The capitalist system is doomed.

“The monopoly of land drives him (the worker) from the farm into the factory, and the monopoly of machinery drives him from the factory into the street, and thus crucified between the two thieves of land and capital, the Christ of Labor hangs in silent agony.” Ernest Jones, Chartist

The Socialist Party appeals to you, fellow-workers, to rally around the only banner that symbolises hope – the banner of Socialism. Cast off all your old political affiliations, and organise and vote to reconquer society in the interests of its only useful class – the workers. Let your slogan be, the common ownership of the means of life. working people are not content to remain wage slaves of the capitalists and refuse to accept the burden of the economic crisis created by the capitalists themselves. Do not forget for an instant that the great struggle in which you are engaged in is a class war and that the lines must be sharply drawn in every battle, whether on the economic or the political field. The slavery of your class is responsible for your chains and not until your entire class is emancipated can you escape from the grasp of your capitalist masters. As far as this struggle is concerned, there is no good capitalist and no bad worker. Every capitalist is your enemy and every worker is your friend.

You have got to stand and act as one. Solidarity is your salvation, and socialism points unerringly the way. The class-conscious socialist movement scorns all compromise. The Socialist Party is pursuing its object and come what may, it will press on and on until the goal is reached and labor rules the world. The days in which we live are indeed pregnant with great possibilities. The working class is charged with the gravest responsibility of the ages. The history of the working class has been a history of unremitting struggle against exploitation and oppression by the capitalist class. Under the rule of the present capitalists, there can be no freedom for the workers – only freedom to be exploited as wage slaves. But where there is oppression there is always resistance and the working class has never been cowed. It has always struggled militantly to throw off the yoke of wage slavery.

The Socialist Party is the only party that stands against the present system and for the rule of the people; the only party that avows itself the party of the working class and the overthrow of wage-slavery. So long as the present system of capitalism prevails and the few are allowed to own the means of production, the toiling class will be struggling in the hell of poverty as they are today. The Socialist Party is absolutely the only party which faces conditions as they are and declares unhesitatingly that it has a definite and concrete plan for dealing with capitalism. The Socialist Party is the party of the workers. The Socialist Party stands for common ownership and co-operation. the Socialist Party demands the overthrow of capitalism. The most promising fact in the world today is the fact that labour is organising its power; its economic power and its political power. The workers who have made the world and who support the world, are preparing to take possession of the world. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for.

We demand the means of production in the name of the workers and the control of society in the name of the people. We demand the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery and the surrender of the capitalist class. We demand the complete rights of all the people regardless of race, colour, or nationality.  We demand complete control of industry by society; we demand all the wealth they produce for their own enjoyment, and we demand the Earth for all the people. The Socialist Party is determined to work co-operatively for the socialist commonwealth.

If the workers do not wish to emancipate themselves, if they are content to remain mere commodities for the  profit-extracting processes of the rich, then industrial action may perhaps make their masters adopt gentler methods of treatment; but if they wish to be no longer mere clay for the extraction of surplus-value, but living men and women, rejoicing in the freedom of their lives and the fruits of their labour; then they must apply their political strength, so as to splinter the system.

 Workers have but one commodity to sell, that is, their power to labour. The value of this power, embodied in their brains, nerves, muscles, etc., depends upon the value of the necessary elements of their subsistence. The cost of the food, clothing, and shelter, etc., that the worker must have in order to go on working are reflected in the wages that they receive. In the long run and on the average, they cannot accept less without causing their energy to deteriorate and become unsaleable. They cannot get more, because there are machines on the one hand and unemployed workers on the other ready to take their places.

With the workers, the existence of economic law is not a matter of speculative theory; it is a painful, everyday experience. If there were no economic forces operating according to some discoverable law, nothing could prevent the workers from claiming what wages they fancied, and the same would apply to the capitalists in fixing their prices. Nothing would be determined; all would be chaos; but human beings cannot exist on chaos and such a state is simply inconceivable.

At first sight, the realm of exchange presents an appearance of anarchy. The fluctuations in prices, including wages, are occasionally so violent that they seem capricious to the superficial observer.

In the same way, superstitious sailors, even today, attribute storms to spirits, etc., but for every wave, there is a corresponding trough and the general level of the ocean remains unchanged. So with the world market. The rise in prices at one time encourages greater production till the market is glutted; then, with the consequent fall in prices, the less economically conducted concerns go out of business. Always there is going on a ruthless, blind, automatic selection of the fittest types of machinery and organisation for the production of the wealth, with the result that the social powers of production are greater today than ever before in human history.

How are these powers controlled? They are in private hands, in spite of their social character. Consequently, they are only set into operation for the production of private profit. There is no organised social plan. Competition asserts itself at every turn. Even the narrowing of the circle by the concentration of capital, the forming of world trusts, international combines, etc., only makes the struggle fiercer.

The larger the output, the greater the importance of minute economies; yet the conflict in the market is as nought compared with that in the factory. If the capitalist is an anarchist in the realm of exchange, he is a despot in that of production, which is carried on amid the smouldering revolt of wage-slaves needing but little to fan it into open flame; but this revolt, again, is for the most part blind. It is only against the effects of the system, because the workers have not yet learned to understand the cause, i.e., the system itself.

Hence their efforts at improvement take the form of demands for higher wages and shorter hours, valuable enough if other things remained the same. Capitalism, however, constantly develops a greater power of exploitation. No programme of reforms can alter that. The workers cannot interrupt the development of industry; they can only take advantage of it by obtaining control of it through the common ownership of the productive forces themselves, but that would be socialism—and “the end of all things.” That at least is what those who pretend that “there is no capitalist system" would like us to believe. 

Anti-Racism Rally

STUC St Andrew's Day Anti-Racism March & Rally
SAT 24th November
10.30am
Glasgow Green

Fellow-workers should be aware that the only way to confront racists and fascists is on the battlefield of ideas, not with fists and boots.

The Socialist Party points the finger of blame at the real perpetrator of racism — the capitalist system.  Dispossessed, frustrated and alienated workers will always look for a short-cut to even up the imbalance between themselves and their masters. Is it any wonder workers are hoodwinked into believing ethnic communities or newcomers are the cause of their misfortune, and so must bear the brunt of their frustration. 

Racism will only be destroyed through a change in society. Racism has to be seen for what it is — a parasite on the back of nationalism, which is itself a disease of world capitalism. The task for socialists in their argument with racists is to convince them that workers have no nation and that there is more that unites the exploited members of the human race, all of whom have the same basic needs than can ever divide us culturally or historically. 

Racist ideas are a manifestation of capitalism, and will only be eradicated when the capitalist system itself is expunged by workers taking control of their own destiny, becoming conscious of their position in the relations of production and by democratically establishing a socialist society.

As we oppose, we must also propose.

“The enemy on whom we declare war is capital, and it is against capital that we will direct all our efforts, taking care not to become distracted from our goal by the phony campaigns and arguments of the political parties. The great struggle that we are preparing for is essentially economic, and so it is on the economic terrain that we should focus our activities.” -  Kropotkin

Workers cannot get straight improvements under capitalism —they all have strings. Wages may improve, but with a big demand for labour, up go rents and the price of food and necessaries. So that, overall, it might be said that in spite of the fantastic technical developments of the last decades—the fundamental position of the remains the same. And this, after hundreds of reforms and scores of political leaders. The Labour Party was born out of the idea of working-class political action. Many of its prominent figureheads claimed to be socialists. Even more than this, they claimed to be "practical" socialists who knew the way to get socialism. But the myth of the working class moving steadily forward to socialism by Labour governments is well and truly finished. Labour once used to be a reformist party which claimed to be able to impose socialist values—democracy, equality, co-operation not competition—on capitalist society. It was an impossible project of course which was bound to fail because capitalism can only work as capitalism. Capitalism offers to those who administer it just a choice of evils.  Now Labour is an openly capitalist party trying to impose capitalist values on those who haven’t absorbed them. How right was the Socialist Party to have had nothing to do with the Labour Party from the start.

We are inclined to accept the view that a terrible apathy exists and it is not as unhealthy as it would appear. The workers may not yet have awakened to the need for socialism, but they are beginning to demonstrate that they at least realise that so far whatever party they have voted for no change ensues for them—hence the abstentionists are the real majority—they continue to accept capitalism, but they are not voting for it. We believe that, especially among such people, real effort on our party can carry the day and convince them that there is something worth voting for. The fact that we are small numerically does not mean that the influence of our propaganda is not being felt; many people are quite prepared to vote and think with us to the exclusion of all others, even if they are not prepared at this stage to join us. 

Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive of men, goods, power, land. The ultimate destiny of all useful goods is to be consumed. Yet under capitalism goods are not produced to be consumed, but for profit, and if a greater profit can be made by destroying the goods, the destruction takes place. A capitalist system that prioritises profit and market growth over all else is the mortal enemy of a sustainable economy that satisfies needs rather than stock portfolios. Capitalist crises provide essential fuel for the growth of far-right politics. In times of crisis, we can either look towards solidarity or turn inward in xenophobic fear. Far right demagogues harness and promote fears of difference and anxieties about joblessness and financial ruin when leftwing alternatives fail. When so-called "socialist" political parties enact brutal austerity measures, they open the door for the far right as the lesser evil.

 With so many people now aware how much harm and misery profits can cause, the socialist alternative appears more clearly as the way out. If people come to see that profits themselves only exist because a minority have unjust possession of what the majority need, and this dominant class exploit both with damaging anti-social consequences, then all that unfocused anger would linger, politicians’ gibberish and worthless promises would be ignored, and there would be ever-increasing support for common ownership of vital industries and other productive assets, along with politician-free democratic control over how these are used. This is genuine socialism. It has never existed anywhere. It would make restrictive and dangerous money completely obsolete. Take a little time to find out more about this people-first system before your next trip to the polling stations.

 We are a Socialist Party because socialism alone is based on the facts of working-class existence. Socialism alone can free the workers from the necessity of selling themselves for the profit of a master. Socialism alone will strip all of us of our merchandise character, and allow everyone to become a full social being. Debates about reformism vs. revolution have waged for generations on the left. But now we are on a deadline. We need to organise socialist movements to gain political power and shut down capitalism that threatens our existence. We must recognise that the climate crisis is the most acute symptom of our failure to abolish capitalism.

The Socialist Party measures working-class progress in terms of its heightening awareness of its needs and aspirations. Consciousness in short, of its liberating rôle in history. Do workers realise the necessity of their building trade-union organisation that is independent of the employing class? Do they know the value of the strike weapon—and its limitations? Do they value and exercise hard-won electoral rights and the right to dissent? Do they become more and more convinced of the need for a change in the very basis of present society if humanity is to survive and to reach its proper stature? These are our criteria.

Nationalism teaches the worker to identify with his or her ruling-class. The Socialist Party says that the worker has no country and should recognise his common bonds with workers everywhere. Each new state that is set up has as its number one task the inculcation of a sense of differentness into its school-children and of their loyalty to a piece of territory quite arbitrarily arrived at. 

 If the workers vote for capitalism, then they will get what they vote for. Workers who want socialism will vote only for socialist candidates. The Socialist Party is unique among the political parties in this country is being prepared to put forward candidates fighting on that issue alone, socialism or capitalism. At present, the number of workers who want socialism is few in comparison with those who want capitalism. That unfortunate position can be remedied only by socialist propaganda. It is not helped, but hindered, by voting for one in preference to another of the parties which stand for private or state capitalism. There are differences, and real differences, between the capitalist parties, but the differences do not touch the subject condition of the working-class.

On The Record

From last month’s featured writer, J. A. MacDonald offers another fitting missive from his self-published journal, "On the Record". One this occasion MacDonald’s gives a humorous account of the animal economy of the humble ape known as man.

The Loquacious Ape

 "Man is a chattering animal. Usuall,y there is little of value in his pronouncements but we readily concede his facility of utterance. Other members of the animal kingdom are able to see, hear, taste, and smell far better than man can, but he can out-talk them all. The gift of gab he possesses today was not always a human attribute. Man was at one time much like other animals and answered all searching questions with a grunt, groan, grimace, or gesture.
Our simian ancestors were a sociable lot. With all his animosity to foreigner and outsider, as well as his political dissensions within the local orbit, there is probably no other animal as social as man. Looking back along the lengthy line of evolution it would be difficult to reach a point where our founding fathers were social exclusionists. They were always animals that enjoyed company...

. . . Looking over the position of the other animals in retrospect to language, we can readily that it had its origin and development in labor. It was a definite result of wielding tools to produce the needs of life. None of our fellow animals is expert in the use of articulate speech. None of them can argue or orate with ease and readiness we find in man. None of them has discovered the difference between the noun and the verb, or even the vowels and consonants. They communicate with each other in the old miocenic manner. . . . .

...The wild dog – the Australian dingo – is much like other animals of the frontier. He has no inclination to be on friendly terms with the people he happens to meet. But the tame dog, after centuries of training, has his ear attuned to his master’s voice and understands even better that some humans what the talking he hears is all about. When his owner speaks to him in a pleasant voice he returns the compliment with wagging his tail and osculatory gestures. When the boss berates him he sneaks off with his tail between his legs. The labor that induced speech and influenced the brain of the ape to become more and more like that of the man can be seen in its leavening function among the not so aptly termed – lower animals."

For socialism, 
Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC.

But Let’s Face It..

We of the SPC are as horrified as anyone else over the slaughter in Pittsburg, but realize that as long as capitalism continues this sort of thing also will, in fact, become more frequent. 

Though Trump isn't anti-semitic, nevertheless his, ''there's us and there's the others'', attitude is conducive to racist thinking, (if one can call it thinking); one can say it's halfway to government sanctioned, racism.

 Ironically, a few minutes later I heard the terrible news, I was watching, ''South Pacific'', in which John Kerr, sings, ''You've Got to Be Carefully Taught''. The song is about how parents teach their children to hate all those who aren't like them. If every parent instead taught their kids love of humanity it would be a wonderful thing, but let’s face it, this will not happen as long as we live in a society which by its very abnormal nature is divisive. 

If you want to see the end of atrocities, like the one in Pittsburg, then work towards putting the run on capitalism.

For socialism,

Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC.

Red Jackie

Jackie McNamara Snr Billy McNeill called him a “wee commie bastard”, Kenny Dalglish dubbed him “Trotsky”. 

“While the rest of them were playing cards, I’d be reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists,” Jackie McNamara Senior once recalled of his Celtic days, when he picked up the nickname Red Jackie. 

It had emerged that he sold Soviet Weekly when he was a kid, not that he tried to hide political convictions inherited from his father, who had been one of the Clyde’s youngest shipyard shop stewards. 

After a Drybrough Cup win over Rangers, Jimmy Johnstone told McNamara it was a grand a man for the bonus. But because he was younger, McNamara only got £250. “Wages were wages but I reckoned bonuses should be the same for everyone. Unfortunately, Billy and Jock [Stein] didn’t see it that way!” 

Read more at: https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/teams/scotland/scottish-football-s-10-greatest-rebels-1-4831513

System Change Not Climate Change!

CAPITALISM OR SOCIALISM

Climate change is possibly the greatest existential crisis facing humanity today. Capitalism has led us to the edge of the precipice, and avoiding the end of civilization means direct opposition to capitalism. Today’s planetary ecological crisis is due to the increasing scale of the capitalist world economy. It is connected to the nature and logic of capitalism, understood as a system directed at the accumulation of capital. Capitalism is a grow-or-die system. If accumulation declines, the result is economic crisis.  For capitalism, accumulation of capital is everything, the Earth and its inhabitants nothing. If value is created by the exploitation of labour, this nonetheless requires constant expropriation from nature which is considered a free gift to capital. In its narrow pursuit of profits, the capitalist system points inexorably to environmental destruction on a planetary scale. We need a massive shift to solar and wind and other alternatives, but the fossil-fuel economy and the goal of capital accumulation stand in the way. 

The answer of the system is to boost accumulation and expand markets. To speak of the need for a steady-state economy as a solution, immediately raises the doubts in people’s minds of the end of progress. However, we should be careful not to identify capitalist economic growth with human advancement as a whole. New technology is indispensable in addressing global problems when not aimed almost exclusively at promoting profits. Rational development and application of technology necessitates a transformation of our social relations. The big mistake is to fall for crude techno-fix solutions such as geo-engineering, viewing it as a magic solution to all problems yet continuing unchanged our social relations. The fact is that a simple technological fix would make it possible for capitalist business-as-usual, to carry on into the abyss. What is required is the creation of a massive global movement toward socialism that goes against the logic of the system: igniting a revolution. The biggest challenge humanity has ever faced is to carry out the socialist reconstitution of society at large.

There is a strong belief that changes in consumer habits can bring about good things for the environment and result in social and economic change. However, individuals in our society do not possess sovereignty as consumers and do not direct or dictate what happens in the economy and within society. There exists a sense that all the problems of the environment are due to consumers themselves but buying green and behaving green does not mean the market will turn green. The capitalist economy rests upon ownership and control of the means of production by a minority of capitalists, not with the consumer.  What is consumed depends largely on what is produced. Over a trillion dollars are spent per year in the US alone on marketing with the object of getting people to buy things they neither need nor want. Gaining control over production is essential if we are to avoid the tendency toward environmental devastation. Anyways, individual’s contribution to the environmental damage is minimal. If all the household waste in the United States going into municipal landfills were eliminated this would only take care of about a small portion, maybe as little as 3 percent, of the total solid waste generated in the economy, the rest is commercial wastage.

Why the Left needs socialism

The definition of socialism accepted by the Socialist Party is “the collective ownership of all the means of production and distribution.”  Socialism leaves consumption, i.e., the selection and the enjoyment of the means of life to the free will and the taste of the individuals. Socialism was impossible in former centuries. The modern development of the means of production — manufacturing in the present large scale — has now made socialism possible and necessary. Our present system divides society into two classes, the “have all” and the “have nothing” class, and that it is the great mass of the people that do all the useful work who belong to the “have nothing” class.  Socialists are class conscious. This does not mean that we must hate every capitalist individually, that some should be picked out or particular repulsion while the economic power and political encroachment of others should be silently submitted to. It means that while we understand that every individual capitalist is the result of the present system as much as the wage worker, we still must fight the capitalists as a class, because the producers cannot reasonably expect anything but exploitation from the exploiters as a class. Socialists do not propose to run away from the capitalists; they intend to stay right in the battle. Socialists will fight open and aboveboard everywhere and fight all capitalist parties alike. They cannot and will not assist capitalist politicians of one colour and offer support for another of a different colour.

The new social system at which we aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed out by a system of regimentation. What we seek is the rational collective organisation of the planet’s resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every citizen.

Our present society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic recession, in which the average person’s normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialised economy in which our natural resources and principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated by the people. The present order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed when private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort. The Socialist Party aims to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a society in which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine democratic self-management based upon economic equality will be possible, restoring to the community its natural resources.

The Socialist Party will not rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and established the socialist cooperative commonwealth. We are well aware that socialism is a term little understood by the world at large, and that it is everywhere a target for denunciation by the media of the plutocracy. When analysed it means a more equitable distributions of the products of labour; cooperation instead of competition; common ownership of land and all the means of production and distribution. It proclaims the coming of the cooperative commonwealth to take the place of wage slavery. The present economic system is not only a failure, but a colossal crime. It robs, it degrades, it starves; it is a foul blot upon the face of our civilisation; it promises only an increase of the horrors which the world deplores. There is no hope for our fellow-workers except by the path mapped out by socialists, the advocates of the cooperative commonwealth. In socialism, private ownership, the exchange economy (and barter) being at an end, money would lose the functions which it possessed under capitalism and would be abolished as will the wages system. Humanity will then be emancipated from the horrible thralldom which a soulless moneyed oligarchy has forced upon it.

We, organised in the Socialist Party, declare that to the working class belongs the future and through the ballot box, abolish the capitalist system of ownership with its accompanying class rule and class oppression, and establish in its place socialism — an industrial democracy — wherein all the land and the tools of production shall be the common property of the whole people, to be operated by the whole people for the production of goods and services for use and not for profit. We ask our fellow-workers to organise with us to end the domination of private property— with its poverty-breeding system of unplanned production — and substitute in its place the socialist co-operative commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his or her faculties, multiplied by all the modern technological wonders of the modern world.

More Positivity Needed. The Case For Socialism.

The most significant thing about the Ontario municipal elections was the low turn-out of voters. 

Toronto did quite well with 41 per cent. Misssissauga had 27 per cent and London 39. 

Some had thought it would be higher there because London became Canada's first city to have first, second and third choice candidates, but it made no difference. 

Some Toronto wards with large working-class populations polled as low as 32 to 27 per cent; all of which suggests many have given up hoping for any improvement in their lives from those they elect.

 As positive as this is it would be even more positive if their despair would lead them to study the case for Socialism. 

For socialism, 

Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC

.

As The Brits Say “Good Luck Mate”

October 22 was municipal Election Day in Ontario. The results brought few surprises, Oh yes !, silly me, everyone elected is pledged to administrate capitalism. 

The main media focus was on Toronto, in view of Premier Ford’s cutting the wards down from 44 to 25. John Tory was re-elected as Mayor with 63.5 per cent of the vote.

 So arch-tory Tory will now have problems getting a majority to push his bills through as some councilors don't see eye to eye with him and some are wild cards.

 Furthermore, Toronto has major problems with crime, lack of affordable housing, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, a very high cost of living and traffic congestion, in fact, the normal problems of major metropolitan areas under the lovely economic system we live under. 

All this Mr. Tory faces; as the Brits would say, ''Good Luck Mate''.

For socialism, 
Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC.

Each for all and all for each

Socialism is the hope of the whole of humanity for the workers cannot liberate themselves without emancipating the whole of mankind. It is impossible to contemplate the horrors of capitalism and remain immune unless, indeed, one is emotionally dead to every sentiment of humanity.

We are ready to conquer capitalism by making use of our political liberty and by taking possession of the public power, so that we may put an end to the present barbarous class exploitation  by the abolition of capitalism and turning all of the land, and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution, into the property of all people as a collective body, and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production, and social disorder — a commonwealth which, although it will not make every man and women equal physically or mentally, will give to every worker the free exercise and the full benefit of his and her faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of civilisation and ultimately inaugurate the universal brotherhood of mankind.

A class-free socialist commonwealth cannot be attained without the overthrow of the rule of capitalism. It is an illusion that it can be built up alongside and within capitalist society.  There can be very little gained by socialists trying to administer the capitalists’ political machinery; that this machinery is especially adapted to fit the necessity of the ruling class. A socialist official is powerless to do more than the machine permits, and the machine permits practically nothing. If socialism is simply going to be another system of exploitation it can easily graft on the old tree, as has its predecessors. But if it is to usher forth the triumph of a new era, the final capture, and overthrow of the master class and the establishment of an entirely new principle in production.

What the working class may gain under capitalism at one point, they lose at another; and that as the struggle goes on it will become more and more bitter, and the general distress and subjugation of the workers more and more acute; and that this process must go on until the workers learn the lesson that the source of their trouble is inherent in the wage system and that the remedy is not in placing patches on this system but to its final overthrow and the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth.

To accomplish this aim is the historic mission of the working class and one of the most effective tools at the command of the workers in the struggle against their class enemy, is socialist party,  a party not the work one man but a mass movement that has  grown out of the needs of the class whose interests it represents. The party that can speak in the name of labour is a socialist party.  However, many of you think that those of us in the  Socialist Party are impractical visionaries with strange notions in our heads and thus a waste of time. When we explain our ideas you dismiss it as mere theory yet are willing to accept others theories such as that immigration is the cause of your problems, that over-population is the root of what ails the world. You unquestioningly take such theories as veritable truths. Compromise and reforms will never destroy wage-slavery.  Through socialism alone will this be accomplished and it is the duty of every worker to align with the Socialist Party.  Link arms, fellow workers, with your brothers and sisters of other lands for there can be no grander reward than when there is no longer a master, no longer a slave.

Under capitalism, with its wage slavery, the worker and his family are nominally free; but, as we have seen, the land, the tools and all the product of his labour belong to the employing class. The workers are at liberty to change their individual masters, if they can, that is all. There is a continuous class war between wage slaves and the capitalist class, with its parasites. So long as wages are paid by one class to another class, so long will men and women remain slaves to the employing class. Wage slaves have ceased to be at the mercy of individual employers, but they cannot emancipate themselves from slavery to the employing class until they themselves cease to compete with one another for wages. “Free and Independent Workers” sell their labour power, which is the only commodity they possess, to the capitalists who own or control all the means of producing wealth, including the tools, raw material, land, and money.

Under the machine-method of production, the workers are controlled by their tools, instead of being in control of them. Under the capitalist system of production for exchange, the producers themselves have no control over their own products. Commodities, social goods, are produced, not directly for social purposes, but indirectly, in order to create a profit for the capitalists. If capitalists are unable for any reason to produce goods profitably, the wage-earners cease to be employed, though there may be a vast quantity of useful goods glutting the warehouses on the one hand, and millions of people who are anxious to have them on the other.

Rent, profit, and interest are all provided by the workers. All three are the component parts of the labour value embodied in saleable commodities by the labour power of the workers, over and above the actual wages paid to the employee, and the cost of raw materials, incidental materials, etc., needed by the capitalist for the conduct of his business. The wages paid by the employers to their hands represent the customary standard of living of the skilled or unskilled workers employed. These wages are, on the average, returned in saleable values to the capitalist in a portion of the working day, or week, for which the worker has sold his labour power to the capitalist. The goods produced during the rest of the time the wage-earner works for the capitalist are the result of this extra and unpaid labour, furnished by the worker to the capitalist. It is the modern industrial expression of the corvée, enforced, not by the whip, but by pecuniary necessity and individual hunger. This is the surplus value, out of which all the classes who do not directly produce are paid their share, the parasites. Wages paid in money seem to workers to come to them from above, instead of being only the value of a portion of the goods they themselves produce, paid to them in the form of money. They owe this blunder to their own condition of servitude. Workers have advanced their labour power to the capitalist before they are paid their wages for its use. Capitalists, as a class, run no risks whatever; the unfortunate in the competitive struggle for gain are simply wiped out by their competitors, who benefit by their downfall. Shareholders in capitalist companies rarely or never render any service to the company, or the community, as shareholders. In the vast majority of cases, they have never visited the enterprises from which they draw their dividends.

 Production for profit and exchange by wage labour assumes the existence of large numbers of people who are divorced from the land and possess no property of their own. The only way to solve the growing antagonism between the two great classes of modern society is, by substituting co-operation for competition, in all branches of production and distribution. This involves a social revolution, peaceful or forcible. Wage-earners are thrown out of employment, not because they are clamouring for impossible wages, still less because they are unwilling to work, but because the employing class itself cannot produce at a loss.

Where freedom of speech, freedom of combination, together with political freedom and voting power, have been secured, the use of the political weapon in the first instance is by far the best course, and in the long run the most effective. This arises for several reasons:

(a) The wage-earners who, being too ignorant of the real interests of their class or insufficiently organised, will not go to the ballot-box to vote for their champions, certainly will never go to the barricades to fight for them effectively;

(b) If they win on the political field they are in a very much stronger position to enter upon actual civil war, and are ready to take over the machinery of government for the benefit of the whole community;

(c) Direct action, by means of successive strikes or a general strike of all the workers, would only disorganise the whole of the existing machinery of production and distribution which they desire to secure for themselves and the whole community. Even when the workers have succeeded in paralysing industry, they must co-ordinate by political means so created through some style of General Assembly.

Also, in any organised effort outside the political arena, the growing ill-feeling of all not immediately concerned in the strike when starvation set in, might lead to a military dictatorship of some duration, if only to secure renewed peace and daily sustenance for the majority. The inclination of the great majority of wage-earners has been to use political action in the interest of their class, with the object of obtaining direct control over the industrial forces. This means that, wherever the wage-earning class is sufficiently organised and disciplined, they should refrain from the use the dangerous weapon of the general strike. With political action, for which our forebears fought for and which we have secured there is far less danger of armed conflict. It cannot be doubted that if direct action such as a general strike took so wide a sweep as is contemplated, implying the cessation of work in every sphere of manufacture and transportation, this would almost inevitably lead to civil war. Then there may easily then arise differences between the strikers themselves; for it is by no means certain that men who are too slow and careless to vote for their own class champions would develop a whole-souled eagerness to fight for themselves and their class.

 Privation and shortages is apt to turn even enthusiasts for overthrow into partisans of a military dictatorship. No Government, also, would, or could surrender at once to such an organised stoppage of the whole national life, without a desperate effort, in which all the resources of the coercive State would be used. Is it advisable even to threaten to resort to such desperate tactics, when the alternative of political action is still open? Is it well to risk a defeat, which might be a throwback for a whole generation. The reaction upon failure would be terrible.

The Socialist Party aims at the entire emancipation of the workers from the mastery of the capitalist system via the ballot box, not for the enactment of palliative reforms under capitalism but for the immediate establishment of a co-operative commonwealth, that is, in fact, the emancipation of the whole wage-slave class.

Silly season in Scotland (1989)

From the June 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political scene is really buzzing up in Scotland. The Labourites are in turmoil over the issue of Scottish independence while the Scottish National Party is split because of something called the Constitutional Convention. To add to the fun Militant is up to its old tricks and there is a brand new “socialist" party with the usual stale ideas.

After the last general election when the Tories won only 10 of the 72 seats in Scotland the SNP floated the idea that the anti-Tory forces should join in forming a convention of MP's, councillors, churchmen and trade unionists which would draw up a plan for Scottish self-government within the United Kingdom. This, it was argued, would gain Scotland some protection from unrepresentative Thatcherism.

Preliminary talks in January between the SNP, Labour and the SLD began amicably enough but then the SNP delegation suddenly walked out. They probably felt that, after their Govan by-election victory, the convention no longer had anything to offer them and they should go for outright "Independence Within Europe". This move outraged several prominent SNP members who condemned the leadership for having made a bad error of judgement. The Scots electorate, they said, is so desperate to be rid of Thatcher that they will not forgive the SNP for abandoning the convention.

Isobel Lindsay, a member of the executive, pointed to the immediate drop in SNP support in the opinion polls and added “perhaps even more important . . .  we are alienating Scotland's thinking classes . . .” (Glasgow Herald 7 February 1989). Lindsay is a university lecturer. In the end the walkout was backed by the party’s national council by a big majority but rumblings of discontent continue.

Labour’s Troubles

What about Labour's troubles? The party's neo-nationalist wing, which includes several MP's and leading trade unionists, is openly calling for Labour to lead a Scottish UDI from the United Kingdom should England vote the Tories in again. This revolt forced Neil Kinnock to declare his support for devolution at this year's Scottish Labour Party conference although he didn't even mention it last year, an omission which doubtless had nothing to do with the SNP's low standing in the polls at that time.

Almost obscured by these events is the formation of the Scottish Socialist Party *, the latest breakaway from Labour. The new party has about 100 members and believes that the only way for Scots to get rid of Thatcherism is the creation of an independent “socialist" Scotland. Alex Wood, former Labour leader of Edinburgh District Council, and an SSP leading light, gives us his idea of what socialism means.

  He firmly believes the time is right for a socialist approach to Scottish life, such as public housing, free education and a national health service (Glasgow Herald 12 January 1989).

In case anyone is wondering why Wood bothered to leave the Labour Party he says it was because, among other things. Labour has rejected the socialist transformation of society. Since he also tells us that Labour was never a socialist party anyway then what else did he expect?

The SSP says that it will appeal to disenchanted nationalists and on cue they have been joined by Alan Clayton, a prominent SNP member. He denounced the SNP's withdrawal from the convention as "shameful" and told them the correct policy would have been to stay and fight from within it. Why he didn't stay and fight from within the SNP he didn’t say. The SSP will soon follow into oblivion its predecessor, the Scottish Labour Party, formed by Sillars in 1976 and died in 1980.

Mindless Militants

Meanwhile, Militant's long-running efforts to take over the Labour Party in Scotland have produced results — all of them bad. Their tactic of flooding local Labour parties with recruits and then using them to deselect Labour MP's and councillors who don’t toe the Militant line has hit a snag. Why? Because the Labour Party will not sit back and let this happen. For example, 158 applicants in Pollok have been refused membership and it is Militant members who are getting the push. Three have been expelled in Cumbernauld with more to follow in Livingston and Cathcart. More seriously for them 13 alleged Militant “supporters" in their Pollok stronghold have been suspended and expulsions are a certainty. To rub it in all their candidates for office in Leith were defeated.

These antics make us think of a no-contest between two grossly mismatched boxers. In this corner the Labour heavyweight, and in the other corner the Militant flyweight. No matter how many times the flyweight gets flattened he gets up and comes back for more. He's game but is he wise? Does Militant really think the Labour Party will let them take it over? And what would they do with it if they got it? Do they imagine that significant numbers of Labour voters would vote for Militant policies? Maybe they're just punch-drunk enough to say "yes".

In conclusion, will the present nationalist upsurge in Scotland collapse like the previous one in the 1970's? This is unlikely because of the Thatcher factor. Another Tory victory at the next election along with their continued rejection in Scotland will cause many Labour leaders, activists and supporters to decide that full independence is the only hope. Margaret Thatcher is a better propaganda weapon for the SNP than North Sea oil ever was.

Vic Vanni

* The Scottish Socialist Party mentioned in the article are not to be confused with the current Scottish Socialist Party which was formed by Scottish Socialist Alliance (Tommy Sheridan's Scottish Militant Labour and others) in 1998.