measured in our participants... translates into a 12.5-pound increase in weight over a single year," they wrote.

Dr Orfeu Buxton said: "We think these results support the findings from studies showing that, in people with a pre-diabetic condition, shift workers who stay awake at night are much more likely to progress to full-on diabetes than day workers. Since night workers often have a hard time sleeping during the day, they can face both circadian [body clock] disruption working at night and insufficient sleep during the day."

Socialist Courier has previously reported the risks of shift ork and this lqatest finding simply confirms that capitalism is bad for your health.

Understanding Capitalism

The basis of capitalism rests on the relationship between the capitalist and the worker. The worker must sell his or her labour in order to live. The capitalist needs that labour to produce things to sell. So a capitalist will buy and own the raw materials, tools etc. necessary for production and will then hire workers to work with the tools and the raw materials to produce what the capitalist tells the workers to produce. The workers will then use the tools to turn the raw materials into something the capitalist then sells.

Let’s look more closely at the relationship and how it benefits the capitalist. Let’s say the capitalist owns a factory that makes wooden tables. This means he needs to buy an amount of wood and the tools to make the tables (hammers, nails, glue etc). He also needs workers to come and use the tools to turn the wood into tables he then sells. Let’s say he spends $10 on the raw materials for one table and when it’s finished the table is worth $20. The worker who comes in to turn the raw materials into a table uses his or her skills and energy, takes the raw materials and adds value to them in the form of a finished table. The capitalist then pays the worker. The table immediately belongs to the capitalist and the capitalist sells the table for $20.

The capitalist has spent money on tools and raw materials and on a worker to build the table. The worker has used brain power and muscle power to turn the raw materials into a table (which immediately belongs to the capitalist and not to the worker), adding $10 units to the raw materials in the form of labour. The capitalist then sells the table. But something is missing. What did the capitalist pay the worker?

If the capitalist paid the worker the value of his or her labour, this adds up to $10. The capitalist has spent $10 on the raw materials and tools, and $10 on the labour to use these up and produce a table worth 20. The capitalist then sells the table for $20. What’s in this for the capitalist? He’s spent $20, and at the end of the process he’s received $20. So what was the point? The capitalist hasn’t got anything out of this arrangement.

But what happens if the capitalist pays $10 for the raw materials and tools, but only pays the worker $8 for his or her labour? The capitalist sells the table for $20, but it only cost $18 to produce. The $2 left over is the capitalist’s profit.

So the key is in the nature of the relationship between the worker and the capitalist. One capitalist isn’t likely to sell wood or tools to another capitalist for less than what they’re worth. So where does a capitalist find a reason to be in production in the first place? The reason is profit, and that profit is found by the capitalist paying the workers less than the value of their work.

To make this a little bit clearer, consider that the capitalist rarely pays a worker based on the number of finished items they produce. The capitalist pays the worker to come to work and work as hard as they possibly can for a set amount of time. This obscures the real relationship between worker and capitalist somewhat and leads to the situation where the worker works half the day to meet his or her own immediate needs, and the rest of the day works to create wealth just for the capitalist.

It is this relationship between the worker and the capitalist that is central to how the capitalist system functions. It is in work done by the worker above and beyond that needed to meet his or her own immediate needs that the capitalist finds a reason to be in business. This relationship is the basis of profit. We can see it most clearly, and it begins to explain the situation, where labour is cheap and where it produces expensive commodities, places where the weekly wage of a person stitching trainers isn’t enough to buy a single pair of them.

In essence we as workers have been reduced, by the capitalist class and the politicians who support them, to tools of work; a cog in a machine; essentially born to work for them, and have our work make them money. If we're going to be truly free, we need to have the freedom to pursue our goals where and when and how we see fit. Wage labour is fundamentally incompatible with this.

What is needed is a fundamental shift in attitudes towards work and the relations that make work necessary. People feel undervalued and underpaid because they are. People can see the inequity in their relationship with their bosses. What isn't seen so well is the fact that we're literally selling our ability to work and a good third of our lives, giving up our freedom in the process, in order to live. But people weren't born simply to work. We instinctively know this and we value our lives more than this because none of us really likes work, but this is balanced against the necessity of work for the vast majority. If we don't do it, we can't really live at all. These are conditions imposed on us by capitalism. We need to continue the task of attempting to reconstruct society.

Nationalising a business or service or industry isn't going to help deliver economic democracy either. The people who work there, and workers generally, would have no more control over how the business is run or what happens to the product of their labour than they would if the business was in private hands. Nationalisation doesn’t address the relationship between employer and employee. It is simply a case of swapping one group of expropriators and facilitators for another. The trade union movement is concerned with higher wages, sometimes with shorter hours (or at least limiting increases in hours), protecting jobs, but these days never, it seems, with the way production and distribution is organized. Such concerns are pushed to the fringes. However, labour movement doesn't go anything like far enough in addressing the real economic problem facing workers and society at large: the problem of how we should organise production and distribution of what workers produce. In fact, trade unions  makes no attempt to address this problem at all. We need to make economic democracy a cornerstone of radical thought again. We have to present workers with a vision of the future where they decide democratically, and in collaboration with the community at large, what to produce, how to produce it and then how to distribute it. To really change capitalism, we need to change its core: the relationship of workers to the production, appropriation and distribution of the surplus they create. Workers need more radical solutions. The ultimate aim must be not to prop up capitalism but to destroy it. To overturn the relationship between employer and employee. To abolish the root cause of our economic misery – the employer, the rentier and the banker – and to take control of our own working lives by whatever means necessary. This should begin with a fight to control the ground on which this battle is being fought but the focus overwhelmingly seems to be on fighting for a few extra crumbs from the table. What is needed is not concessions to capitalists and politicians but a vision of workers taking control of the production process themselves so we can free ourselves from the misery of wage slavery.

Adapted from here
http://libcom.org/blog/universal-basic-income-freedom-workers-13122016

Glasgow homeless

This letter appeared in the current issue of Weekly Worker and Socialist Courier see no reason to give it a wider audience. 

The number of homelessness care providers in Glasgow is being reduced from five down to one or two between now and November. There is a competitive tendering process going on at the moment. This is open to all providers at a UK level. It is part of the process of the Labour-controlled Glasgow council passing on cuts to services, following big cuts to its budget from the Scottish National Party government and, ultimately, budget cuts from the Tories to the Scottish government.

Pressure is being applied to the workforces ‘to do more with less’- ie, do more work, do it better than now and with far fewer workers. Subtle pressure is being applied - if your company is to win the tender, you may have to think about doing things you don’t do now: shift work, compulsory weekend and evening work, personal care, more community link projects, etc. If you object, then the tender will go to the providers that are willing to dramatically increase their workloads and be totally flexible and you will probably be out of a job.

Back in planet real world, this will mean workers who provide vital services to the homeless finding themselves being made redundant (and potentially homeless themselves) and facing an ever stricter work programme. It will also mean increased worker turnover and absenteeism. It will certainly lead to poorer-quality services to the public. All the current areas of support will reduce in quality - support with finding permanent accommodation, mental health problems and addiction issues not being addressed, more social isolation and exclusion. There will be greater poverty and debt-related issues. All these problems and many more will not be addressed to the same level of quality in Glasgow as they have been up until now. The care side of homelessness in Glasgow has worked so far. The cuts could see a wasteland created, as we go down more and more of an American-type road - more visible homeless, more begging, more people on the streets with mental and addiction issues, as more people fall through the current safety net.

It will lead to increased crime, family stress and break-up and shorter life expectancy. And even on cost grounds alone it will be the council that has to pick up the tab for all of this.

These services have already experienced redundancies on a wide scale in the years since the Tories were elected in 2010, resulting in increased workloads for existing workers. Casework teams who are responsible for moving homeless on to permanent accommodation when they are ‘tenancy-ready’ are in crises now and have been for over a year. Redundancies and new procedures that lengthened the waiting time for homeless people to be moved on have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many homeless now have to wait to get a caseworker allocated and, even once this takes place, the new procedures combined with less social housing stock can mean a long wait for permanent housing.

Those classed as homeless living in temporary accommodation have very high rents - on average about £180 per week. In the past homeless people who worked paid £60 per week from their wages towards the rent and the rest would be paid in housing benefit - fairly straightforward and unbureaucratic. Now a ‘revenue and property’ team calculates to the exact pound what they want in rent and council tax based on proof of all income supplied. Every time income adjusts - eg, a person gets some extra hours or an additional benefit - there has to be a readjustment of the claim. There is a delay between housing benefit processing claims and changes to claims and the revenue and property receiving money, leading to demand letters to the homeless for exorbitant rents and council tax.

If the homeless try not to work while they are in temporary accommodation to get 100% housing benefit and council tax benefit, they are hit with the ‘work programme’, so the council knows it can hound the working homeless for more and more rent and council tax. There is a scam in the midst of this that is causing real hardship. Temporary furnished flats (TFFs) that charge £180 per week rent on average are around £225 to £250 per month in rent if they are permanent and unfurnished for the same type of tenancies. This looks awfully like the council trying to line its coffers with state housing benefit money. It has been going on for years, but the removal of the cap means some of the working homeless are now being made destitute.

The attack on the sick is also causing huge stress. If a homeless person on employment and support allowance is assessed as ‘fit for work’, they are not only kicked off employment and support allowance (ESA), but also lose housing benefit. However, it is rare for the homeless person to be informed of this. Housing benefit are immediately informed, so the homeless individual is often unknowingly accumulating rent arrears, as housing benefit has been stopped at soon as their ESA was stopped. They can accumulate large arrears very quickly through no fault of their own. And rent arrears in one of the key reasons housing associations will not move people on from temporary accommodation to permanent accommodation.

And there are queuing systems now for everything. It used to be just the department for work and pensions where it was difficult to get a human voice on the line; now it’s everything - asylum and refugee teams, casework ... There is now a queuing system for housing and council tax benefit problems. A year ago a support worker could get straight through to them on the phone. Now the homeless person has to go into the city centre to deal with any housing/council tax issues, incurring transport costs, as there can be up to a 30-minute wait on the phone.

Glasgow council has moved from a ‘two reasonable offers’ policy of housing to ‘one reasonable offer’ - it’s take it or leave it. If the one offer is refused they ‘discharge duty’ - meaning the homeless are on their own, having to look for a private let. The person has to leave the temporary accommodation or face huge rent arrears and eviction. Many housing associations are now demanding one month rent in advance from people who sometimes only receive £73 per week jobseeker’s allowance.

Even people who are successful at moving on to permanent accommodation will not get a decision about receiving goods to furnish the permanent tenancy for three weeks after they have signed the missives for the permanent tenancy - meaning three weeks of rent arrears on the temporary flat if they have not moved out of it into a completely unfurnished permanent tenancy (and for people with family and young children this is a horrendous state of affairs, raising serious health and safety issues).

The cuts to caseworker numbers, cuts to council workers working on housing and council tax benefit claims, benefit cuts, cuts to support agencies such as translation, are all creating a perfect storm. There are fewer and fewer resources with more and more demand, leading to increased stress, frustration, anger and in some cases sadly intolerance. Immigrants are not responsible for austerity. The rich are.

The Defend Glasgow Services campaign ought to oppose the latest ‘race to the bottom’ cuts by the council with deputations, lobbies, demos, council surgery pickets and putting up anti-cuts candidates for next May’s council elections. The council ought to put forward a needs-led budget. We need an end to austerity!

Glasgow homeless support worker

work causes cancer

Further to this earlier post that health inequalities between rich and poor have widened since Labour came to office in 1997 , American research shows that night-shift workers, and their number is growing by about 3% per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , are known to be at higher risk for accidents, sleep disorders and psychological stress due to daytime demands, such as family and other obligations, that interfere with sleeping. Now scientific evidence suggests their disrupted circadian rhythms may also cause a kind of biological revolt, raising their likelihood of obesity, cancer, reproductive health problems, mental illness and gastrointestinal disorders.

The evidence for an increased cancer risk is so compelling that, in December, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a unit of the World Health Organization, declared that shift work is "probably carcinogenic to humans."

*Night-shift workers have a 40% to 50% increased risk of heart disease compared with day workers, various studies have found.
* People who get five hours of sleep, common among night-shift workers, are 50% more likely to be obese than normal sleepers, Columbia University researchers have found. Several dozen other studies have tied sleep loss to weight gain as well.
* Women night-shift workers have higher rates of miscarriage, pre-term birth and low birth-weight babies.
* Night-shift workers show increased rates of breast (by 50%) and colon (by 35%) cancer in numerous, independent studies. And animal studies have shown that exposure to dim light during the night-time can substantially increase tumor development.

Capitalism - Insanity, Socialism Common-sense

“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 earth? You and me who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.” – William Morris

People have endless problems to worry about - problems of wages and prices, rents and mortgages, and how to provide against sickness, unemployment and old age. The usual attitude is to regard these problems as ones that can be dealt with by the political parties who tell the voters about the new laws they will introduce if they become the government which will fix their problems so they have petitioned Parliament and supported candidates for office. Over the years working people throughout the world have employed a variety of other methods in the hope of improving their living conditions. They have marched and demonstrated in the streets, they have in their protests erected barricades and fought against police. But, more importantly, they have also organised in trade unions which have provided them with their most effective weapon, the strike. The unions exist to protect and improve wages and working conditions. The real worth of a trade union must not be overlooked. However, the Socialist Party say that the social system itself needs to be changed fundamentally, that is, the class relationships and the way production and distribution are carried on. This goes much deeper than a mere change of government but it can never be brought about unless there is widespread understanding of what needs to be done. The Socialist Party recognises that even at their best the unions cannot bring permanent security or end poverty.

The establishment of socialism will bring far-reaching changes in production and distribution, arising from the fact that ownership of the means of producing wealth is transferred to the whole of society. The products of labour will no longer be privately owned; incomes from property ownership and from employment will alike disappear, along with buying, selling, and profit-making. In distribution the principle will be “according to need”, and, of course, without the double standards that now exist throughout the capitalist world, of best quality for the rich, and varying degrees of shoddiness for the poor; which, in turn, presupposes that in production every person will give “according to his or her ability” and will see to it that there are no poor quality goods turned out. Unfettered access to educational and training facilities will enable all to acquire knowledge and skill and bring to an end the existing barriers between unskilled and skilled, manual and mental labour. Great demands will be made on the productive capacity of society but there will be ample means of satisfying them. With the ending of capitalism, enormous additional resources of men and materials will become available through stopping the waste of arms and armaments, and the innumerable activities that are necessary only to capitalism, including the governmental and private bureaucracies, banking and insurance, and the monetary operations that accompany every branch of production and distribution. This release of capacity will vastly increase the number of men and women available for the work of useful production and distribution. In addition, we may expect a continuing annual increase of productivity resulting from the accumulation of skill and knowledge and of productive equipment. With these large additional resources at its disposal society will easily be able—if need be with some loss of productivity in particular fields—to end excessive hours of work, harmful speed and intensity, and unnecessary night and shift work, and to use machinery to replace human labour for types of work that cannot be other than unpleasant. The aim of a society of free men and women should be that work is part of life, no more to be neglected than other intelligently conducted human activities. In a free society, functioning on voluntary co-operation, in which “the government of persons will have given way to the administration of things”, people will not wish to spend the working part of their lives as human automatons serving machines, performing monotonous manual operations. The principle must be that people in a socialist society shall be able to bring to all the various aspects of life, including work, all qualities of body and mind, skill, knowledge, thought and imagination. Our future technological developments will accelerate beyond all measure when mankind is freed from the constraints of capitalism. For the expansion of technology is forever intertwined with the expansion of human consciousness and neither can proceed in its correct path until the entrenched social, political, economic and psychological divisions and strive of capitalism is reversed. The more technology is shared, the more our understanding grows of what technology can achieve as a beneficial tool for humanity’s evolution.

The Socialist Party holds a shared vision of socialism as the lasting solution to much of the world’s problems that inflict misery and suffering upon billions of people. When we are genuinely sharing the planet's wealth and resources and when the people themselves are directing where it most belongs—then socialism will blossom beyond our wildest dreams. For then the whole world is involved, including the several billion people whose basic rights to life and liberty are presently unfulfilled and their talents untapped there will be an awakening, as imaginations are released and a metamorphosis takes place in ordinary global citizens, leading to results and transformations that we have never witnessed on this Earth with the disappearance of stress and tension worldwide and instead a newly-found sense of trust and hope. Yet, the socialist movement can go nowhere without the engagement of heart and mind to build it. Let not the aspiration for socialism remain an intellectual abstract ideal when the world needs socialism to be implemented if humanity is to survive. Capitalism contains within it the seeds of our environmental destruction. The longer we fail to pursue our socialist goal, the more likely we will have no future on this planet. 

An alien world

Imagine a being from Outer Space visiting Earth. The alien would observe our scientific, technological and medical achievements, but would then notice the plight of billions with no access to these accomplishments. Then s/he/it would notice a small minority of Earthlings who are not only indifferent to this suffering but directly benefit from it.

The number of wealthy individuals in the world has reached 10.9 million - more than existed before the 2008 banking crises. Their collective wealth, $42.7 trillion, has also topped the levels it reached in 2007, before the crash and recession. This elite group represents 0.15% of a world population of over 7 billion. The super-rich were hiding at least $21 trillion in tax havens at the end of 2010. This is an underestimate and could well be as high as $32 trillion.  Oxfam estimates that  $7.18 trillion - is sitting in accounts in British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.

The above wealth exists in a world where 870 million people were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012, 16 million of whom were in the developed world.   Poor nutrition plays a role in at least 5 million deaths of children each year. Additionally, more than 3.4 million people die each year from water, sanitation, and hygiene-related causes.

The alien being would also notice all the resources used to patch up this broken system. The social work profession is in charge of administering the minimal resources provided by the state to smooth over the sharpest edges of  capitalism. Profit maximisation is the fundamental principle of capitalism. Social work operates within the dictates of a ruling class who sees the protection and expansion of profit, and thus the exploitation of humanity, as the primary objective.

Capitalist development forges a working class out of conditions of suffering and deprivation. Homelessness, poverty, mental illness, hunger, and other social ills are inevitable machinations of the capitalist system. Social workers are hired by the state and/or ‘non-profit’ private enterprises to stabilise capitalist exploitation. Capital employs social workers to provide mental health, addiction counseling, and case management services. These services address the social ills of capitalism without challenging the profit motive or the entrenched principle of private property that creates inequality in the first place. Social workers work toward the “stabilisation”  rather then the “liberation” of masses of people from the exploitation of man by man. Social workers manage exploitation rather then challenge it. The social work values of self-determination, empowerment, and dignity are empty rhetoric in the midst of a capitalist political economy that plunders the world at the enrichment of the few.

The great economic power of the world is the product of the labour of countless people in this land and around the globe. But while the working people created this wealth, they do not own or control it. The capitalist system has concentrated the ownership of the tremendous productive forces in the hands of a small group of big capitalists. Workers are wage slaves who survive only by selling their labour power to the capitalists. Capitalists own the means of production and pay workers for their labour power. But the working class produces far more wealth than it receives in income. The difference is the source of capitalist profits. The worker is employed only as long as he or she helps create profit. When the capitalist has problems maximizing his profits, he does not hesitate to throw workers out into the street. The capitalist system exploits the working class and creates the poverty and economic insecurity of society as a whole.

The capitalist system is a system of economic anarchy and crisis. Capitalism is plagued by periodic economic crises, such as recessions, which are becoming more serious and complex. These crises are built into the economic system. Each capitalist enterprise tries to profit in the short run, but because of this competition the economy is thrown into turmoil.

The system of capitalism wastes a great amount of social wealth. Even technological advances often are delayed or even suppressed due to profit considerations. And when technological innovations such as “industrial robots” are introduced, they are at the expense of workers who are discharged from their jobs. The colossal development of capitalism in the post-war years is evident enough. The rapid growth of technology, the electronic and informational revolution in the recent decades, the unprecedented expansion of the application of robots and computerised systems in production and distribution point to the this development.

There is a hoary old argument that ‘in any society someone has to do the nasty jobs’. New technology raises the very real possibility of a society in which robots would do all the nasty jobs. Technology could do away with toil and tedium of much work for ever. They could produce a society in which mining accidents only ‘maimed’ robot miners; in which clerical workers turned into the office for only a couple of hours a day and engaged in leisure pursuits while machines did the rest; in which shift-work was unknown except for a very narrow range of occupations like nursing and firefighting; in which the tedium of the assembly line was a nightmare from the past; in which even the handicaps associated with natural afflictions like deafness and blindness were overcome.

The vast array of communications technology that is becoming available could provide a ready means by which those who produce the wealth could democratically adjudge how it should be used, with the information about what different alternatives would mean literally at their finger tips. The final death blow would be dealt to the claim that somehow human beings are  incapable of obtaining the information needed to make rational decisions as to how to use resources to satisfy their material needs.

Nowhere in Marx’s writings is there to be found a detailed account of the new social system which was to follow capitalism. Marx wrote no “Utopia”. The terms “socialism” and “communism” are used more or less interchangeably The first essential feature of socialism is that the of production are taken from private ownership and used for society as, a whole.  The objective  is classless society. The people as a whole own the means of production (factories, mines, etc.). Production is for people’s use, not for  profit. The principle of the operation is “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. Production is of such a high level that there are abundant commodities for every member of the community and each member helps him or herself according to his or her needs.

Computers, automation and robotics are making it possible to build a new world, a world in which the robots do the “work” and people set about the task of culturally and socially enriching their lives.

‘No’ to slavery – but ‘Yes’ to our chains.

Socialists are against buying and selling things with money and for money. But, we exist in a capitalist world that requires us to do much of what we are against. In order to survive we need to buy food and such and what we sell is our labour-power – our capacity to work. Only by buying the worker’s labor power can the capitalist make profits. Workers produce more than what the capitalist pays them in wages and benefits. This is the basis of exploitation of the workers. What the workers produce over and beyond the socially necessary labour for keeping themselves and their families alive and working is surplus value. Surplus value is the only source of profits and is ripped off by the capitalists.

Our goal is to move beyond capitalism. We also use fossil fuels while pre-Civil War and people in the North wore clothes made of cotton picked by slaves. But that did not make them hypocritical when they joined the abolition movement. It just meant that they were also part of the slave economy, and they knew it. That is why they acted to change the system, not just their clothes. Also remember that the people in the North didn't "fight" slavery by buying non-conflict fair trade cotton from somewhere else to somehow stop slavery. What do most consumers know about how food is grown and processed? We know to find it on grocery shelves. But we don't know about the actual social process of production—that's not listed on the ingredients. We know price. That's the essential market information. I buy a chocolate bar. But do I know that the Ivory Coast is the world's leading cocoa exporter and supplies most of the chocolate I crave? Do I know that Nestle and Hershey's work through a web of cocoa exporters, purchasing agents, and labour contractors linked to plantations that rely on child labor? The market doesn't convey this crucial information. Not only do commodity production and market relations hide exploitation and oppressive class relations rooted in the system of production. They also distort and obscure the real social relations that bind individuals to one another. We are not free-floating consumers but are in fact part of an economic and social “matrix.”

Socialism is incompatible with markets for goods and services in an exchange economy.

 Capitalism is a highly developed and interdependent system of social production, with highly advanced technology and a complex division of labor. The different units of production, let's say, steel mills and computer makers, depend on each other—both as suppliers of raw materials, machines, etc., and as customers. On the other hand, the system of production is fragmented into privately owned and controlled units. So the connections between producers are not, and cannot, be consciously and directly worked out. Instead, the links among units are spontaneously arrived at through endless processes of exchange. If something sells, fine; if it doesn't, something is wrong. If earnings rise, fine; if they plummet, the capitalist responds and adjusts. There is no “before-the-fact” planning. So the market) coordinates the different components of the economy. But this happens indirectly and in a roundabout way behind the producers' backs. Each owner goes his or her own way, and then sees what happens...in the market.

Money rules in the capitalist market. Not only is money the medium by which prices are paid and goods obtained. Money is the goal of production. The units of production are organized around profit. No capitalist is in the business of making soap or lighting fixtures or cars; they're in the business of making money. The capitalist aims to come out of the process of production and exchange with more money (profit) than he started with. And somebody has to produce that wealth which under capitalism is the worker. Why do we work for capitalists? That has everything to do with market and ownership relations. The capitalist class owns the  means of production. We have no choice but to sell their labour power (our ability to work—our energy, skill, intelligence and creativity) in the labour market, or we starve. Wages enable workers to obtain the means of survival—to buy back in the market a portion of the wealth they have produced. The rest belongs to the capitalists. The most fundamental market transaction under capitalism is the sale and purchase of labour power. The exploitation of wage labour is the source of capitalist wealth and power.

Markets are NOT the source of exploitation, rather, extraction of worker surplus value by the capitalist is the source of exploitation under capitalism. The market mechanism is not the same as the exploitation of wage labor. Exploitation takes place at the point of production. But some fail to see is that the market is integral to this process. On the one hand, a pool of labourers (a labour market) is available for exploitation, because these laborers have no means of production. The labour market represents a form of coercion unique to capitalism—the worker is not forced at gunpoint, or by feudal obligation, to work—but he or she is compelled to seek work (and labourers can work only insofar as the capitalist can make profit off their labour). On the other hand, the market is the mechanism through which the capitalist carries out and completes the cycle of production and exchange: buying means of production and labour, and then realizing (converting into money form) the surplus value produced by social labour. If people say that the market will exist under socialism, does that include the market for labour power?

The market regulates capitalist production in two fundamental ways.

First, the market imposes norms (standards) of efficiency . Each capitalist is in battle with others. Each seeks a larger market share (at the expense of others), and the chief weapon in the battle is to expand production, raise productivity, and reduce cost. That means getting workers to work harder, faster, and longer. If an individual capitalist doesn't operate at a certain level of efficiency, he loses out—he can't sell at the prevailing market price—and he either raises efficiency or goes under.

Second, the market guides investment. When the market and profits are growing in a particular sector or product line, capital moves in. For instance, big returns could be gotten in telecommunications a few years back, so huge amounts of investment capital flowed in (you can see the moral of the story). But when the economy gets out of whack, the market imposes discipline and dictates reorganization: companies go under or merge, assets get sold or liquidated, workers are laid off, wage levels are pushed down—and stronger capitals and speculators move in like sharks in a feeding frenzy. This is a highly wasteful, anarchic, and oppressive process of regulation.

The market is impersonal. It isn't accountable to people. It doesn't consult with you about your needs. It doesn't care whether you lose your job, house, retirement pension, or your health coverage. If those things stand in the way of market efficiency, so be it. If you want the market—let's call it a “Market with a Human Face”—to be the organizing mechanism of the economy, you have to explain how the market can function according to market rules and yet not do the horrible things that the market does. Let's say market mechanisms are allowed to operate fairly freely in the consumer goods sector. Different enterprises are producing goods and winning or losing in the marketplace, based on what people buy.

Will the managers of these enterprises be allowed to trim the work force if earnings decline?

Will enterprises be allowed to go bankrupt if they do not make adequate profit?

Will society allow the market to “freely” set prices for goods—including items essential to people's well-being?

Will society allow production to shift to upscale goods that people with higher incomes demand—even if this comes at the expense of things that broader numbers of people need?

If you don't want the market to do those things and you want it to act according to other rules, let's say safeguarding people's basic interests, then what is the market doing that keeps it a market?

Market mechanisms do not promote meaningful work that serves the social good, and they do not promote social equality. These values are totally contrary to competition.

There is no plan for social production in the capitalist market economy. Society as a whole is not figuring what its requirements are: its social needs, the equipment and technology to carry out production, the housing requirements of the population, the resources called for to deal with an AIDS epidemic.

Instead, this is left to the market to work out (of course, the government plays a role, but the market reigns supreme). What happens is that capitalists enter different fields and product lines. Each capitalist producer decides what and how much to produce, whether to expand or cut back, whether to hire new workers and build new facilities. These decisions are guided by the capitalists' ability to sell products at profitable prices and by the expectation of finding profitable markets in the future. The capitalist produces and then sees what happens. It's a hit-and-miss, shoot- and-overshoot, trial-and-error process. In boom times, investment is expanded too much. In periods of economic slowdown, there is too little investment. Great numbers of people can no longer work, resources lie idle, and urgent social needs go unmet. All this is tremendously wasteful and destructive.

The market rewards the minimization of cost in pursuit of the maximization of profit. This is the “bottom line,” what it all comes down to in the market. The capitalists equate the “bottom line” with efficiency. But efficiency has definite class content under capitalism. It is the efficient exploitation of wage labour. It is the calculation of what is cost- efficient and profitable in a narrow and short-term sense. A factory might belch out pollution, but that cost to society is not a worry for the factory owner—you see, air is not within his boundary of ownership, not part of the cost structure that the market rewards and penalizes. The market doesn't register the long-term and social effects of economic activity. Health and pollution don't show up in the supply- demand and profit maximization framework of price and profit. That's what happens when profit is the starting and end-point.

Take the example of pharmaceutical industry. It is not profitable for the pharmaceutical industry to develop cheap drugs for diseases that affect the vast majority of humanity. The market returns are too low. So people go untreated and die of curable diseases. But it is profitable to develop “life-style” drugs and to slightly modify existing drugs to get new patents. Housing is another example. There is an obvious need for affordable and decent housing. But the market doesn't respond to social need or social demand. It only recognises monetary demand—“show me the money.” So you have the problem of homelessness; you have a public housing crisis; you have a situation where the average worker in retail in the U.S. can afford the rent for a one-bedroom apartment in only three of the largest 20 housing markets in the country. Globalization is all about the “bottom line.” In the anti-globalization movement, they call it the “race to the bottom.” The global investor scans the global market in search of low costs, high productivity, and big returns. Sweatshops, lax environmental regulations, few worker benefits—all this makes “good market sense.”

Each capitalist seeks to outmaneuver and out-position others. They keep technical and scientific knowledge from one another through trade secrets and patents and intellectual property rights. Ideas can become private property, and the “rights to these ideas” are bought and sold—just like everything else. To win in the market is to maximise competitive advantage and gain.

We can't eat, put a roof over our heads, or work without going through the market. But when you relate to the market for a house or for a job, you are relating to other people in very definite ways. You are competing for jobs, for housing, etc. The market breeds a mind-set of “me-first,” of “look out for number one.” The market is cold and cruel. It's about “winners and losers.” And in such a world, our world, it's just not “cost-effective” to show concern for others. Of course, we do try to care about others (today, even in this world dominated by the capitalist market), and we organise on the job and in the community. But the fact remains: capitalism and market exchange pit us against each other; the system of private ownership and the market fragment and atomise people.

The situation of exploitation and market relations alienates workers from the means of production, from the goals of production, and from work itself. Work is an alienating and oppressive activity. We work for an impersonal market and we work to obtain life's rewards in the market. There's nothing intrinsically rewarding about work, nor is work about serving meaningful social purposes. We “market ourselves” for jobs, for education...even for relationships. Happiness in the market society is measured by wealth and by the acquisition of things. Okay, there is the cornucopia of products. This, however, is not a market response to consumer want. Logos and brands are not about satisfying real material and social needs, and advertising is not a public service announcement. It's all about manipulating wants, stimulating and steering demand, and fighting for market share. Yes, “we get to choose things.” But three points have to be said about that. First, it's a “sliding scale of choice” based on class position and income. Second, as I have emphasized, the market does not respond to social need. And, third, like the ritual of elections, the “illusion of choice” masks and reinforces the basic powerlessness of the great majority of society. The ideology of consumerism is part of the psychology of control exercised in the capitalist market economy.

There is no plan for social production in the capitalist market economy. Society as a whole is not figuring what its requirements are: its social needs, the resources, equipment and technology to carry out production for the requirements of the population. We are often told that the capitalist consumer market is a kind of “referendum” in which consumers “vote with their dollars”—that in the market the “best product” wins. This is an extraordinary distortion, because it is the market that shapes the consumer. What wins in the marketplace is a function of marketing. What wins is a function of the manipulation and creation of wants (It is estimated 20 to 25 percent of the U.S. labour force is engaged in selling and marketing and advertising). What wins out in the dog-eat-dog world of capital is profitability and least-cost production. We get this message from capitalist ideologues that socialism will only produce a standardised and dull selection of goods that people don't like; or that people won't be able to get what they need, because there isn't enough attention paid to distribution of products. From people who are more radical the argument that socialist planning is inappropriate to consumer want, because these wants are so varied and changing. The “preference question”—the question of the volume, assortment, and variety of consumer goods is the standard bourgeois charge is that a socialist economy can't respond to, or doesn't care about, changing wants.

 A genuine system of socialist planning cannot be ignorant or indifferent to people's needs and wants. It must safeguard people's basic interests and it does have to be responsive to changing wants. Socialism is not “more of the same”—or “less of the same”—with the private individual as the starting and end point. Socialism has to forge new relations of social life and community. Responsiveness requires “feedback mechanisms” and information flows into the planning process. It requires social interchange and social investigation at all levels. It's not a question of bureaucrats deciding from afar through a command economy, or of letting the market and price dictate what gets produced and who gets to buy it. It can be achieved by processes already in place. Trade organizations can periodically engage in consumer surveys. The distribution system keep tab on the changing pattern of tastes by what and at what speed items leave the shelves. Outlets can periodically hold public forums at which suggestions and customer grievances were aired. When new product lines were introduced, the distribution centres specifically solicit consumer reactions. Meetings can be held between agencies which handled supplies and retailers to discuss problems of marketing, volume, quality, and appropriateness of goods handled. Mobile teams were sent out regularly to make “on the spot investigations” of user needs and responses. Telephone or internet research carried out. Supply agencies can keep representatives at the plants of major suppliers to act as liaisons for user interests. Perhaps some of those suggestions may be imperfect life-styles can be so messy. But this approach to consumer and user wants helps people take off the blinkers and think about real alternatives to market/ price mechanisms of decision-making.

People's most basic needs will be met, and the new economy will strive to produce a rational variety of consumer goods. But the ‘convenience’ of having Indonesian workers cater to athletic clothing needs, or peasants in other parts of the world cater to upscale coffee sensibilities, will be no more. At the same time, people's social needs will change with the transformation of social life. There will not be the obsession with consumption, the need to define oneself on the basis of what and how much one consumes. We are saying that a goal of socialist society is to create a common (shared) material abundance.

Working less - earning less

Professor David Bell, an economic expert, warned MSPs that soaring numbers of Scots have been forced into “under-employment”  and a seismic shift away from full-time to part-time work and the disappearance of overtime have created a culture in which Scots’ lack of work is forcing them to cut back on household spending. Prof Bell’s report to the economy committee revealed the extend of “disguised unemployment” and the new phenomenon of “in-work poverty”.

About half a million Scots are now feared to be either out of work or under-employed. The number of part-time workers, including those who are self-employed, has risen by 74,000 since 2008, alongside a dramatic fall in the hours worked by full-time staff. The under-employment rate stands at over 10 per cent among Scots, with the academic finding there is not enough demand for the labour they are willing to supply. “The ‘Great Recession’ has had an adverse impact on the Scottish labour market,” said the report.

The jobless rise has been less then expected, but there has been a sharp fall in the number of hours that Scots are now working overall. The report says: “Amongst the full-time employed, there has been a reduction in their number and in their average weekly hours, partly as a result of reduced overtime working. “In contrast, there has been an increase in part-time working, though little change in their average weekly hours. “There has also been a trend towards self-employment, particularly part-time self-employment, where weekly hours are extremely low.” Scots struggling in this situation will not show up in official unemployment statistics, because they remain in work.

Margaret Lynch, chief executive of Citizens Advice Scotland, said: “We know that thousands of Scots can’t get work at all, but far too many of those who are in work are struggling in low-paid, temporary and unsatisfying jobs which don’t meet either their aspirations or their bills." She added: “Many people who are under-employed have to top up their income by borrowing, and often turn to high-interest lenders like payday loans, which they can’t repay and which gets them into a spiral of crisis debt.”

Dr James McCormick, Scotland adviser to poverty charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said “What we see now is a significant risk of what we would term ‘in-work poverty’. This is people who are working, they may be doing less then 20 hours a week, but even if they are on a decent hourly rate of pay, they may still find themselves below the poverty threshold, because they’re not working sufficient hours.” Low pay remains a “persistent problem”, Dr McCormick said, and the combination of factors leads to a situation of “disguised unemployment”.

Another report reveals that Scots workers spend £2,000 a year on job-related costs such as food, travel, childcare, equipment and clothes. The average British worker spends one pound from every eight of their disposable income on costs relating to their job.

A Socialist Health Service

Large-scale sanitation in the developed world, vaccines, and even the NHS itself, must be seen as gains for the working class in some aspects. The whole process of the foundation of the NHS was a contradictory one, serving the interests of capital and, as a by-product, that of the workers. The strong empathy and support that most workers in Britain have for the National Health Service is after all support for free access, "to each according to needs", for the idea that healthcare be freely available to all regardless of wealth. Some health and welfare services are now available to some people free at the point of delivery or consumption. In socialism the principle of free access according to reasonable need will be universally applied. Yet in socialism there won't be such a widespread demand for health and welfare services. Very different goods could then be manufactured, possibly using alternative technologies, with work organized in different ways, so as to reduce the possibility of ill health arising in the first place. And although it would be absurd to say that all disease would be abolished, we can assume that a real concern for the health of the population would be reflected in planning and decision making. Such a society is not a pipe-dream, but the logical outcome of the working class taking control of their own struggles. The demand for a healthier society is in effect a revolutionary demand, since health-damaging aspects of production cannot be removed in response to political reform.

In an ideal world, the application of medical interventions would be guided by the criterion of scientific objectivity and driven solely by the concern to meet human needs. So would healthcare be any different if socialism were established? Yes it would. Why? Take one or two minutes out and just think how the non-existence of wages, profits and budgets would change the present situation. Then think about the end of the hierarchies that dominate healthcare at present and no more layers of useless bureaucrats skimming their share. Instead healthcare would be conceived and administered, democratically by us, the people who brought socialism about. Globally, doctors, nurses, scientists and everyone at present involved in healthcare at the human level would act as guides, informing people as to where healthcare is capable of going once the artificial barriers of money had been eliminated. The recruitment, training and deployment of committed volunteers will take much organising and administration. The emphasis will be on activities and tasks rather than on occupational labels: nursing, brain surgery, portering, scientific research, and so on, rather than nurses, brain surgeons, porters, scientific researchers. Everywhere we shall treat each other as friendly co-operators.

Although we cannot specify in advance a utopian blueprint for a socialist health policy what we can say about the likely effects on health and illness of future socialist society is that the promotion of good health and the care of the injured and sick won’t be restricted by money considerations. There will be no profit to be made out of employing people in dangerous occupations, supplying them with unhealthy substances or encouraging their harmful addictions. No sales-people will advertise items and services that at best have no good effect on health and at worst damage it. Health and injury insurance and the compensation industry won’t be necessary. The types and incidence of health problems are likely to differ in the early stage of socialism from later stages when the legacy from the money system will have receded. Also, some parts of the world today have different degrees of economic development, commonly referred to as under-developed, developing and developed. We don’t know the extent to which present trends, such as urbanization and environmental degradation, will continue, accelerate or be reversed. One thing we can say for certain is that socialism will release us from useless and harmful capitalist employment. We shall be free to take up work that will meet the needs of ourselves, others and the community, society and world in which we live. This is not to say that there won’t be problems to overcome. Natural disasters and pandemics won’t end with capitalism, although more effort will doubtless be devoted to avoiding and coping with them. Health and welfare problems resulting from natural disasters like floods or earthquakes will continue to require emergency measures. But the problems won't be as extensive. For one thing, people living in disaster-prone areas will be offered removal to safer environments.

Socialism will be able to provide decent care for the elderly. These now take up half the beds on the orthopaedic, chest and other medical wards. They are seen as a burden. In a socialist society real care – and that takes a lot of time, a lot of people – will be possible. Also, people with learning difficulties – those currently dismissed as mentally handicapped – can be more integrated into the community. A lot of people are currently left in hospitals because the society beyond can't be bothered, or lacks the cash, to care for them. Socialist hospitals will keep patients in for longer periods and not treat still frail and vulnerable patients as “bed-blockers”. At the moment hospitals do their best to throw patients out so that their beds can be filled. There will be also be the follow up treatment of district nurses and community psychiatric nurses engaged in home-visits. People need to be properly looked after and capitalism isn't letting us do that as well as we can and should. There will be an increase in neighborhood medical clinics and a return to rural cottage hospitals providing care and treatment although not performing transplant surgery! Capitalism sees the unproductive disabled as a drain on profits. Socialism will promote the good life and society for all, regardless of health condition. The replacement of a society based on production for profit by one based on production for needs will not of course mean the disappearance of disabled people, but it will certainly change for the better the way they are treated. Whether someone enjoys perfect health or suffers slightly or severely from an ailment of some kind will make no difference to the free and equal access they will have to the goods and services society is able to produce. Men and women in difference states of health will be able to contribute to the work of society in different ways. They will be in a position to balance the needs of themselves, others, the community and world society with their own physical and mental abilities and tastes. In a socialist society where the capacity for wealth production, unhampered by the colossal waste endemic to this one, can be released to the full, human values will predominate and energy can be concentrated on the causes of disease and its prevention. Issues such as the need for pharmaceuticals to make billions of pounds in profit will not exist.

But is there anything to think that socialism has something to offer as an answer to the problem of human misery? In socialism we will still have some of the problems that make you feel miserable, scared, depressed or demented. Socialism is not a solution to all mental health problems, it is a solution only to those created by capitalist conditions of life, or to class conditions of life. While some of the problems are due to being human beings living within a social setting, others are due to being biological organisms, and as such will break down if we are damaged or just get old. While there could be a reduced use of medication and an increased use of social therapy, the power to detain people whose condition renders them dangerous to others will still be needed. Capitalism has long produced the potential for such individual development, the task now is to realise it, to persuade working people that there is more to living than the shit of capitalism—we are more than pigs, content with mere physical satisfaction. All the indications are that common ownership and democratic control are the best way to long life and happiness.

Minimizing costs so as to maximise profits has harmful consequences. The health and welfare of the workforce and the effects on the environment take second place. That's what cutting costs means. This why at work we suffer speed-up, pain, stress, boredom, overwork and accidents. This is why we have to work long hours, shift-work and night-work. This is why the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe are all polluted. So in socialism there won't be such a widespread demand for health and welfare services.