"It's only human nature , isn't it?"

Sooner or later a socialist will be faced with the question “What about human nature? Socialism is against human nature" as the reason to why the struggle for socialism is doomed and why socialism itself will not work. Rarely, if ever, is the question phrased “What aspect of human nature do we feel we should encourage to achieve socialism?”

Human nature has always been invoked every time there has been any question of social progress. The slave-holders said some people were born to be slaves. The slave was a possession of the slave owner and only lived and worked for his benefit. The master had full control of the life and family of the slave. The owner was everything, the slave nothing. It was the natural order of things.

Capitalism has been responsible for a great deal of human suffering. Concentration of wealth and property, exploitation of labour, the abuse of nature for profit, the violent suppression of opposition, the manipulation of democracy and control of information, surpluses of food and medicine for the rich while millions of the poorest die of malnutrition and disease. Supporters of capitalism, however, insist that “human nature” creates the ills associated with the present system – greed, competition, war, inequality. Socialists declare it is not “human nature” that is the cause of the problems people face today. It is the way society is organised

Opponents of socialism say that we are not being practical: that we are dreamers and utopians. Our opponents confront us again with human nature and say; “You want to change society to ensure happiness to all and give everyone equality. You forget human nature! Man is by nature selfish and evil. You will never be able to change people.”

Socialists do not believe that there is no such thing as the nature of man; that man at birth is like a blank sheet of paper, on which the culture writes its text. Socialists are never tempted to assume that "human nature" is identical with that particular expression of human nature prevalent in their own society. Socialists do not accept that there was a fixed, eternal "human nature". In human society nothing is unchangeable. Everything is variable. Human nature is strongly shaped by the society it exists in and does in fact vary from one society to another. Through history classes and social systems have succeeded each other and differed from each other. It is a mistake to maintain that human nature does not change. Everything changes in Nature and in life. Everything is in a process of transformation. Movement is the universal law of everything that exists. We never meet the same person twice because during the interval they have grown older, their constitution and character changed; they is no longer the same. If everything changes, is subject to transformation and modification, how is it possible to believe for a moment that the present system of property will always remain the same? That would be, indeed, contrary to nature.

The satisfaction of human needs is impossible for an isolated individual. Only by taking part in the collective production process, working alongside everyone else to produce what we all require, can an individual become truly human. It has also been said that if men do not have the spur of hunger and want and of the desire to make profit they will become lazy. To argue this is to forget the necessity for clothing, feeding and sheltering oneself. Who does not work neither will they eat. It is to forget too, that idleness is not the characteristic of a sane person.

Laziness is a social malady, spawned by our system, which is in itself a stimulus to laziness. It assures all riches, all the pleasures of life to those who work the least possible - the idle rich parasites. Laziness also develops from the intolerable conditions of forced and excessive labour in unhealthy factories. How can people work with enthusiasm when they know that their work will go to the enrichment of others? When the producers know that the products of their work will belong to them they will throw overboard the old repugnance which forced drudgery engenders in them. Work well regulated and fairly apportioned will become attractive. It will become a joy and a pleasure, and this is because work is necessary for the physical and mental well-being of the individual. Altruism/co-operation/communism, call it as you will, is basically the "we" and the "us" versus the egotistical bourgeois, "I" and the "me". "All against all" would properly express capitalist values.

Socialism does not depend on some miraculous change in human nature. Thirsty men will fight tooth and nail for a drink of water in a desert. But if they are up to their waist in water they may have a thousand differences among themselves, but they will not even dream of fighting for a drink. A dozen men in a prison cell with only one tiny window may trample over each other in the fight to get to that tiny source of fresh air. But outside, who ever thinks of fighting for air to breathe, or for more air than the next man? Announce a shortage of bread, and immediately a long line will form, with everyone racing to get there first. But if everyone knew that there is an ample supply of bread today, and there will be just as large a supply tomorrow and the next day, there would be no line, no race, no conflict; nobody would try to hoard an extra loaf in order to make sure of eating the next day. If society could assure everyone of as ample and constant a supply of bread as there is of air, why would anyone need or want a greater right to buy bread than his neighbor? Bread is used here only as the simplest illustration. But the same applies to all other foods, to clothing, to shelter, to transport.

Capitalism cannot exist without the working-class. It is the working-class which sets in motion the machine. As soon as the proletariat becomes conscious of this fact it will begin to revolt against a state of things. Socialism is very simple. A small minority of rich people exploit the mass of poor people, those who produced the wealth of the world. If we, the vast majority, got ourselves organised, we can take the wealth into our hands, along with the means to produce it. Then with rational planning all major problems of social life can be resolved to the satisfaction of all.

More Food for thought

At the other end of the spectrum ( the highest paid lackeys ) we have those on welfare. The Provincial Liberal government is bringing down a budget and looking to decrease its deficit. As usual, it is targeting the most vulnerable in our society. It has proposed that anyone on welfare will experience clawbacks of their allowance if they earn more than $200 per month. They also propose to scrap the special diet allowance for those with chronic illnesses that require special foods. The program costs $230 million a year, not a small amount but piddling in the total budget. How mean can you get? How about getting someone to donate his/her hedge fund salary for a year (at that rate, how many years of earning do you really need?) and keep the food program going for another four years. Maybe the high earners can rotate! Of course, this nonsense will go on as long as we, the ninety-nine percent let the one percent do as they bloody well like.
But wait! We have a saviour. Justin Trudeau, son of former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, has been elected new leader of the federal Liberal party to contest the stagnating Tories. David Olive of the Toronto Star exhorts Trudeau to 'craft a bold agenda'. Olive points out that middle-class incomes have not only been stagnating but actually plummeting and the only thing saving them is the second bread-winner in the family and the credit card. Also for Captain Trudeau to address is the fact that 1.4 million are out of work and almost 900,000 Canadians, 38% of them children, use food banks *every week*, a 31% increase since 2008. Still, we are being told to wait for miracles from our leaders. Only when we all own the system and we have no leaders will this nonsense end! John Ayers

Food for thought

We are all aware that the highest paid lackeys of capitalism receive extraordinary salaries, often in the millions when one can say that by the mid-morning of the second day of the year they have earned as much as the average worker will earn in a whole year. However, the New York Times reported (Sunday, April 21) that hedge fund titans make much more than this. In fact the four top earners cited earned, $900 million, $1.7 billion, $1.1 billion, and $1.4 billion! Please
explain to me how anyone can earn $500 000 per hour! That means that these hard workers earn the average worker's salary in about five minutes! Just how crazy can this get? John Ayers

Gerald Massey - the Chartist Poet

"KINGS ARE BUT GIANTS BECAUSE WE KNEEL"

Good People, put no faith in Kings, nor merchant-princes trust,
Who grind your hearts in Mammon's press—your faces in the
dust—
Trust to your own true thought! to break the Tyrant's dark dark
ban;
If yet one spark of freedom lives, let man be true to man.
We'll never fight again, Boys! with the Yankee, Pole, or Russ.
We love the French as Brothers, and the fervid French love us!
We'll league to crush the fiends who kill, all love and liberty,
They are but Giants because we kneel, one leap, and up go we!

Trust not the Priests, their tears are lies, their hearts are hard and
cold—
The welcomest of all their flock, are fierce wolves fleeced with gold;
Rogues all! for hire they prop the laws, that make us poor men
sin.
Ay! tho' their robes are black without, they've blacker souls
within.
The Church and State are linkt, and sworn to desolate the land—
Good People, twixt these foxes tails, we'll fling a fiery brand!
Who fears the worst that they can wreak, that loveth liberty?
They are but Giants because we kneel, one leap and up go we!

"Back tramplers of the many! death and danger ambusht lie?
"Beware ye! or the blood may run! respect a nation's cry.
"Ah, shut not out the light of Hope! the People blind, may dash
"Like Sampson in his strong death-grope, and whelm ye in the
crash.
"Think how they taxt the People mad, that old regime of
France,
"Whose heads, like poppies from Death's sythe, fell in a bloody
dance.
Ye plead in vain! ye bleed in vain! ah! Blind, when will ye see,
They are but Giants because we kneel! one leap, and up go we?

We've fought and bled, while Fortune's darlings slunk in
splendid lair,
With souls that crept like worms in buried Beauty's golden hair!
A tale of lives wrung out in tears, their grandeur-garb reveals,
And the last sobs of breaking hearts, sound in their chariot wheels.
But they're quaking now! and shaking now! who've wrought the
hurtling sorrow:
To-day the Desolators, but the desolate To-morrow!
Loud o'er their murderous menace, wakes the watchword of the
Free.
Kings are but Giants because we kneel! one leap, and up go we!

Some brave and patriots hearts, are gone, to break beyond the
wave,
And some who gave their lives for love, have found a prison-
grave,
Some, have grown grey with weeping! some have fainted by the
way,
But youth still nouritures* within the hope of a better day.
O! Blessings on world-conquering youth! God's with the shining
band!
Their spirits breathe of Paradise! they're freshest from his hand!
And looking on the People's might, who doubts they shall be
free?
Kings are but Giants because we kneel ! one leap, and up go we!
* Nurtures.

GERALD MASSEY
(1828 - 1907)

Born in a hovel in Tring, on 29th May 1828, (Thomas) Gerald Massey was the eldest son of an impoverished and illiterate canal-boatman. Massey said of himself that “he had no childhood,” for on reaching the age of eight he was put to work in the Town’s silk mill where his twelve-hour days spent labouring in grim conditions added between nine pence and one shilling and three pence to his father's meagre earnings. He later worked in Tring’s then-thriving straw plaiting industry producing braid for the straw hat trade in nearby Luton and Dunstable. Thanks to his mother, Mary, Massey received a scant education at a “penny school”. Despite these tough beginnings, he learned to read and write using the Bible, Bunyan, Robinson Crusoe and Wesleyan tracts left at the family home.

Lots To Smile About

Accompanying a photograph of the two billionaires smiling broadly at a Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders meeting in the USA was the following piece of information. 'Super-rich Bill Gates and Warren Buffett obviously know how to take it easy. It can't be too hard when Microsoft chairman Gates, 57, is worth $67 billion and Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Buffett, 82, has been valued at $53.5 billion.' (Sunday Express, 5 May) RD

Another Promise Bites The Dust

When the government closed Remploy factories that employed disabled workers their boast was that the closures would lead to more of them getting jobs in mainstream employment. Like most government promises this turned out to be untrue. 'Up to two thirds of the disabled workers who lost their jobs when the nationwide network of Remploy factories began to be shut down last autumn are still out of work.' (Sunday Express, 5 May) Being unemployed is tough but being unemployed and disabled must be hellish. RD

Scottish Wage Slavery

Although Scots speak of Scotland as “our” country and millions of Scotsmen have died or have been mutilated over the centuries in defence of what they called “their” country, as a matter of fact Scotland does not belong to the whole of the Scottish people, but to a comparative few. How many Scots can point to a particular part of the map of Scotland and say “this is mine”? The greatest portion of Scotland is divided among a few great landlords.


Scotland is spoken of as a wealthy country by proponents of nationalism. Does that mean that the Scottish people as a whole are well off? By no means. Some are immensely rich, most merely get by with a bare living, and large number are degradingly poor. The land, factories and transport, all the means of producing the nation’s wealth, are owned by the landlord/capitalist class. In capitalist Scotland, production is carried on not for the purpose of supplying the needs of the people but for the purpose of sale in order to realise a profit. Only those who have something to sell can get a living.

The working class have nothing to sell but their labour power. They sell their labour power to an employer for a price, that is, wages. Since one cannot separate labour power from one’s body it comes down to this, that a workers actually sells themselves like a slave. Socialists describe it as wage-slavery. In Scotland the average a worker is not more than a few weeks removed from penury. The Scottish worker know that year of honest sweat and persistent toil and bring them nothing worth holding on to, nothing worth fighting for. Yet, deep down in their foolish hearts they believe they have a country. Oh, the blind vanity of slaves!

What does Scottish capitalism offer the worker? A life of toil, and a bare subsistence. Always the fear of unemployment. A drab, colourless existence and, when unable to earn our keep any longer, to be thrown on the scrap-heap. In an independent Scotland , nationalists say “there will be change” and that “things will be different”. But capitalism will remains in existence, the worker will still remain subject to the capitalist. There will still be riches and leisure for the few yet drudgery and poverty for the many. Mansions for the idle rich, slum housing for the workers. An independent Scotland can offer its workers nothing but wage slavery. Independence does not make a wage-slave free . There has neverexisted a truly free and democratic nation in the world.

No master ever had any respect for his slave. The capitalist for whom you work doesn’t have to go out and look for you; you have to seek out him, and you belong to him just as completely as if he had legal title to your body; as if you were his chattel slave. He doesn’t own you under law, but he does under the fact. Why? Because he owns the means by which you work and if you don’t work you don’t eat. He is your boss; he owns your job, takes your product and controls your destiny. You have wants. You have necessities. You cannot satisfy them except by your labour. In a barbarous competitive struggle workers are fighting each other to sell themselves into slavery.

After the American Civil War, the ex-Confederacy plantation owners looked upon the loss of their slaves as a severe blow, but they soon began to see what the North had long since known, that the ownership of land and capital meant the virtual ownership of those who must have access to those instruments or starve. The slaves had been freed but as this freedom did not include freedom of access to the means of livelihood they were still as dependent as ever. Being unable to employ themselves they were compelled to seek employment, or the use of land upon which to live, at the hands of the very class from whom they had been liberated. In either case they were only able to retain barely enough of the product to keep body and soul together. The competition among the newly emancipated for an opportunity to secure a livelihood was so great that their labour-power could be bought for a mere existence wage. The labour-power of the slave thus became a commodity, and like all commodities, its price was determined by its cost of production. The cost of producing labour-power is the cost of the labourer’s keep. The master class were able to secure the necessary labour-power to carry on their industries for merely a subsistence wage for no more than it cost them when they owned the slaves as chattels. Indeed, slavery is not yet abolished. So long as the worker is deprived of property in the instruments of production, so long as his labour-power is a commodity which he is obliged to sell to another, he is not a free being, be he white or black. He is simply a slave to a master and from morning until night is as much a bondsman as any black ever was below Mason and Dixon’s line before the civil war. Slaves are cheaper now and do more work than at any time in the world’s history.

A shopkeeper in order to live must sell his wares for what he can get, but a worker in order to live must sell a part of his life, nine, ten, or twelve hours per day, as the case may be. The shopkeeper, if lucky, may get the value of his goods, but the worker cannot get under the capitalist system the value of his labour; he must accept whatever wage those who are unemployed are willing to accept at his job. This is what is called wage-slavery, because under it the worker is a slave who sells himself for a wage with which to buy his rations, which is the only difference between this system and chattel slavery where the master bought the rations and fed the slave himself. There is only one remedy for this slavery of the working class, and that remedy is socialism a system of society in which the land, factories, workshops, and everything necessary for work shall be owned and operated as common property

Today there is nothing so easily produced as wealth. The whole earth consists of raw materials and with solar, wind and water power, by the touch of a button from the merest child, these can be set into operation to transform these raw materials into wealth, the finished products, in all their multiplied forms and in opulent abundance for all, wealth enough for a community. There is no excuse for poverty today yet it is a scourge for most living in a chronic state of poverty. Workers can change this by making up their minds that it shall be changed.

There is one way to attain that end, and that way is for the working class to establish a political party of its own, resolved to use all the power of the workers against their oppressors.

Colonial Hypocrisy

For many years the British ruling class have painted a picture of their government always behaving in an honourable fashion. This fallacy has now been exposed as nonsense. The British government is negotiating payments to thousands of Kenyans who were detained and severely mistreated during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency . 'In a development that could pave the way for many other claims from around the world, government lawyers embarked upon the historic talks after suffering a series of defeats in their attempts to prevent elderly survivors of the prison camps from seeking redress through the British courts. Those defeats followed the discovery of a vast archive of colonial-era documents which the Foreign Office (FCO) had kept hidden for decades, and which shed new and stark light on the dying days of British rule, not only in Kenya but around the empire.' (Guardian, 5 May) In the case of the Mau Mau conflict, the secret papers showed that senior colonial officials authorised appalling abuses of inmates held at the prison camps established during the bloody conflict, and that ministers and officials in London were aware of a brutal detention regime in which men and women were tortured and killed. RD

Not So Shocking

Workers often have to borrow in order to get by from day to day, but now we learn many have to do so just to get something to eat. 'One in five UK households borrowed money or used savings to cover food costs in April, a Which? survey says. It suggests the equivalent of five million households used credit cards, overdrafts or savings to buy food. The consumer group tracks the spending habits and behaviours of 2,000 people every month. Which? boss Richard Lloyd described the findings as "shocking". (BBC News, 5 May) Mr Lloyd may be shocked, but socialists find it no surprise. RD

The General Strike Weapon

The possibility of a general strike keep cropping up within the trade union movement. There have been many different types of general strikes in the history of the working class internationally. A general strike is a practical tactic or a token gesture, useful or detrimental, according to the conditions under which it takes place, the method it employs and the end it proposes. When we speak of the general strike we are not concerned with the general strike of a single trade union but of all workers. The movement is no longer, a trade union movement but has become a class movement.

For the general strike to succeed, the working-class must be convinced of the importance of the aim for which it is declared. It must be demonstrated that the purpose is legitimate and victory is realisable. The general strike must not be a disguise for revolution, but simply the right to strike on a wider scale and with a more clearly marked class character. The Socialist Party dismisses the idea that the general strike is the panacea of the proletariat. If the weapon of the general strike is to be used, then the organisation must be so built up that this weapon will stand ready for instant use. For the certainty of success in a general strike lies in its suddenness.

The Socialist Party oppose those who think that a general strike would be enough to bring on the social revolution and the fall of the whole capitalist system. The Socialist Party call for for participation in elections, as a means of propaganda, organisation, and struggle. The class vote has as its goal the self-emancipation of the working class. Yet, despite those who like to claim otherwise, we have never subordinated the taking of political power by the workers – which is necessary for the emancipation of labour and society – to a socialist majority in parliament. But we are also obliged to reject as a mirage the general strike as the only way to achieve socialism. We argue that the working class can vote for itself, for its own candidates and against the candidates of the exploiting class, with little need for the social disruption required to make a general strike as effective tool.

There are some who desire to transform the proposed general strike against austerity into a political general strike, using the opposition to the cuts as the slogans to mobilise around. They expect that because of a sustained general strike the normal economic life of the country will be suspended, rail and roads would be deserted, container ships unable to dock. Everywhere there would be a stoppage in distribution and in production. Naturally, this great discomfort would arise since workers would be depriving themselves, and therefore would be forced to adopt more forceful methods in order to live. They would seize food and other provisions wherever they could lay hands on them. The privileged classes, threatened, would respond in kind with repression and so the general strike is envisioned to escalate into a revolutionary character. That is the idea of the “revolutionary socialists".

This sort of strategy is a trick to delude the working-classes. It proposes to drag them far beyond what was proposed. By the attraction of certain concrete, definite and immediate reforms they are to be led to believe from the general strike they will be conveyed almost automatically to the Revolution. To imagining that a social revolution can result from misleading workers in such a manner is nonsense.
The idea of carrying through a social revolution by means of a folded arms policy is romantic. A stoppage of production and transportation is not enough to bring about the overthrow of a society. Strikers will stand outside the gates of the factories, and even if the workers occupy and take possession of the factory, it is a pointless exercise for the factories cannot function while the economy is suspended and production is stopped by the universal strike. The general strike is centred upon the economic and does not supply the working-class forces with a broader but more central aim by which they can unite. So long as a class does not own and control the whole social machine, it can seize all the factories and yards it wants to, but it really possesses nothing.

The general strike, although, quite powerless as a revolutionary means, is none the less important. It is a warning to the privileged classes, rather than a method of liberation for the exploited classes. It tells the governing class if they are mad enough to threaten or attack universal suffrage, if by the persecution of employers and the police they made the right to unite in trade unions and the right to strike empty forms, then a forceful general strike would be certainly the form that a labour revolt would take. It would be an act of desperation, more as a means of damaging the enemy to save ourselves than a means of liberation.

The cost of cancer

Allan Cowie, general manager for Macmillan Cancer Support in Scotland, has revealed that after fear of pain, money worry is patients’ greatest cause of stress. And demeaning work assessments ruling people are fit to work are also causing unnecessary suffering.


Many Scots, according to the charity boss, have been left with the fear of being labelled scroungers, meaning vital benefits go unclaimed. Cowie said:

“ We worry the stigmatisation of those on benefits may mean patients with cancer are too ashamed to claim. We have encountered cases of terrible poverty. We have heard of instances where people only worry about benefits when they face losing their home. Up until that point, they are more concerned with the dreadful worry of if they will live or die. We have also heard of cases where people have no food in their homes because they have channelled all their money into keeping a roof over their heads. This is not acceptable in this day and age.”

Cancer sufferers face additional costs of a staggering £470 a month – the same as many mortgage payments.

He said: “This is the average cost associated with a cancer diagnosis in Scotland. It accounts not only for heating bills and travel costs for appointments, and dietary needs, but also the reduction in their income. People often can’t work during treatment or rehabilitation. Cancer mounts a two-pronged attack on people’s finances.”

Starvation Amidst Plenty

Everything that is produced in capitalism is for sale in order to make a profit and that includes food. So we can have a situation where people starve whilst food is destroyed. 'More than a quarter of a million people died in the Somali famine in 2011, a study by the UN and the US-funded Famine Early Warning System found. The figure was twice previous estimates and more than half the victims were under 5.' (Times, 3 May) We live in a society that technically could produce enough food to feed the world but because of the profit motive it condemns children to starve. RD

A Grim Forecast

Politicians and media "experts" are always telling us that although times may prove economically fraught at the moment the future will prove much better. Occasionally however the truth leaks out. 'Recession in the eurozone will be deeper than expected this year, the European Commission said yesterday in spring forecasts that predicted continuing record unemployment and a sluggish economic rebound next year.' (Times, 4 May). Capitalism by its very nature is based on booms and slumps and no "expert" has ever managed to solve that basic flaw of the system. RD

Why Vote SPGB?

We should not over-emphasise the counting of noses at election time but it does serve as a barometer of the maturity of the working class. All the votes of the people would do the Socialist Party no good if we ceased to be a revolutionary party by modifying our principles for the sake of capturing a higher vote. Some Left parties have sought to make their propaganda so attractive that it serves as a bait for votes rather than as a means of education. The SPGB rejects such an electoral strategy judging the votes thus secured do not properly belong to us and does an injustice to our party as well as to those who cast them. These votes do not express a wish for socialism and in the next election they can equally be cast for another party. The Socialist Party has no interest in swinging these type of votes to its favour. It is better that these sort of votes are not cast for the Socialist Party, for they will only misrepresent the degree of progress the party and indicate a political position the party is unable to sustain by obtaining what is a fictitious vote. We seek only the actual vote for socialism, no more and no less. Of course, we want the support of the workers, but only of those who desire socialism and are ready to vote and work with us for the overthrow of capitalism. We make it clear that the Socialist Party wants the votes only of those who want socialism, and that, above all, it discourages vote-seeking for the sake of votes and holds in contempt office-seeking for the sake of office.

In our propaganda we state our principles clearly to convince and win workers to our cause through an intelligent understanding of our object. We make no coalition with those who we disagree. No possible good can come from any kind of a political alliance.

Voting for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal. Socialists must be organised to achieve it. With the workers bound together by the common tie of their enlightened self-interest, they will express their solidarity in political terms and cast a united vote for the party of their class. The Socialist Party scorns any compromise and wants no votes that can be bought nor any support gained by false pretense. What other parties can say the same? The Socialist Party stands upon its principles and relies wholly upon combination of the forces of social progress and the eduction of the working class.

The Socialist Party is to the working class politically what the trade-unions is to them industrially; the former is the party of class, while the latter is the union of their occupation. The difference between them is that while the trades-union is confined to his or her occupation, the Socialist Party embraces the entire working class, and while the union is limited to bettering conditions under the wage system, the party is organized to conquer the political power to wipe out the wages system and make the workers the masters of the Earth.

Leaders and intellectuals offer themselves up as the wise men and shepherds to lead us out of the wilderness into the land of milk and honey. They would have us believe that if we had no “intellectuals” to lead, we would have no movement. They would have the workers’ party controlled by party-bosses as the other capitalist political parties are controlled. The working class are no unthinking flock of sheep.

When we vote together on election day and act together on the industrial field we shall conquer state power and take possession of all the means of production and distribution then we will have an industrial democracy of and by and for the people. By voting into power the enemies of the labour movement many of the working class are responsible for the crimes perpetrated upon their fellow workers and sooner or later they will have to suffer the consequences of their miserable act.

Poor Scotland

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has revealed that 344,000 households in Scotland fall below the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) which is set by asking members of the public what they think people need as a minimum in order to have the choices and opportunities to participate fully in society. Goods and services included by the public are then assigned a price in order to produce figures for how much different households need to earn to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living.

For a couple with two children the MIS is currently £685 a week, which includes rent and childcare. For a single person it is £262 a week.

In March, a report into poverty and social exclusion in Scotland found that almost 1 in 20 Scots were unable to afford an adequate diet, and that 1 in 6 children lives in a home that is either damp or not adequately heated. It also found that 24 per cent of Scottish adults cannot afford one or more basic household appliances, such as a washing machine, a phone, curtains or blinds or table and chairs.

During 2010-11, there were 780,000 individuals living in relative poverty in Scotland, 160,000 of which were pensioners.

Judith Robertson, head of Oxfam Scotland, said: “The poorest people in Scotland are facing a perfect storm of rising living costs, falling incomes and government cuts. They are struggling and the gap between them and the richest people has grown massively over the years."

Who owns Scotland

Buy your little piece of it - for just £2.5million.


800 acre Tanera Mor, the largest and only inhabited island in the Summer Isles archipelago, 1.5 miles off the north-west coast of Scotland is up for sale. It has nine residential properties, a cafe, post office and three jetties.

Food for thought

In the wake of the horrendous factory collapse in Bangladesh, companies identified as having work done there are scrambling to minimize damage to their brand. Loblaws, a giant food store in Canada that sells clothes as well, has publicly stated that they are having an emergency board meeting to address the sorry state of affairs. The really sad thing is that they and the others have made conscious decisions to use Third World factories to avoid unionized workers and any country that has labour and safety laws that are in any way enforced. The other point is that these companies are doing the right thing as far as profit is concerned. Although individuals in the companies may deplore the conditions and pay of the workers, capital demands that they show excellent numbers on the balance sheet considering the competition is doing the same thing. The coercive laws of capitalist competition demand it. Doesn't it make sense to end a system that makes this type of situation necessary? John Ayers.

No God-given right to a country

The Church of Scotland denies any special privilege for the Jewish people in the land of Israel. In fact it went further and declared "Christians should not be supporting any claims by Jews, or any other people, to an exclusive or even privileged divine right to possess particular territory." [our emphasis]
In its report the Church of Scotland refutes claims that scripture offers any peoples a privileged claim for possession of a particular territory. Promises about the land of Israel were never intended to be taken literally, or as applying to a defined geographical territory. The ‘promised land’ in the Bible is not a place, so much as a metaphor of how things ought to be among the people of God. This ‘promised land’ can be found – or built – anywhere.

The Socialists' Message

The word “socialism” is commonly used as a political trick. Various Labour Parties are called “socialist” and it is suggested that countries with large welfare state systems are socialist and that nationalised industries are socialist. There has been a persistent tendency to define the idea of socialism to as a mere legal alteration of the property system and the introduction of some sort of planned economy.


When production is for the requirements of the community and when production is for use and not for profit of a minority, this is the basis of socialism. This socialist commonwealth liberates the individual from all economic, political and social oppression and provides for real liberty and for the full and harmonious development of the personality, giving full scope for the growth of the creative faculties of the mind. Based on the common ownership of the means of production and distribution it dissolves the hostile classes into a community of free and equal producers striving not for sectional interests, but for the common good.

Capitalism is a social system that stands condemned. Its usefulness of the past is now long over. If it is allowed to continue, the world will only plunge deeper into suffering, degradation, destruction. Revolution does not mean that we would “demand” that a government do this or that. It means that we, the working class, make the decisions ourselves.

Food for thought

A recent report by McMaster University (Hamilton) and United Way Canada, funded by The Federal Social Sciences and Humanities Council, released some amazing facts. It stated that 'precarious or insecure' work in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas has increased by 50% in the last twenty years and is affecting people's decisions regarding relations and having children. Barely half of the working adults in the two areas have full-time jobs with benefits and expect to be in the same job a year from now. Half of the insecure workers are earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. According to the report, the impact is being felt in the upper income levels. Some of the middle- income workers are university lecturers on contracts and research assistants in hospitals and government facilities. Contracts mean limited-time employment, low wages, no benefits, and no guarantee of further employment when the contract ends. Until recently, poverty and insecurity were thought to affect low-income workers, but not anymore. As Wayne Lewchuk, McMaster University Labour and Economics professor put it, " ...we found that in some cases, middle-income households with precarious work are under more stress than low-income households with secure employment." One thing is clear -- under capitalism, whatever one's job or income, you are bound, sooner or later, to get screwed. John Ayers.

The bedroom tax song

You Cannae Have A Spare Room in a Pokey Cooncil Flat

  I’m a welfare state wean, we live on the bottom flair
But we’re no allowed to even live there any mair.
They say we’ve got too many rooms, in our social rented flat
We’ve an eight by ten foot boxroom where you cannae swing a cat
Chorus:

Oh ye canna have a spare room in a pokey cooncil flat
Ian Duncan Smith and Co have put an end tae that
They say “live in a smaller house”, they say that is their plan
When the odds against you finding one are ninety-nine to one

Noo ma auntie’s in a wheelchair, but these Tories dinna care
They say they have a deficit, she got to pay her share
£60 a month they’ll take, then leave her tae her fate
Whilst gieing millionaires a tax cut, cause they say they’re due a break

Noo that Buckingham Palace looks a pretty roomy gaff
And the ludger there gets benefits at rates that make me laugh
A civil list, plus tax perks, near ninety million pounds
With her other dozen mansions lying empty a’ year round

Noo those MPs doon in Westminster must think that we’re ‘a dense
Wi their second home apartments, where the public pays their rent
They’re even get a food allowance, two hundred quid a week
But they’re claiming we’re the scroungers, is their arse up in their cheeks?

So we’ve formed a Federation and we’re gonna have our say
The Bedroom Tax it has to go, and we ain’t gonna pay
We’re gonna march on London tae demand our civil rights
Like nae mair Tories and their Liberal shite


To the tune of “The Jeely Piece Song”,
by Scottish singer-songwriter Adam McNaugton.

We Arra People!

The Socialist Party stands for common ownership and co-operation. The Socialist Party as a party of exploited workers, of both sexes and of all colours, regardless of nationality, the working class in a word, constituting a great majority of the people, ( and in fact, are The People) , demands that the industries shall be taken over by the workers who shall operate them for the benefit of the whole people.We demand the means of production and distribution 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 unconditional surrender of the capitalist class.

In the name of the people, the Socialist Party condemns the capitalist system. In the name of freedom we condemn wage-slavery. In the name of modern technology and potential abundance we condemn poverty and deprivation. In the name of peace we condemn war. We condemn hunger and the murder of little children. We condemn ignorance and superstition. In the name of humanity we demand freedom for every man, woman and child.

The workers who have made the world and who support the world, should take possession of the world. We demand complete control of industry by the workers; we demand all the wealth they produce for their own enjoyment, and we demand the Earth for all the people. The battles of the workers in the war of the classes and the battles of the workers, wherever and however fought, are always and everywhere the battles of the Socialist Party.

The Socialist Party makes no promises. It doesn’t canvass for votes with false election pledges. We simply deliver this ultimatum to the global capitalist class. The ballot expresses the will of the people and it means that the working class has a voice, that must be heeded. The workers have never made use of their political power. Workers who vote for a pro-capitalist party do worse than throw their votes away. They are deserters of their class and their own worst enemy. Though they may be in blissful ignorance of the fact, they are false to themselves and their fellow-workers, and sooner or later they reap what they have sown.

Every worker should rally to the standard of his and her class. The overthrow of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party and there can be no compromise. The Socialist Party stands squarely upon its principles in making its appeal to the working class. We do not beg for votes nor bargain for votes. We want votes, but only from those who want socialism - those who recognise it as in their interest and come to it of their own free will. The Socialist Party does not seek office and the perks of government. We want all the votes we can get only as a means of developing the political power of the working class. The Socialist Party is organised and administered from the bottom up. Each member has not only an equal voice but is urged to take an active part in all the decision making. There is no leader and there never can be unless the party deserts its principles and ceases to be a socialist party.

The social-reformer, the immediate-demander and the one-step-at-a-timer challenge the Socialist Party’s impossiblism. The half-wayers do indeed make steps but towards where? The Socialist Party will never mistake reform for revolution. We will wrest and extract what we can from the capitalists, but with our eye always fixed upon the goal and never losing sight of it. Enough is enough! There must be a change! The message of socialism proposes a change of system. Now is the time for the workers to assert their political power, and to demonstrate their unity and solidarity. The education and organisation of the workers is the aim and the purpose of the Socialist Party. The party relies wholly upon the power of knowledge and mutual understanding.

If the working class reaches an understanding of socialism and a consciousness of itself, no power can prevail against it. More people are taking action. People are challenging the system to create the world they want to see.

Food for thought

In "Climate Change or Revolution", The Toronto Star of March 6th .the Star staff commented on a series of essays jointly produced by The Center for American Progress and The Center for Climate and Security in Washington. The thrust of the essays was to emphasize the connection between climate change, food prices, and politics, and to show that these are the stressors that help fuel uprisings. To quote Princeton scholar, Anne-Marie Slaughter, "...consequences of climate change are stressors that can ignite a volatile mix of underlying causes that can erupt into revolution." Furthermore, the study argues that climate change played a significant role in the Arab Spring. Troy Sternberg, a geographer at Oxford University, a contributor, wrote that a drought in China, heat waves and floods in other wheat-growing countries, and a wet season in Canada, sent prices skyrocketing which led indirectly to regime change in Egypt.
Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell of the Center for Climate and Security said that from 2006 to 2011, up to 60% of Syria's land experienced the worst long-term drought ever recorded causing herders to lose 85% of their livestock and the livelihoods for 800,000 people. One may assume the above worthies quoted above are upholders of capitalism. The point is, if they can clearly see the connection between climate change that the effects of capitalism are causing, droughts, floods, and uprisings against governments, then it is to be hoped that the majority of the world's population also will and organize for the only thing that can prevent global disaster -- socialism. John Ayers

We are the Power

The capitalists are the upper class-because they are always on our backs; if they were not on our backs they would not be above us. In capitalist society the worker is not a person or an individual at all. He or she is simply merchandise, a commodity. The very terminology of the capitalist system proves it. Go to any factory or office and there will exist a department called “human resources”.

Capitalism is a society divided into two economic classes: a relatively small class of capitalists who own the machinery they did not make and cannot use, and the vast numbers of workers who did make the tools and machines and who do use them, (and whose very lives depend upon using them), yet who do not own them. Every cog in every wheel that revolves everywhere has been made by the working class, and is kept in operation by the working class; and if the working class can make and operate this marvelous wealth-producing machinery. These millions of wage-workers, producers of wealth, are forced into the labour market, in competition with each other, selling their labour power to the capitalist class, in return for just enough of what they produce to keep them in working order.

You are as much subject to the command of the capitalist as if you were his property under the law. You have got to go to his factory because you have got to work; he is the master of your job, and you cannot work without his consent, and he only gives this on condition that you surrender to him all you produce except what is necessary to keep you in working order. The machine you work with has to be oiled; you have to be fed; the wage is your lubricant, it keeps you in working order, and so you toil until you pass away. That is your lot in the capitalist system.

You do everything and he has everything. We do not need the capitalist. He could not exist without you but we can live without him. Workers are the only class essential to society; all others can be spared, but without you society would perish. Why should you be dependent upon a capitalist? Today the capitalist is far removed from the scene of production, and workers generate wealth more autonomously. All you have to do is to unite, think together, act together, strike together, vote together, never for an instant forgetting that you are one, and then the world is yours. You only need but to stretch out and take possession.

In the struggle of the working class to free itself from wage slavery it cannot be repeated too often that everything depends upon the working class itself. The simple question is, can the workers fit themselves, by education, organization, co-operation and self-imposed discipline, to take control of the productive forces and manage industry in the interest of the people and for the benefit of society? That is all there is to it. All the workers have to do is to recognise their own power. This seems simple enough and so it is, yet simple as it is it involves the greatest struggle in history.

Socialists are the very last to underestimate the magnitude of this Herculean task. We offer no so-called “great men” to do something for the workers. We are not offering ourselves as the vanguard party which will lead you. The workers must organise their own emancipation to achieve it and to control its almost limitless opportunities and possibilities.

Food for thought

Double speak -- Faced with a $26 billion deficit, Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, is said to be clawing back $2 billion previously going to the provinces for job training programs. Prime Minister, Stephen Harper hardly seems to be on the same page when he made it clear that upgrading skills training is a top priority when businesses are complaining that lack of skilled workers is preventing economic growth. The hardest hit among the unemployed and in need of skills
training is the fifteen to nineteen year-olds with a jobless rate of 20%. It's easy to talk a good game but as usual, the benefits go to the capitalists and the workers have to suffer the consequences. John Ayers

A crisis of capitalism

The problem of the crisis is gaining the attention of people worldwide. This is because the present crisis is of unprecedented scale, and unparalleled seriousness and tenacity, have struck throughout the world. Representatives of the two classes in society are seriously engaged in the study of this problem with a rare level of seriousness; economists for the sake of somehow forging a path to stable capitalist production, and Marxists to provide a scientific basis for their tactics in this momentous period. As long as bourgeois economists maintain their capitalist perspective, they are incapable of understanding the problem of crisis. We socialists pointed out that it was not the bankers and financiers but the capitalist, system which was at fault.
To-day, the recession is still as intense than ever, at least, in regards for the working class. Workers in countries all over the world are faced with a world crisis of capitalism. Now genuine questions of survival, issues of actual life and death, are in the forefront of peoples minds. The crisis is not a crisis of natural scarcity or shortage. Millions of workers are willing and able to work; but existing society has no use for their labour. The crisis is a crisis of capitalism alone.
Everywhere there is a call for change and for government interventions that lead to a way out. All the leaders of capitalism, economists, financiers, politicians, are at sixes and sevens. All the capitalist spokesmen, Tory, Lib-Dems and Labour speak of “re-organisation,” and “re-regulation", of new policies of this, that and the other, to “save the British economy.” They appeal to the workers to make “sacrifices” to help and impose austerity cuts to ensure that sarifice. They mistakenly imagine that if only British capitalism could be modernised and improved and rationalisation all will be well. But no policy of patching up capitalism can avail. These so-called remedies not only fail to touch the root of the problem, they can only aggravate the disease.
What solutions do the capitalist leaders propose? They propose to throw the cost of the crisis off the backs of the rich onto those of the poor. The working class has met with the smashing of the unions, the driving down of the standard of living simultaneously with the drastic increase in the cost of living. The capitalists have no solution to the crisis. Its measures aggravate the crisis and pave the way for still more deep-seated and profound crisis in the future. The working class must not harbour any illusions about “recovery”. The motive of capitalist production is profit and the only issue of “recovery” for the bourgeoisie is recovery of profits. Such “recovery” will not alter at all the condition of the working class as wage slaves, or change the conditions of the exploited in relation to the exploiters. In fact, the recovery of the profits of the bourgeoisie can only take place on the basis of the further intensification of exploitation, the further impoverishment and ruin of the masses of the people, with a higher level of the permanent army of the unemployed, an increase in the impoverishment and immiseration of the working class. In order to force through its programme for shifting the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the working people, the bwealthy is launching a savage offensive against the rights of the workers.
In the crisis, the banks could not lend money to business which was not producing profits or dividends and banks could not collect on their loans to business. The government kindly issued loans, took up part of the credit of the banks and in return gave interest bearing bonds (quantitive easing) thus providing a juicy investment field for the bankers. Money went to the banks, the insurance companies, the credit companies to help them overcome the crisis.
With a decrease in revenue and an increase in expenses the government had to increase its taxes. It refused to tax the higher brackets of incomes . Instead, it began a series of wage cuts for government employees in the public sector. It cut welfare benefits. It raised VAT on goods needed by the masses.

Is it any wonder that many capitalists showed a larger profit in some of the years of recession than in other more prosperous years?

The capitalists can only look for the solution in fiercer competition and in cheapening their own costs of production, by cutting wages against their competitors, in increasing their own workers’ productivity , in fighting to enlarge their own share of the market. But these measures are pursued by the capitalists in every country. Although one capitalist or another may gain a temporary advantage for a short time, the net effect can only be to deepen the crisis. The net effect of every advance of technique, of every wage-cut, of every cheapening of costs and intensification of production, is to intensify the world crisis for the worker. Increased output is demanded from every worker for less reward. Speeding up and rationalisation are the order of the day, leading directly to worsening work conditions, mounting health problems, and rising numbers of industrial accidents, along with increasing rate of unemployment or underemployment.

Many would-be reformers of capitalism urge that if only the employers would pay higher wages to the workers, enabling them to buy more of what they produce, there would be no crisis. This ignores the inevitable laws of capitalism — the drive for profits, and the drive of competition. The drive of capitalism is always to increase its profits by every possible means, to increase its surplus, not to decrease it. Some economists may preach the gospel of high wages in the hope of securing a larger market for certain capitalist’s goods. But the actual drive of capitalism as a whole is the opposite. The force of competition compels every capitalist to cheapen costs of production, to extract more output per worker for less return, and for wholesale wage-cuts in every industry. All have the same task; to cut down rigidly the standards of the workers at home, to carry through a trade offensive for the capture of markets abroad.

Capitalism has no solution. The most the capitalists can do is to wait amidst the general misery until the universal stagnation of production has run its course and for “demand” to once again return (...to begin a new trade cycle, and lead to a new future crisis.) Capitalism will survive if we let it. Crises can resolve the contradictions temporarily and allow a new period of expansion until the next crisis.

The motive of capitalist production is the securing of maximum profits. Production of goods is in fact an incidental aim of capitalism, as is employment. The bourgeoisie organises production for the purposes of increasing profits. When conditions are such that profits can be increased by increasing production, the bourgeoisie does so, and when conditions are such that profits can only be increased by cutting back production to keep up the price, then that is what the bourgeoisie does. Thus if it serves to increase profits to increase the numbers of workers in production, then this is done; but if profits can only be increased by intensifying exploitation, getting more or the same amount of work out of fewer workers, then this is done instead. These fundamental features of the capitalist system cannot be eliminated without removing the capitalist system itself.

This crisis calls aloud for the workers’ socialist revolution. Only the working-class can solve the causes of the crisis by wresting production from the fetters of private/state ownership and profit-making and organise production for social use. The power of producing wealth is greater than ever. It has grown far more rapidly than population, thus disproving all the lies of those who talk of “over-population” as the cause of the crisis. Although capitalism does not use more than a portion of modern productive power, although it wastes most and deliberately cuts down and restricts production in order to increase profits, actual production has grown much faster than population.

Only under capitalism can there be a curse of plenty. Only socialism can bring the solution. Only socialism can cut through the bonds of capitalist property rights and organise production to meet human needs. Once capitalism is overthrown, then and only then can production be organised in common for all, and every increase in production bring increasing abundance and leisure for all. This is the aim of the Socialist Party, the only party that pointed out during the present period that there is no alternative for the working class other than socialism.

May Day Greetings

On May Day, the day of international working class solidarity and struggle, the Socialist Party of Great Britain sends its fraternal greetings to the working class. The Socialist Party sends its greetings to the workers of all countries the world over who are waging the same class struggle against capitalism. We have declared war upon the capitalist class, and upon the capitalist system. We are of the working class. We say: Arise, you worker! It is in your power to put an end to this system, seize and take control of the tools with which you work, and make yourselves the masters instead of being the slaves of industry. Long enough have we suffered ourselves to blindly and stupidly follow a leadership that has misled and deceived and betrayed. Wipe out the wage system, so that you can walk this Earth free men and women!


The Workers Maypole

World Workers, whatever may bind ye,
This day let your work be undone:
Cast the clouds of the winter behind ye,
And come forth and be glad in the sun.

Now again while the green earth rejoices
In the bud and the blossom of May
Lift your hearts up again, and your voices,
And keep merry the World's Labour Day.

Let the winds lift your banners from far lands
With a message of strife and of hope:
Raise the Maypole aloft with its garlands
That gathers your cause in its scope.

It is writ on each ribbon that flies
That flutters from fair Freedom's heart:
If still far be the crown and the prize
In its winning may each take a part.

Your cause is the hope of the world,
In your strife is the life of the race,
The workers' flag Freedom unfurled
Is the veil of the bright future's face.

Be ye many or few drawn together,
Let your message be clear on this day;
Be ye birds of the spring, of one feather
In this--that ye sing on May-Day.

Of the new life that still lieth hidden,
Though its shadow is cast before;
The new birth of hope that unbidden
Surely comes, as the sea to the shore.

Stand fast, then, Oh Workers, your ground,
Together pull, strong and united:
Link your hands like a chain the world round,
If you will that your hopes be requited.

When the World's Workers, sisters and brothers,
Shall build, in the new coming years,
A lair house of life--not for others,
For the earth and its fulness is theirs.

Walter Crane
Justice, 1894

What is capitalism?

"If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire." George Monbiot


"Capitalism is the natural system of humanity, it's all these small businesses and people coming together to compete. Everyone gets the amount of money they deserve because they've earned it, or if you're poor it's because you're lazy and if you're rich it's because you've earned it. The system works perfectly. It grows as long as the government stays out of the way; technology is just going to make the system better. And it's the only way to organise a society that's not going to be living in caves and rubbing two sticks together."

That's the catechism of those hopeless apologists who support the status quo and advocate the unreal laissez-faire philosophy of no governmental interference with business (as if they are not dependent on governmental interference!), a balanced budget, lower taxes, encourage private enterprise, etc. The libertarian/propertarian desire to eliminate merely the big capitalist is a dead-end, for the small capitalist is continually growing and expanding into the large capitalist.

The guiding principle of capitalism is competition, to make profit out of one’s fellows, and to grow richer than one’s fellows, at the expense of one’s fellows.
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 labor 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.
Within the work-place rules a rigid dictatorship where the men and women are transformed into a cogs of the machine, where labour becomes wage-slavery. Outside the workplace economic chaos prevails and people are ruled by prices which they cannot control and by the wild forces of the market of which they can be only victims. It is only through the anarchic fluctuations of supply and demand, booms and bankruptcies, that society “decides” and “plans” its production .

Capitalism is tremendously wasteful and destructive of men, goods, energy, 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.

As capitalism develops, larger and larger factories are built, thousands of labourers co-operate in the production of a single article, yet the article does not belong to them but to the owner of the means of production. The laborers are merely paid wages for the use of their labour power, wages which constantly grow less and less in proportion to the total product. Simultaneously the owner of the industries becomes progressively more divorced from the productive process. As small partnerships become big corporations or are driven out of business by the trusts and monopolies, the original entrepreneurs and organisers become mere dividend-takers. The corporation also develops, becomes more and more a public utility. The state begins to take a hand, and to run the industry. The former individual owner has now become a purely parasitic hanger-on.
The greater the productivity of labour, and the greater the amount of production, the greater becomes the surplus product in the hands of the owners, the greater the need for markets, the greater, therefore, the competition among the capitalists, the greater the relative lowering of the wages of the workers, the larger the army of unemployed and paupers, the more vigourous the drive for foreign markets and colonies for exploitation, and the more violent the military struggles to control the world. The greater the internationalisation of markets, the greater the need to have a military machine to defend the market interests, the greater grow the oppressive burdens of the state apparatus, the greater grows the necessity to transform the whole nation into an armed, ruthless, chauvinistic state,
Capitalism sucks the blood of workers and feeds off humanity like a leech.

The Price of Profit

Yesterday was Workers Memorial Day when we highlight the bloody toll capitalism inflicts upon us.
In New Zealand a coal mining company, Pike River Coal, was found guilty of nine health and safety violations over a 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners.
A government investigation found the company ignored 21 warnings that methane gas had accumulated to explosive levels in the mine and it was exposing miners to unacceptable risks as it strove to meet financial targets. Each of the charges comes with a maximum penalty of 250,000 New Zealand dollars ($211,000). But since the company is bankrupt, just who will pay the penalty?

Former chief executive Peter Whittall has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges. His case has yet to be heard.

We Are All Leaders

These are not times for reform and tweaking the system. Capitalism is in the process of destroying the Earth. The Socialist Party knows that no leaders are going to pull the workers into socialism. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. Mainstream politics cannot comprehend the absence of leaders in the movement and that it is not a weakness but a strength, testifying to our determination not to be followers.

Forget about looking for leaders. What we need is a movement that rises from the people and empowers ourselves. People need to stop looking up, and start looking around. There is an old adage, if the people lead, the leaders will follow. People need organisations, and people need to come together. But by self-organisation from the root, you will find that you have got no leaders - and do not want them because you do not lead them.

A leader may say “all that our organisation has gained is because of me”. But it is not so. It is not because a leader persuades the government to be nice, but because the actions of mass movements force the government to give back some of what has been taken from us.

Leaders, indeed, will sometimes pretend that they know best and that the movement depends on them. But they can do this only by with-holding knowledge and denying power from others. This is why it is important to make organisations as democratic as possible. The individual leader substitutes for and holds back the capacities of the 'led'. If we rely on one leader, or a group of leaders we are putting ourselves in a vulnerable position because we can easily be misled. Nor is there a leadership to be bought off. A leader comes to symbolise an organisation's cause and projects it on to one individual that his or her reputation and personality comes to represent and embody the cause.

The working class have nothing to gain and everything to lose by relying on leaders.

Leadership is one of those problematic words that needs qualifying. When we say "don’t follow leaders" we mean by this something very specific - a narrow political sense of the term - to denote the idea of surrendering power to an individual or group to change society on our behalf. We are not promoting the false idea that socialism is about "making everyone equal" in their endowments, abilities and so on. There will always exist those who will be better orators or write more lucidly than others.

Structure doesn't necessarily mean a leader. The best examples of organisation historically can be found in the trade union and labour movement at its best. Take, for example, the structures of trade union branches. These are a product of a long tradition of members debating, agreeing and renewing clear, transparent written rules that create a framework of mutual accountability, self-discipline and individual responsibility. They are there on paper, the responsibility of every member, to be used, contested and, once agreed, followed. That is not to deny that apathy and inertia can set in; the rules become a barrier to creative thinking and change; officials become corrupt or complacent. Yet the rules and basic principles remain, always available.

A socialist party must be a party of no compromise. Its mission is to point the way to the goal and it refuses to leave the main road the side-tracked that lead into the swamp of reformism. Nor does a socialist party advocate violence in the labor movement because it knows the capitalist class has the advantage. It is not cowardice but common sense and it is not heroism that makes a fool rock a boat in deep water, it is idiocy.

The capitalist class can gerry-mander elections, miscount and steal votes, plus resort to a thousand and one other political tricks, but such is simply to tamper with a thermometer, it cannot change the temperature. And the temperature is the organised power of the working class.

Power to no one, and to every one!

Scotland's Slave Traders

Socialist Courier has previously drawn attention to Scotland’s role in the slave trade and the fortunes made from it, here and here .
Ian Bell in the Herald reminds us again of that dark period of Scotland’s history.
Richard Oswald trafficked at least 13,000 Africans, although he never set foot on their continent. By the time he bought Auchincruive House and 100,000 acres in Ayrshire in 1764, he was worth £500,000, "roughly equivalent" to $68 million (about £44m).

The mercantile class got rich twice over: despite fortunes made from stolen lives, they were quick to demand compensation when slavery was ended in 1833. Britain's government decided that £20m, a staggering sum, could be raised. Glasgow's slave traders got £400,000 – in modern terms, hundreds of millions.

30% of Jamaican plantations were run by Scots. Few realise that the behaviour of Scots busy getting rich in the slave-holders' empire was actually worse – routinely worse – than the worst of the America’s South cottonocracy. In the British West Indies, only 670,000 survived from two million imported.

Not all the slaves in the 18th century were black. In fact, in Barbados at one point 21,700 of 25,000 held were white. A great many of them, then and afterwards, were Scots who happened to be poor, homeless or political nuisances. Rounding them up and selling them off, especially after the '45, was routine. In the language of the time, and for obvious reasons, these were "redlegs".

To-day, the International Labour Organisation calculates that 126 million children around the world labour in a state of bonded servitude. .

Rich And Arrogant

The arrogance of the extremely wealthy knows no limits. You would think as their wealth comes from the exploitation of the working class they would try and keep their obscene accumulation of surplus value a secret. Not a bit of it. "Britain is now the home of nearly 10 times as many billionaires as we featured in the first Sunday Times Rich List, published in 1989. Their collective wealth and that of all of this year's 1,000 richest has now reached nearly £450bn, the highest on record." (Sunday Times, 21 April )RD

to Bee or not to Bee

Has the Scottish rural affairs minister, Richard Lochhead , fallen victim to the chemical pesticide industry’s vigourous and vociferous lobbying effort against a ban on neonicotinoids. Surely not.


Forget his sympathetic rhetoric about supporting the precautionary principle. A two-year moratorium on stopping the use of this type of pesticide, waiting until the stock-pile of pesticides is used up means two more years of damage to bees and their hives.

Can we expect better from an independent Scotland? Or will it be business as usual for the multinationals?

The class struggle

The strike has long been labour's most powerful weapon. Strikes put pressure on the employer - which needs the employees' labour to run the business - to agree to employees' demands for fair wages and working conditions. Strikes are also a public form of expression. Seeing picket lines in front of a workplace sends a message to the employer, to the public and to the workers themselves. It says that the workers stand together to fight for decent working conditions and that their dispute with the employer is so important that they are willing to lose pay to fight for a fair workplace. It tells the public and other workers that they might not want to patronise, or work for, the employer unless changes are made. Strikes build solidarity among the workers and help them maintain their resolve under the severe pressure of losing income while on strike. Strikes are also an expression of control by the workers, who may feel that the employer treats them as if they were nothing more than a live form of raw materials - human resource.


But against the power of capitalism, strikes by the trades unions are no longer the potent weapon they once were and the political futility of the Labour Party is obvious to all. It could not act (and cannot act) otherwise as a representative of capitalism. The result is that during the last decades the condition of workers has grown steadily worse.

The Socialist Challenge

Masses of the people are being ruined by Big Business and their millionaires. Poverty, unemployment and insecurity threatens the majority. There is no need for a single worker to be overworked or in dread of losing his or her job; no reason why an unemployed worker should lack the necessaries of life. All over the world millions of workers are coming to realise these facts and to see that nothing except the existence of capitalism prevents them building up for themselves a decent and stable world. Everywhere the workers are becoming less and less willing to put up with an entirely unnecessary state of deprivation. They are showing themselves more and more determined to insist upon their right to food, clothing and shelter for themselves and their families. But to get this, capitalism must be overthrown. To get this, is only possible by the building socialism.


When the fight for their interests has reached the stage when capitalism is being overthrown, then, in order to do it, and in the doing of it, workers will create the required organisations necessary for this purpose. In the moment of need that will arise when the workers are getting ready to take over power, the working class will create its own instruments to hold and maintain its political power. Socialism, that co-operative commonwealth, which has been the aim of generations of working-class will attain its full meaning and realisation with the ending of capitalist rule. The needs of all will be met, and new needs and pleasures now denied to the working class will be created and satisfied by a socialist organisation of production. We have to-day ample resources for producing all the things we need. Moreover, the workers will naturally produce far better and more willingly under their own management than they do now. For the first time workers will know that greater productivity will no longer be a threat to their livelihood but will make it possible to raise the whole standard of living and shorten the hours of labour.

Capitalism is founded upon production for profit. Socialism is based upon production for use. If the owners of the means of production and distribution fail to make a profit, it is in their power to cease production or distribution and the world’s workers may starve.The owners of the means of production and distribution dictate the terms upon which the world may use that machinery. The Socialist Party calls upon fellow workers to join in the overthrow of capitalism by capturing the powers of government and transferring the ownership of the world from capitalism to socialism. With the power of our votes it is within our power to accomplish our own emancipation without the need of physical force.

Still Auld Reekie

The number of Edinburgh streets affected by transport pollution has increased.


There are now an additional six miles of streets that have been deemed officially polluted in the capital. Tourist areas Princes Street, George Street, most of the Royal Mile and the Grassmarket are all now included. Gorgie Road, London Road and some of Easter Road also make up the additional six miles of polluted streets.

Dr Richard Dixon, Friends of the Earth Scotland's director, said: "Pollution from cars, vans, buses and lorries are still making the capital's air bad for our health...”

What's On The Other Side?

To those workers in Britain bored out of their skull by party political speeches on TV here is a word of consolation. It could be worse you could live in Russia. 'Vladimir Putin doled out parenting advice, mused on the difficulty of pork imports and compared the struggle for happiness to a massive drinking bout, in another of the marathon question and answer sessions that have become a hallmark of his authoritarian rule. Sitting in a shiny studio peopled with uniformed soldiers, athletes, doctors and more, a heavily bronzed Putin held forth for four hours and 47 minutes, beating his previous record by 15 minutes.' (Guardian, 26 April) Can you imagine the boredom of Cameron or Milliband spouting for over four hours? RD

Democratic Production

Socialism, a society based upon the planned organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and the democratic control of the means of production. If, however, production were carried on for use, to satisfy the needs of the people, the question immediately arises: Who is to determine what is useful and what would satisfy these needs? Will that be decided exclusively by a small board of government planners? A technocratic elite? Both would make for the benevolent regimentation of the people “for their own good.” No matter how high-minded and wise they might be, they could not plan production for the needs of the people.

Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, constant control and direction by the people. The democratically-adopted decisions of the people would guide the course of production and distribution. Democratic control of the means of production and distribution would have to be exercised by the people to see to it that their decision is being appropriately carried out. The continual extension and expnsion of democracy, is therefore an indispensable necessity for socialist society. Production for use is aimed at satisfying the needs of society and of freeing all the people from class rule including that of “experts.”

Many will say “It would be a good thing to have socialism; but it is only an ideal which cannot be realised in practice.” But socialism is not a utopian ideal, a blueprint for society that exists in the minds of some people. Capitalism itself has provided the social force capable of building the new society. Every social system changes ceaselessly, and, ultimately, having fulfilled its mission, passes away. The capitalist industrial forces are now making for socialism, preparing the way for it, and sooner or later it is sure to come. The seeds of the socialist society are already growing right in the soil of capitalist society itself. One of the results of capitalist development is that production is already carried on socially. The only important thing that has not been socialised is the ownership and the appropriation of the products of industry. These remain private. The capitalist owns the tools he does not use; the worker uses the tools he does not own. The working class alone made the tools; the working class alone can use them, and the working class must, therefore, own them.

People will no longer be the slave of the machine. The machine will serve people. Every increase in productivity would bring with it two things: an increase in the things required for the need, comfort and even luxury of all; and an increase in everyone’s leisure time, to devote to the free cultural and intellectual development of humankind. Humanity will not live primarily to work; he will work primarily to live. There are capitalist experts who declare that industry, properly organised, can produce the necessities of life for all in a working day of four hours or less. Organised on a socialist basis, even this figure could be reduced. As the necessities and comforts of life become increasingly abundant, and the differences between physical and mental labour, and the divide between town and country are eliminated. A planned organized society, efficiently utilising our present productive equipment and the better equipment to come, could easily assure abundance to all. In return, society could confidently expect every person to contribute their best voluntarily.

To be a socialist, merely means to be conscious of its necessity, to make others conscious of it, and to work in an organised manner for its realisation. The workers must be taught to unite and vote together as a class in support of a genuine socialist party, a party that represents them as a class, and when they do this the government will pass into their hands and capitalism will fall; private/state ownership will give way to social ownership, and production for profit to production for use; the wage system will disappear, and with it the ignorance and poverty, misery and crime that wage-slavery breeds; and a new era will dawn.

The Deadly Profit Motive

Capitalism is a ruthless system and one that puts profit before anything else - including human life. 'Hundreds of garment workers employed in factories that supplied high-street shops in the west, including Primark, the discount clothing store, are feared dead after an eight-storey building collapsed on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on Wednesday. Officials said the death toll had topped 160 by Thursday morning and 2,000 people had been rescued from the ruins.' (Guardian, 25 April) Dilara Begum, a garment worker who survived the accident, said workers had been ordered to leave after a crack appeared in the wall of the building on Tuesday but on Wednesday morning supervisors had told them to return to work, saying the building had been inspected and declared safe. "We didn't want to go in but the supervisors threatened to dock pay if we didn't return to work," she told the Guardian. RD

Europe In Disarray

Capitalism is often hailed as the most efficient way to run modern society, but recent unemployment figures from Spain show what a waste of human resources it is. 'Spain's unemployment rate soared to a new record of 27.2% of the workforce in the first quarter of 2013, according to official figures. The total number of unemployed people in Spain has now passed the six million figure, although the rate of the increase has slowed.' (BBC News, 25 April) These unemployment figures are mirrored in other European countries and illustrate what a wasteful society capitalism is. RD

Marx and Engels on Ireland

Marx (and Engels) supported Irish nationalism and the Socialist Party’s position on Scottish independence is often criticised by those on the Left who claim to be Marxists because we ignore that fact. But to be a Marxist means, to apply the Marxian analysis to continually changing social conditions Too many so-called socialists are reluctant to apply the Marxist materialist conception of history in their thinking.
Indeed, Marx did support Irish independence, we do not dispute it, but he did so primarily because he thought it would hasten the completion of the democratisation of the British state. At the time the bourgeois democratic victory over feudalism was far from complete even in Britain, and on the continent of Europe what progress had been made was continually threatened by three great feudal powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia. In these circumstances Marx considered it necessary to support not only direct moves to extend political democracy but also moves which he felt would weaken the feudal powers of Europe. For instance, he supported Polish independence as a means of weakening Tsarist Russia and for similar reasons he opposed Slav independence movements which he believed would strengthen backward Russia (so he simultaneously supported and opposed the right of national self-determination).

His support for Irish independence was for it would weaken the position of the English landed aristocracy. The English landed aristocracy still enjoyed considerable political power. The majority of the working class were still vote-less, there were not yet secret ballots, the House of Lords could still reject any Bill it objected to as long as it was not financial.

As he put it in a letter dated 9 April,1870:
"Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of that country is not only one of the main sources of the aristocracy’s material welfare; it is its greatest moral strength. It, in fact, represents the domination of England over Ireland. Ireland is therefore the great means by which the English aristocracy maintains its domination in England itself. If, on the other hand, the English army and police were to withdraw from Ireland tomorrow, you would at once have an agrarian revolution there. But the overthrow of the English aristocracy in Ireland involves as a necessary consequence its overthrow in England. And this would fulfil the preliminary condition for the proletarian revolution in England"

Marx may well have been right about the effect of Irish independence in 1870. Since the English landlords only retained their power to exploit the Irish peasants by force of British arms, a British withdrawal from Ireland could well have led to their expropriation. But this was never put to the test and the Irish land question was solved in quite a different way even before Ireland got independence. The series of Land Purchase Acts introduced between 1885 and 1903 enabled the government to buy out the Anglo-Irish landowners and then lend the peasants the money to buy their farms. By 1921 Ireland was largely a country of peasant proprietors. In the meantime the political power of the English landed aristocracy had finally been broken by a series of reform measures .What this meant was that by the time Ireland was about to get independence after the first world war, the changes Marx had expected it to bring—land reform in Ireland and a weakening of aristocratic power in England—had already been brought about by other means. His particular case for supporting Irish independence was thus no longer relevant. Besides, the first world war destroyed the three great European feudal powers—Russia, Austria and Prussia—so making it unnecessary for socialists to support moves to weaken them.

In fact, once industrial capitalist powers had come to dominate the world, and once a workable political democracy had been established in those states, then the task of socialists was to advocate socialism alone, rather than democratic and social reforms that might make the establishment of socialism easier. This is the position the SPGB adopted .

Marx’s strategy on Ireland was concerned with furthering the establishment of political democracy in England. Marx realised that the struggle of the Irish Nationalists for Home Rule was bound to help the evolution in Britain of political democracy because both struggles were directed against: the same class enemy, the English landed aristocracy. It was not an anticipation of the Leninist theory of imperialism according to which independence for colonies will help precipitate a socialist revolution in the imperialist countries, though it is sometimes misunderstood to be this. Marx clearly wrote of independence for Ireland helping to overthrow the remnants of feudalism not capitalism itself in England. Both he and Engels knew full well that, in the political conditions then existing, socialism was not an immediate issue either in Ireland or in England.

Engels, stated clearly that socialism was not an issue in the Irish Question:-
"A purely socialist movement cannot be expected in Ireland for a considerable time. People there want first of all to become peasants owning a plot of land, and after they have achieved that mortgages will appear on the scene and they will be ruined once more. But this should not prevent us from seeking to help them to get rid of their landlords, that is, to pass from semi-feudal conditions to capitalist conditions" (Interview, 20 September 1888, New Yorker Volkszeitung)

But as an aside, Engels did recognise the primacy of political action over insurrection.The Fenian, O’Donovan Rossa,was elected (only to be disqualified), and Engels wrote to Marx:
"The election in Tipperary is an event. It forces the Fenians out of empty conspiracy and the fabrication of plots into a path of action, which, even if legal in appearance, is still far more revolutionary than what they have been doing since the failure of their insurrection" (29 November, 1869).