End Nationalism by Ending Capitalism

How can you be proud of your nation?
What say had you in its birth?
Which part do you control?

How can you a patriot be?
Which bit is yours?
Who owns you?

How can you love a country?
Which parts?
Who?

Richard Arnold 

The capitalist class, by making the workers propertyless, has made them nation-less. The workers have no country. This is no more your country than the shop you work in is your shop or the factory you work in is your factory. You are simply employed here, that is all. Those who so proudly talk about their country do not even own a plot of ground to be buried in. Why a worker, no matter to what country he belongs, should be patriotic is more than we can comprehend. The workers of the world have but one common enemy, the capitalist class of the world. There is not a square foot of land  that you, the working class, can call your own…They will take control of the land, they will fill all the higher positions.

Nationalism is the nationalisation of people. Once the border is created, the immigration posts and passport controls established by the new state undertakes to homogenise all those trapped within with an invented common inheritance of loyalty, supposedly to a common culture or way of life, but in practice to a particular capitalist state. The capitalist system generates nationalism as a necessary, everyday condition of its existence. If we want a world without exclusion and inequality, we must discredit all the structures that  exist to keep inequality in place. The nation-state is fraudulently constructed for one’s exclusive group. All nation-states deserve to be eradicated rather than legitimised. Every nationalism has its own special pleading as why it is special and not as bad as all the others but nationalism is and always has been a weapon in capital's arsenal. There is nothing progressive about national liberation movements, and "liberated”countries throughout history have shown themselves as capable of brutality as their oppressors.

Socialists argue that the division of the world into nations will disappear once the economic basis of that division is removed.

"National differences, and antagonisms between peoples, are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto." Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto.

Thus they looked to socialist revolution as the means by which national oppression would be ended: "In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put to an end, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put to an end. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end."

While Marx and Engels may have opposed the idea of nationalism, they, however, supported some nationalistic movements for tactical reasons but nevertheless always viewed it through the prism of hastening the establishment of socialism. Historic conditions change and it is no longer expedient to promote nationalism as a means to achieve socialism. Rather, it would be a hinderance.

Class struggle is the motor of history and as capitalism spreads around the globe it creates an international working class that must fight back against an international capitalist class. Most of what affects Scotland does not take place in Scotland. Capital has no national identity and capitalists are not concerned about national loyalties although they might exploit national boundaries for pragmatic reasons. Nationalists reject all theories which would have us see ourselves primarily as worker and have us believe that the accidental fact of Scottish nationhood, or any other, is what determines our fate. Nationalist politics feeds upon the feelings of resentment and revenge, it nurtures  old wounds in the collective memory of the society, it never let the people forget them, by constantly picking at the scabs of history.

Left nationalists such as the SSP offer the same stale promises of the old Labour Party all dressed up in new clothes. Although they speak of “socialism” against “capitalism,” they do not propose the overthrow of capitalism, the working-class conquest of power, the expropriation of the capitalists; their basis is still the same basis of capitalism, of capitalist democracy, of the capitalist State, and therefore the outcome can only be the same. Their only proposals are for the constitutionally re-organisation of capitalism by re-locating the Parliament and government. This is precisely its value to capitalism, to divert the workers in the name of phrases of “socialism.”

It is a common error to assume that every objection to Scottish nationalism must be based on 'Unionist' support for the British state. The Socialist Party opposes British nationalism as much as Scottish. The revolutionary working class is the grave-digger of all nations. Any defence of the nation further tightens the chain that keeps workers in slavery. The task of the working class is to defend its own interests, which in the Socialist Party’s opinion does not involve supporting  the expansion of Scottish capital. The emancipation of the working classes must be accomplished by the workers themselves, but it is no movement for new class monopolies and privileges; it is not a local or national, but a social problem embracing all countries, where capitalism exists.

George Julian Harney, an activist in the great Chartist movement and the First International, wrote:
“The cause of the people in all countries is the same – the cause of labour, enslaved and plundered labour...The men who create every necessary, every comfort and luxury are themselves steeped in misery. Working men of all countries, are not your grievances; your wrongs, the same? Is not your good cause one and the same also...the veritable emancipation of the human race. (Northern Star, February 14, 1846)

A Sense of Values?

The craziness of capitalism and its sense of values is well summed up by this news item. 'Two adjacent parking spots in the US city of Boston have been auctioned for $560,000 (£357,000), almost double the average price of a home in the area. ...... Lisa Blumenthal, who lives in a multi-million dollar home nearby with three existing parking spots, was the buyer. She told the Boston Globe the spaces would be useful for guests or workers.' (BBC News, 14 June) This is a city where currently thousands of families have to rely on food stamps in order to survive. RD

Food for thought

How and why do these jumped-up dictators like Syria's Assad get their weaponry from? That's easy to answer – the five nations in the world charged with the world's security – France, China, Russia, GB, US, are making a packet for their capitalist class as the worst purveyors of arms in the world. The US shipped $8.7 billions worth of arms in 2012, just edging out Russia. China ranked third at $1.78 billion. Thank goodness for our security. John Ayers.

State-owned Exploitation

Following on from the previous blog-post on co-operatives, the other panacea often presented is state-capitalism, sometimes described by the oxymoron term state-socialism.

Public ownership by the State is not socialism – it is only State capitalism. What many on the Left will do is add a caveat - that nationalisation with workers control is socialism. That too is erroneous. It still means state capitalism. Socialism is not state ownership or management of industry, but the opposite. Socialism abolishes the state.Industry is not transformed into the state, but industry is transformed into common ownership,  functioning industrially and socially through new administrative associations  of the producers, and not through the state. Socialists reject the idea that State capitalism is a phase of socialism. State capitalism can never become socialism  precisely because there exists  a state. A bait is offered to the workers of a “democratized” State capitalism by “democratizing” the government, placing it in the hands of “the people.” This policy is equally condemnable as strategy and tactics, – as strategy, it dispenses with the necessity of overthrowing the state as an indispensable phase of the Social Revolution; as tactics, it strengthens the state and weakens the proletariat by obscuring the fact that its power resides in ownership and control of the production process. The tendency toward a bureaucratic  autocracy is strengthened. The centralisation of economic management into the hands of the state has little to do with working class rule. Control of the nationalised industries is vested in boards which are appointed and even if elected just how could they change the nature of the capitalist beast - the requirement  to compete and make profits. State capitalism cannot exist without inflicting hardships on the workers.

Workers’ control implies the existence of a capitalist (or state capitalist) management. Workers’ self-management, co-operative production under the joint control of the workers in an enterprise, can also be achieved under capitalism, indeed has been on many occasions. Under capitalism it can only lead to workers driving down their own conditions as a result of capitalist competition or to the collapse of the enterprise.

The vast majority of British industry is not owned privately by individuals but corporately owned; by banks, by finance or insurance companies, by monopolies or by the STATE. These are all forms of capitalism in which capitalist property relationships remain intact. Surplus-value is still appropriated and production is governed through the market by the operation of the law of value and commodity exchange. These laws operate whether private companies or the state control production. The essence of capitalism is property relationships; ownership is merely a formal question, which can take MANY forms.

To portray nationalisation as a means of making inroads into the capitalist system is to ignore the central role of the state. The nationalisation fallacy is based on the misconception of the role of the government, which according to those who desire “public"-ownership, represents a neutral group representing the nation “above” both the workers and capitalists. Bitter and long experience has shown that the government, far from being a neutral in the struggle of the classes, is in reality a representative of the ruling class. Workers will find themselves prisoners caught between two expressions of the same capitalist class – the capitalists themselves and their government lackeys. Hence nationalisation can never be a means of making inroads into capitalism. To argue so is to deny the fundamentals of Marxian economic. For all these reasons there is no advantage, either strategic or tactical, in calling for the nationalisation of private industry. It is irrelevant to the real interests of the working people of Britain whether profits are in private or state hands. It diverts the fight for socialism to a fight for reformism and gradualism. By presenting nationalisation and other forms of state intervention as “socialist”, the Left has helped to turn people away from socialism by identifying it with the suffocating bureaucracy that characterises the capitalist state machine.

An important part of the SPGB’s work must lie in exposing the socialist pretensions and in opposing the false strategies of the Trotskyists who demand that they nationalise more and more industries. The Old Labour left demand nationalisation as a means of making inroads into the capitalist system – as a form of creeping socialism. The SWP and  SPEW (Militant) say that they are making “transitional” demands, that their approach is different to that of the Labour left but in essence their strategy is just as reformist. They claim that slogans for more nationalisation raise the question of state power and heighten the consciousness of the workers. Objectively, in the real world, all these organisations are serving the capitalist class in that they are attempting to mobilise the working class in order to bring about the expansion of state capitalism in many cases to rescue bankrupt private enterprises. The strength of the working class lies in their labour and their relationship to the means of production – let us help them to learn to use it! Not government ownership but common ownership.  

Jobs and earnings in Scotland

256,000 people part-time workers , or more than 10% of the entire workforce, a rise of of 80,000 on 2008, are in search of a job with full-time hours. The employment data shows there was a drop of 92,000 full-time jobs since the downturn began in 2008.

Between 2008 and 2012, earnings dropped more for part-time workers, down by 8.7% to a median £11.50 for men, and down 8.4% for women to £10.29.

 Earnings in Scotland as a whole have fallen 8.1%, in real terms at 2012 prices. Full time median hourly earnings reached £16.12 for men, and £13.78 for women.

The most recent figures show just over 300,000 self-employed workers in Scotland - one eighth of the workforce, up 33,000

A Prince And A Pauper

Prince Charles as a future king of England is forced to attend all sorts of press shows and say all sorts of nonsense to all sorts of cringing, sycophantic journalists but even he must have felt a little sick at this utterance. 'The Prince, known in Scotland as the Duke of Rothesay, met recovering servicemen and women at the Edinburgh House personnel recovery centre.  .... Among those he met was Paul Lambert, 32, who lost both legs in Afghanistan in 2009. The Prince praised him as a "great example".' (Times, 14 June) You own absolutely nothing. You go into a conflict that has nothing to do with you. You have both your legs blown off. Your life is ruined. A "great example" of working class stupidity is what we would call it. RD

And they call us impossiblists!

At least 5,000 people are expected to attend an anti-G8 march in  Belfast. Barack Obama is among the political leaders arriving at the Lough Erne golf resort in Fermanagh for the two-day meeting starting on Monday. A separate concert for the anti-food poverty campaign, spearheaded by charities working in the developing world, will be held in the city's Botanic Gardens in the. The concert has been sold out, with around 8,000 people due to attend, organisers said.

Campaigners behind the city centre march said: "We believe that achieving social, economic and environmental justice must be central to political decision-making."

Socialist Courier wish them well even if we cannot but view their approach as utopian. The G8 protests may demonstrate great strength of feeling they will also demonstrate a great weakness. The capitalist system constantly throws up issues that demand action amongst those who are concerned. As a result, protest tends to become a demand for an “improved” kind of capitalism which leaves the long-term reasons for protest intact. This has been the history of protest. In this sense, protest tends to set a stage for further protest and further demonstrations (care to remind yourself of how many there has been in the past?). Though the issues may vary - and on this occasion anti-gas fracking in Fermanagh features prominently - the message stays the same: “We demand that governments do this, that or the other!” The spectacle of thousands demanding that governments act on their behalf is a most reassuring signal to those in power that their positions of control are secure.  In this way, repeated demonstrations do little more than confirm the continuity of the system. The point is to change society, not to appeal to the doubtful better nature of its power structures.

Co-ops are for coping

One of the main proposals advocated by the New Economic economists and many others is worker-owned and controlled  co-operatives. It has never been argued by the Socialist Party that co-operatives are a means to-wards socialism but rather it is the aim of the people - the Co-operative Commonwealth.

The idea of the workers’ co-operative originated in the early days of the labour movement. It is based on the simple attractive idea: “Get rid of the bosses who make a profit from our work and instead work for ourselves so we can enjoy the full fruits of our work.” Capitalism is not to be overthrown by class war but undermined by the  cooperative movement until it crumbles is the theory  But how does the ownership of the factory by the employees differ from ownership by a capitalist? A cooperative has to buy its raw materials on the market, just the same as every other company. A cooperative has to sell its finished products on the market, just the same as every other company. A cooperative has to invest in new plant and equipment, just the same as every other company. Thus, they have to buy goods at the same price as any other capitalist concerns. They have to sell goods at the same price as any other capitalist firms. They have to compete for extra capital or borrowing as any other capitalist firms. To succeed the worker in a cooperative is obliged to attacked their own living standards by taking less pay, or intensifying his work-rate or laying off some of his colleagues. Workers’ co-operatives face all the problems of capitalist competition and require to resort to all the capitalist cost-cutting strategies. The cooperative  means the workers are landed with the responsibility of making the business a going concern which will involve workers on lower wages and in higher productivity. Those proposing cooperatives are advocating self-imposed sacrifice.

When people endeavour  to ease their life by shopping for their families by purchasing collectively with others at wholesale prices so as to benefit by the difference with retail prices, this is not to be condemned. We understand very well that in our present state of society the workers will try to alleviate  as much of their misery as they can, and to give their families as much comfort and satisfaction as they can. We do not condemn those food co-ops. But as Marxists we must observe that if these means of tackling their poverty and making  their life more bearable were the general rule, instead of being the exception to the present state of affairs, the consequence would be that the cost of living having become cheaper, wages would not increase and would even decrease.

 Employers would simply refuse to increase the wages of their employees with the explanation that they can now live very well, with their cost of living thus reduced so why should we pay more. We witness the proof of that everyday. Pay in London is higher because the costs of living there is more expensive than in the provincial cities and towns. [SEE APPENDIX]

The concept of co-operatives also suffers from the same problem that the market domination of the conglomorates such as Walmart have on local communities. The success of co-operatives would close down the small local corner-shop (the “mom and pop” stores as they are called in the US) as much as the opening of a giant supermarket does and place tens of thousands shop-keepers out of work.

There is still another reason why co-operatives can have no socialist value. The proponents of co-operatives insist that in the co-operatives for consumption, the antagonism between seller and buyer who henceforth are one and the same is done away with,  just as with profit of one at the expense of the other. Yet nearly all of them are obliged by the commercial pressures of the capitalist milieu, to go in for capitalism themselves. Therefore just instead of selling only to their members at the price of cost, they are more and more obliged to sell to outsiders for the sake of profits. The antagonism between seller and buyer, which it is the role of co-operation to abolish, is still in existence. They are more and more compelled by competition to look for means of existence and development outside the distribution of products and are compelled to sell to the public. In attempts to realise and accumulate profits commercially co-ops become only a new sort of department store, constituted by small workingmen share-holders instead of department stores constituted by large capitalist share-holders. Co-operatives cannot help being governed by all the laws which determine and regulate production and exchange in the society of profit of to-day.

 Despite their glowing recommendation co-operatives do not even prepare the elements of the new society. Capitalism itself has already prepared us for a long time, both materially and as organisationally to administer socialist society. It is precisely because of capitalism, that all the work of administration, direction, execution, the most scientific sort of work as well as the most manual, is carried out by members of the working class hired for the task. We can change the present way of running industry into a new one without any shock or disruption or upheaval. Everything is ready for this transformation or revolution, because the role of the capitalists to-day, does not represent any sort of work, even of directing, and they may disappear to-morrow without anything being touched or destroyed in the operating of the different sorts of industries.

 Appendix

 “However, the capitalist character of our worker has still another side. Let us assume that in a given industrial area it has become the rule that each worker owns his own little house. In this case the working class of that area lives rent free; expenses for rent no longer enter into the value of its labor power. Every reduction in the cost of production of labor power, that is to say, every permanent price reduction in the worker’s necessities of life is equivalent “on the basis of the iron laws of political economy” to a reduction in the value of labor power and will therefore finally result in a corresponding fall in wages. Wages would fall on an average corresponding to the average sum saved on rent, that is, the worker would pay rent for his own house, but not, as formerly, in money to the house owner, but in unpaid labor to the factory owner for whom he works. In this way the savings of the worker invested in his little house would certainly become capital to some extent, but not capital for him, but for the capitalist employing him...Incidentally, what has been said above applies to all so-called social reforms which aim at saving or cheapening the means of subsistence of the worker. Either they become general and then they are followed by a corresponding reduction of wages, or they remain quite isolated experiments, and- then their very existence as isolated exceptions proves that their realization on a general scale is incompatible with the existing capitalist mode of production. Let us assume that in a certain area a general introduction of consumers’ co-operatives succeeds in reducing the cost of foodstuffs for the workers by 20 per cent; in the long run wages would fall in that area by approximately 20 per cent, that is to say, in the same proportion as the foodstuffs in question enter into the means of subsistence of the workers. If the worker, for example, spends three-quarters of his weekly wage on these foodstuffs, then wages would finally fall by three-quarters of 20 = 15 per cent. In short, as soon as any such savings reform has become general, the worker receives in the same proportion less wages, as his savings permit him to live cheaper.” Engels in the Housing Question

Food for thought

On March 16th. Toronto Star reporter, John Upton, describes what it feels like in the morning when he opens the door of his apartment in New Delhi, " Fog drenched clumps of soot, ozone molecules, and microscopic bundles of nitrogen oxides flow into my chest, where some become lodged. Some of these particles might give me lung cancer. Others will enter my bloodstream. The airborne detritus puts me in danger of bronchitis, asthma, a lung infection, even high blood pressure and dementia." Yet New Delhi ranks in 12th. place on the list of the world's most polluted cities. Ahwaz in Iran holds the coveted position as the world's worst, the pollution being five times greater than that of New Delhi. In 2010, 3.2 million people died because of air pollution according to a study
conducted by the British Medical Association journal, Lancet. In "People of The Abyss", that Jack London wrote in 1902, that the dome of St. Paul's
Cathedral was being corroded by sulphur fumes and wonders what it does to one's lungs. Have things changed that much? As long as capitalism exists conditions like these will not only exist but be much sought after by the manufacturers. John Ayers.

Poor Scots and rich ones

In 2011/12, there were 710,000 (14%) Scots in poor households of which 420,000 working age adults, 140,000 pensioners and 150,000 children were living in relative poverty, 80,000 children were living with combined material deprivation and low income.

Within the last two years, Scottish incomes have gone down from an average of £461 per week to £436.

Welfare measures including changes to eligibility for child tax credits and working tax credits which could, on average, mean that households will become around £700 per year worse off.

Child poverty levels are expected to soar in Scotland over the next few years by at least 50,000, taking the total number of children who live in families that struggle daily to provide to over 280,000.

Ian Marchant, CEO of  Scottish Power had received £1.45m in 2011.The company's annual report showed he earned a basic salary of £870,000, up by £30,000. He also received shares worth more than £1m from the firm's long-term bonus plan. His pension was worth £680,000 - a total package of more than £2.63m 

The New Economics - Dusty Old Ideas

It is not at all surprising that when capitalism undergoes one of its periodic slumps and stops “delivering the goods” people, particularly economists, begin searching for better models.  People like Gar Alperovitz, a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland and member of a think-tank the New Economic Institute has made  an impact on left-progressives with his books and articles on  "post-capitalism". He is one amongst many with similar analysis and similar solutions.

A Hungry Society

Fifty years in prison for what? Murder? Rape? No, capitalism doesn't work that way. 'A habitual offender may have committed his final felony, after a judge sentenced him to 50 years  for stealing a rack of ribs from a shop. Willie Smith Ward, 43, attempted to steal the $35 large stack of ribs at the H-E-B store in Maco, Texas, by smuggling it underneath his shirt.' (Independent, 31 May) A $35 felony? Fifty years in prison probably seems just in this crazy society of capitalism. Why didn't he just starve? Capitalism has got to protect itself from workers like Ward. RD

Food for thought

New Democratic MPP, Taras Natyshak, is enraged about the exploitation of interns, "It's free labour. The longer we let this thing lie as a vague part in our employment laws, the longer it will be abused." Unpaid internships are unregulated by the Employment Standards Act and no statistics are taken, therefore, it should come as no surprise that the practice is spreading. Employers attempt to justify it by claiming that it is job training and few interns complain, hoping they'll get a job at the completion of their internship. The NDP wants the liberal government to clearly define internships and limit their length. Thus the NDP wants, in its reformist zeal, to decrease the extent of exploitation of these young people. The SPC wants a society where no exploitation of one human being
by another exists. John Ayers.

Who owns the North Pole - Part 59 - India, wants to

Nearly a month after India was admitted as an observer into the mineral-rich Arctic Council, India’s External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid is visiting Norway, a member of the eight-nation forum, where he will pay a visit to the Indian research station, Himadri, in Svalbard.

India’s research station in the Arctic, Himadri, operated by the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research, was set up in 2008.  India has spent $3 million on research activities so far and plans to enhance the amount. During the next five years an amount of about $12 million is expected to be spent on research through the Himadri centre. Around 170 Indian scientists have written on Arctic research matters and 18 Indian institutions are focused on research related to climate through the Arctic.

“We are extremely interested in the Arctic region and intend to play an active role in the Arctic Council too,” said external affairs ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin at a briefing, adding that it would be an area of focus for Khurshid while he is in Norway.

The Arctic region is estimated to hold 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves and 30 percent of undiscovered gas deposits.

The Golden Parachute

After five years as boss of Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester has announced plans to step down. Hester will leave later this year and will receive 12 months' pay and benefits worth £1.6 million and the potential for a £4 million shares windfall from a long-term incentive scheme.

Bank staff union Unite’s national officer Dominic said “With over 30,000 job losses over the last five years and major stress for RBS staff there is likely to be a lot of anger over Stephen Hestor's tax-payer funded multi-million pound exit package.”

Riot v Revolution

Socialists have been accused over the years of wanting to overthrow capitalism by force and violence. When we are accused of this, what they are really trying to imply is that socialists want to abolish capitalism with a minority, that we want to force the will of the minority on the majority. The opposite is the truth. We believe we can win a majority of the people to support a change in the system.  Socialism is not the regime of a minority. It cannot, therefore, be imposed by a minority.

 Our whole case rests on the assumption that violence comes, as, indeed, it generally does, from the side of the ruling class. We have no respect for the established order of things, knowing full well its ruthless disregard of human life and its indifference to human suffering and misery. We can sympathise with the crimes of the outlaw, created a criminal by society. But we know that the crimes and violence inflicted upon our class enemies only serve to strengthen them, and that they are not revolutionary but reactionary in their effects. We may excuse, but we cannot advocate violence. Violence can only to be resorted to in self-defence.

When the working class adopt means to the end; we have to make sure that they are means that reflect the end in view, and that they will hasten, not retard its attainment.  Rioting is simply the display of impotent rage. It is the tactics of despair, not a method for revolution. The capitalists’ power rest on the force of its state and  to appeal to force while all the arms are in the hands of  the ruling class is self-destructive.  It may well be that the revolution will not be achieved without violence; but we should be fools to provoke the fighting when we should have to fight at a disadvantage, when all the riot police and military resources are controlled by the master class, and all we have to oppose to them is bricks and broken bottles. In such circumstances, any use of  force, quite obviously, plays into the State’s  hands; every riot and every attack on property, gives them an excellent excuse to indulge in reprisals. We know that nothing would please the ruling class better than to goad socialists into premature “revolutionary” violence so they can suppress us. When a doomed insurrection inevitably fails it will have left the capitalist system intact and armed it with implacable fury. The fear of the ruling class will express itself in a long succession of reactionary years. And the workers will be bound and crushed for a long time. The pages of history recount this bitter lesson.

Workers and socialists have struggled long and hard for universal suffrage - a vote for everyone.  Elections indicate the strength of the different parties. A minority that, having taken part in the elections and having accepted them as a gauge, should then attempt to do violence to the majority, would would be opposed by a majority that, aware of its legitimacy of the ballot would not yield. The socialist’s task is organising for the revolution through the conquest of political power. We are by no means fanatics of democracy. The Parliamentary franchise is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end. We hold no illusions as to the value of the vote. Those votes are but the outward and visible sign of an inward invisible class-consciousness; the expression of a working-class revolutionary organisation. The power of the ballot depends, not upon the process, but upon the person behind the vote.

Great social changes that are called revolutions cannot (or rather can no longer) be accomplished by a minority. A revolutionary minority, no matter how intelligent and determined, is not enough, in to-day’s world to bring about a revolution. The co-operation and adherence of the majority are needed. The socialist revolution will not be accomplished by the action, or the sudden blows of a militant minority, but by the defiant and harmonious will of the immense majority. Whoever depends on physical force to bring about the revolution, and gives up the method of winning over the immense majority to our ideas, will give up at the same time any possibility of transforming the social order.

 Socialism cannot be achieved except by the will of the majority of people. Socialists do not rest content after abolishing capitalism but must continue and build a new type of society where production is administered in an ordered way. A new social system cannot be constructed by a minority. It can only function with the approval of the majority who will create from capitalism the various types of social property, co-operative, and communal. The common good will be its object. For the first time since the beginning of human history, a revolution will have for its aim, not the substitution of one class for another, but the destruction of classes, the inauguration of a universal humanity. In the socialism, the co-ordination and collaboration of effort will not be maintained by the authority of one class over another,but will come as the result of the free association. How, then, can a system based on the voluntary participation of all be instituted against the will, (or even without the will,) of the greater number? Socialism requires to be organised and accepted by almost practically all.

The political terrorist is either a fool or a villain; either carried away by sheer lunacy, or motivated by personal gain. The genuine revolutionary knows that in order to accomplish results or promote principle, there must be unity of action.  Hence,  the true revolutionary accepts the will of the majority. The object of a Socialist Party is socialism. To that end the education and organisation of the working class and their persuasion to Socialist principles is essential. We cannot have socialism without socialists. Therefore, the first duty of a socialist party is propaganda, in order to make socialists. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working-class themselves. There is no other way. They cannot be emancipated against their will.

To the Socialist Party whose objective is the socialist revolution – the abolition of capitalism and wage slavery parliamentary action is not the only means but in  countries with parliamentary democracy we use it because it is there to use. But in doing so the immediate object in view is to win the people to the ideas of socialism – to make socialists and to organise the working class for the social revolution. That being so, the winning or losing of seats in any legislative chamber is of secondary importance. What is important is to win votes – not merely as votes, but as evidence of the growing strength of the movement. In other words, as has been well said, we count heads instead of breaking them. That is not to say that the winning of seats is of no importance at all. It is important for it enables us to capture control of the machinery of the state to deprive the capitalists of its use and it legitimises the appropriation of the capitalist class. Parliamentarism is simply the most effective and appropriate means to that end at the present time.

Progressing Backwards

The illusion nurtured by supporters of capitalism that workers are constantly improving their financial position is shattered by the IFS.  Wages have fallen more in real terms in the current economic downturn than ever before, according to their recent report. 'On top of rising cost of living, one third of workers who stayed in the same job saw a wage cut or freeze between 2010 and 2011, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). ....... In 2009, the average public sector worker earned about £16.60 per hour, which dropped to about £15.80 in 2011, the IFS said. Meanwhile, hourly pay for private sector workers in 2009 was just over £15.10 and dropped to £13.60 in 2011.' (BBC News, 12 June) RD

Food for thought

Britain, like most countries these days, is up to its eyes in economic woes. Now David Cameron is talking about a "One nation, deficit reduction plan, from a one nation party", and opposition leader, Ed Milibrand, used the phrase 'one nation' forty times in his conference speech last Fall. Even Nick Clegg used it when he told everyone to "Pull together as one nation". The idea is to convince the working class that their interests are identical with those of the capitalist class, whether it is making products for them to sell at a profit in the market place or fighting wars to further the local capitalists' commercial interests, as opposed to the interests of capitalists in other countries. The plain brutal fact is that the working class of any country has more in common with workers ten
thousand miles away than with the capitalists in their own country. One may like certain things about the country one lives in, but it is folly to identify that with the country as a political identity that is a means whereby the few live well at the expense of the many. As for the term 'one nation', the arithmetic is a bit off because there are in fact two nations on this planet – those of the capitalist class and of the working class. The idea should be to abolish all concepts of nation and replace it with 'a world for the workers'. John Ayers

The difference between anarchists and the Socialist Party

“Intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel. If our ideas of a new Society are anything more than a dream, these three qualities must animate the due effective majority of the working-people....” – William Morris

To most people nowadays, anarchism conjures up the image of Molotov cocktail throwing protesters but it is as well to be reminded that anarchism has a tradition in the working-class movement as old as Marxism itself.  Although  the Socialist Party is not anarchist there are many points in where its ideas coincide with the anarchist attitude.

An educated and conscious working class will insist on democracy. And not the narrow, largely fictitious democracy of voting every four years but democracy in all social and cultural activities, in all spheres of communal life from A to Z. Members of the Social Party are agreed as to the general object for which we are striving – the ownership of all the means of production by the community; that community to be organised on the most democratic basis possible. But, beyond this, socialist  are not concerned with the details and intricacies of the organisation of the new society; and it is possible that in the conception of what that organisation will be there may be the widest divergence of views. The point of difference here between the Socialist Party and anarchists is not on form of organisation of the future society, or of the details of such organisation.

It is not that the Socialist Party wishes to impose on the future society a huge bureaucratic system, dominating all the arrangements of social life, crushing all individuality, and reducing every detail of existence to rule and plan. But we do stand for social ownership and social control, as do the anarchists. We are, however, not called upon to lay down  rules for that future society. We shall let that society take care of itself in that respect. It is very interesting, no doubt, to speculate on the future arrangements of society, whether it will be based on workers councils , federations of communes, decisions made by general assemblies or delegated committees but it is not in our power to insist that these arrangements be this or that. Any discussion on this matter must necessarily be of an academic character.The basic difference between the Socialist Party and the anarchists is not in its relation to future society.

The immediate goal of reformists is palliatives. The immediate goal of state capitalist is the re-ordering of private ownership. The  immediate goal of the Socialist Party and anarchists is the social revolution. We both see only one solution: The Revolution.

Food for thought

The Bangladesh garment factory disaster – who's to blame? A New York Times editorial claims the continuing disasters there is an indictment of global clothing brands yet every enterprise on the planet would love to be in a position where wages, safety laws, and collective bargaining (11 units in a population of 150 million people) are virtually non-existent. Surely it must be obvious that the system itself is to blame.

Paraguay is enjoying an economic boom with growth reaching thirteen per cent this year. Not surprisingly, not all the people are included. Thirty per cent of Paraguayans live in poverty just a short walk from the financial centre. One grandmother, 60 years old, interviewed said she worked every day for $4 to look after her four grandchildren. Surely it must be obvious the system itself is wrong. (am I getting repetitive?). John Ayers

Profits or People

During the Irish potato famine of 1845 to 1848, the worst year is known as Black '47, when 400,000 people died of starvation and disease. During that time, vast quantities of food continued to leave the country's shores. 4,000 ships carrying grain and livestock sailed from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow in 1847, according to Dr Christine Kinealy, a fellow at the University of Liverpool.

"I know all the difficulties that arise when you begin to interfere with trade," wrote the Irish Lord Lieutenant at the time, Lord Bessborough, who pleaded unsuccessfully for help from the government in London. "But it is difficult to persuade a starving population that one class should be permitted to make 50pc profit by the sale of provisions whilst they are dying for want of these."

In the world today, just as in Black '47, when wagon-loads of food were exported under guard by the army, there is enough capacity to feed everyone that is in need yet 2.3 million children die from malnutrition every year.

Reform Without the Revolution

Within the Left there has arose a number of misconceptions about the Socialist Party of Great Britain, one being that we oppose reforms that can improve the lot of workers. The economic system don’t operate by immutable “laws” like gravity. Economics is not like physics. Human beings work together and make decisions that shape our economic destiny. No worker gives up the struggle for immediate reforms, and for as many reforms as possible.

If the Socialist Party had nothing to offer to the suffering people but the consolatory hope that socialism will bring help at some future time, while the conditions are nearly unbearable now, this consolation would be pretty poor and we would be little better than preachers. Often enough a future state of bliss has been held out to suffering mankind, in which they would be rewarded for all the wants and sufferings and pains of this world, and most people have lost confidence in such empty promises. They demand amelioration: not words, not promises, but action. They do not want to be resigned to “pie in the sky" that may come after death; they demand a change to their unfortunate situation while living on earth. Workers seek a “terrestrial paradise” without having to wait for it in a “something beyond.” In plain terms, workers want jam today. Workers have always had to fight both for improvements in their living standards and for their most basic democratic rights.

But in order to carry on this struggle successfully, the workers must be organised. Singly and isolated they are powerless; if all would unite for the same purpose, they would be a formidable power which nothing could resist. It is for the whole working class to participate in this struggle, since this war is carried on in the interest of all workers. They cannot sit idly back as indifferent spectators surrendering the task to a political party.

The theory of reformism is a very different matter from the actual struggle for reforms. Reformism is a theory that says repeated success in achieving reforms could, over time, completely transform society, peacefully and without the sharp break represented by revolution, into a quite different kind of society. The idea was that capitalist society could grow gradually into a free socialist society. Yet there is nothing intrinsically socialist or even working class about reformism.

Food for thought

Canada will not block the listing of asbestos as a dangerous substance this year at the Rotterdam conference as it has done the last three years.
Good news you say? Yes, but the reason is that the Parti Quebecois government has refused to subsidize the industry making it unprofitable, not because the toxic product has been shipped abroad and handled by workers in the third world with no warning or protection condemning them to an early death. Cynical? You bet! John Ayers

Cause For Celebration?

We can understand workers celebrating joyous occasions like a birthday or a wedding but this commemoration astounds us. 'Britain is to mark the centenary of the First World War with cultural events and an act of reconciliation with Germany on the battlefield. Maria Miller, the culture secretary, will announce the appointment of one of the leaders of the £20m programme tomorrow.' (Sunday Times, 9 June) They are spending £20 million to commemorate a war that  annihilated 16 million lives. Truly capitalism is a sick society. RD

Suicide system

Suicide rates in older men in Northern Ireland have jumped significantly over the past decade. Austerity measures, job losses and mortgage payment difficulties have been blamed for a rise in the number of men aged in their 30s, 40s and 50s taking their own lives, the suicide prevention charity Public Initiative for the Prevention of Suicide and Self-harm (Pips).

"Today it is older men who are attempting to take their own lives. I have no doubt the recession has a major part to play.” Pips founder Philip McTaggart said. 

We need more than the union

Marx highlighted the weak spot of all trade unionism. What every worker must realise is that through trade union struggle we are not fighting the causes which is capitalism but only its symptoms. We are fighting against the effects of the system as Marx points out, and not against the system itself. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. Trade unionism merely attempts to lessen this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it by socialism. This is the fatal limitation of trade union struggles.

The Socialist Party does not oppose trade union struggles nor do its members refuse to participate in them. 

As Marx wrote in 1881:

“..it is through the action of Trades Unions that the law of wages is enforced as against the employers, and that the workpeople of any well-organised trade are enabled to obtain, at least approximately, the full value of the working power which they hire to their employer; and that, with the help of State laws, the hours of labour are made at least not to exceed too much that maximum length beyond which the working power is prematurely exhausted. This, however, is the utmost Trades Unions, as at present organised, can hope to obtain...”

So trade unions are vitally essential to organise workers and help them to fight for their day to day demands. As long as the capitalist system exists, employers will always try to take back what they have been forced to concede. They will continually try to step up the exploitation of the working class in order to boost their profits. Until the workers get rid of the capitalist system itself, the cause of all the injustices they face, they will constantly have to take up their struggles over and over again.

Marx’s advice to the workers was:

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system’.” (Value, Price and Profit.)

For socialists this is a guide to action, to present the socialist solution, to raise the issue of socialism, to speak and act in terms of socialism and to fight for the socialist transformation of the economic, social and political system. The Socialist Party does not wish to “capture” the trade unions, nor to exploit them for the support of principles in which they do not believe or of men with whom they do not agree. Neither do we suggest that we should “fight” the unions as some Left Communists argue should happen. Nor do we adhere to the idea that we should create rival “socialist” trade union organisations to them as have the old Communist Party and Socialist Labour Party once did. Such efforts proved futile and only further weakened the power of existing unions. The Socialist Party has no interest in opposing, antagonising, or disrupting the trade unions.

What we wish to do is to inspire its members with a consciousness of the reality and magnitude of the class struggle in which, whether they will it or not, they are engaged. The fact is that unions are mass organisations which bring together workers of all political tendencies, including workers who are still under the domination of the prevalent status quo ideology and still have faith in the political parties of the capitalists. Despite this, unions have everything to gain from remaining united. Otherwise their battles will end up in defeat. 

Another name that Marx and Engels often used for a socialist society was “free association of producers”.  Simply describing a world without private property or wages system, however important these might be, misses the point. Marx’s basic conceptions was of universal human emancipation, of a way of living which he called "truly human". Communist society is based on the free association of all individuals who work together to produce the goods necessary for their collective well-being. All will work according to their capacities and their needs will be fully satisfied. Thus, individuals will no longer be governed by the division of labour and the divisions between city and countryside will disappear. The expropriation of the capitalists and the socialisation of the means of production will lead directly to the abolition of society based on class division . The abolition of classes will in turn lead to the withering away of the State, and its extinction, for the State is not, and can never be, anything other than the instrument of dictatorship of one class over others.

Food for thought

An official at the Toronto Zoo said in the recent TV program, "Undercover Boss", that species are dying off at the rate of one thousand a year. Think of the enormity of this and how desperately we need to do something about it.

Yoko Ono recently said that over one million people have been killed by Guns in the US since her husband, John Lennon was shot and killed. Gun control laws may not have an impact, even if an effective law could get past congress, because guns are so easily obtained illegally. Removing the causes of tension and conflict and the end to profiteering on gun sales would work but you need a socialist society for that.

There are nearly six unemployed Canadians for every job vacancy, Statistics Canada reported. Furthermore, 1.2 million people are out of work. Ottawa says it will deal with the problem by focusing on job training. However, Erin Weir, an economist with the United Steel Workers' union, said, "…even if a skills training policy somehow succeeded in filling every current vacancy, more than one million workers would remain unemployed." Another reason to abolish employment and unemployment altogether. John Ayers.

We need the union

You cannot be a union man, 
No matter how you try,
Unless you think in terms of “we”
Instead of terms of “I”

Faced with austerity and wage cuts workers, more than ever, need unions that are prepared to fight to defend living standards. The boss doesn’t give up his profits, interests and dividends or bonuses in a recession.  He only demands that the workers give up their wages so that his profits, interests and dividends will be bigger. This is what is known as everyone sacrificing for the “national interest.” Workers soon learns that if they are by themselves , not in an organisation, they will be utterly helpless victims of capitalist greed. If the employer, especially the more powerful employer in the big industries, is able to deal with each worker separately, he can set almost any wage and working standard he pleases. If each worker offers himself singly on the labor market, he soon finds that other workers, especially when there is a large surplus of unemployed, will “underbid” him in an effort to get the job. To defend themselves from the efforts of the employer to lower wage and working standards, the workers find themselves forced to organize together, to represent themselves to the employers as a group and to bargain collectively. The formation of  unions is therefore the first step naturally taken by the workers to organise themselves as a class.

No one can say with certainty how various sections of the working class in Britain will react to the recession, which is slashing real living standards of those with jobs for the first time for generations, alongside a deep disillusionment with the Labour Party. The possibility of an explosion of anger exists, of which we see flashes of militancy. But political consciousness does not follow as a mechanical process nor does it depend solely on the external circumstances.

 The theory that the workers are not capable of governing themselves is false to the core. Every worker who has participated in trade union life knows that the working class has a tremendous capacity for efficient administration.

In general the employers are much better prepared than the workers in industrial conflicts. The reasons do not lie in any inherent weakness in the working class. Actually the workers are much more powerful than the bosses. The weakness of the workers lies in the failure to recognize the class struggle in its real significance and to prepare the fight accordingly. A union should unite workers instead of divide them; it should be run by workers and not run them; it should fight employers instead of fighting other workers. The most modest victory of the workers in one plant or industry depends upon the organised strength of the workers all over the country, in all the important plants and industries. In other words, the progress of any group of workers depends upon the strength and organisation of their class, upon its ability to combat the capitalists as a class. Those who argue against independent political action by the workers, against a socialist  party, are tied in body and mind to capitalist politics.

The only real answer lies in a world system, a system without classes, an challenge which goes beyond the ‘fair wage’ to challenge the wage system itself. Capital is interested in production for profit, labour in production for use. Capital is based upon a constantly increasing exploitation of labor, in order to maintain its profit; labor constantly resists this exploitation. There is and can be no such thing as a “legitimate profit,” inasmuch as all profit is derived from paying workers less than the value they add to the product. There is and can be no such thing as a “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” inasmuch as wages are the payment for only one part of the day’s work, the other part of which the worker is compelled to contribute to the employer in the form of surplus-value, or profit. Capital always seeks to increase its profits, which can be done only by exploiting labour; labour always seeks to resist exploitation, which can be done only at the expense of profits. Capital always seeks to intensify the exploitation of labour by reducing wages, increasing the work-day, or speeding-up production, or by all three at once; and labour always seeks to raise its wage and working standards. Capital always seeks to increase its profits, which can be done only by exploiting labour; labour always seeks to resist exploitation, which can be done only at the expense of profits. These are fundamental economic facts. Under capitalism, nothing that all the capitalists, or the whole government, or all the union leaders, or all the workers, or a combination of all these, will ever do, can succeed in wiping out these facts.

 Capitalists hammer into the heads of the workers they are entitled to a profit. They hammer into the heads of the workers that capitalism always did exist and always will. Maybe it can and should be improved a little, patched up here and painted up there , but not eliminated. They hammer into the heads of the workers that there always have been people working for wages and there always will and must be such people; that it is so decreed by “human nature”; and that the best to be hoped for is the rule of a “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work." They work hard at hammering  these ideas into the heads of the people. If these ideas did not prevail, they could not retain their power for a week.

The Killer Society

There are many many reasons to abolish capitalism. War, poverty, racialism and nationalism, to mention but a few, but surely this is the most powerful reason of all. 'Malnutrition is responsible for 45% of the global deaths of children under the age of five, research published in the Lancet medical journal suggests. Poor nutrition leads to the death of about 3.1 million under-fives, annually, it says.' (BBC News, 6 June) Capitalism is a killer - we must get rid of it.RD

Democratic socialism

Socialism will replace the chaotic competition of to-day with the organised co-operation of to-morrow. The overwhelming majority of the population consists of wage-earners, men and women who have no means of earning a livelihood except by the sale of the labour-power in their own bodies to those who possess or control the means of making wealth. The ordinary workers of our day possess little property to speak of, and, more often than not they do not own or control their own tools. On the contrary,  machinery, in one shape or form virtually own and control them, dictating the speed at which they shall work and the amount they shall produce, while control passes out of their hands, as does the product.

True, the modern wage-slave is nominally free and possesses certain  political rights which the chattel slave or feudal serf did not enjoy.  But these freedoms and these rights have not emancipated the wage-slaves from economic servitude to the capitalist class which has succeeded the old land-owning aristocrats or slave-owning patricians. The fact that a certain proportion of the workers receive good wages, in comparison with others who are paid on a lower level of subsistence, makes no difference to the system. Some highly-educated slaves received considerable remuneration from their owners, and even became rich men. What prevents many of the present wage-slaves from understanding how little freedom they really enjoy is the payment of wages in cash. This blinds them to the fact that they receive but a fraction of the value of the wealth they produce in return for the use of their capacity to labour; just as their liberty to change from one employer to another obscures the other truth that they are always, in reality, under duress from the threat of unemployment to the capitalist class as a whole. The Chartists taught generations ago that as long as the payment of wages by one class to another class continued, and production for profit under a competitive system consequently remained the dominant form of employment, it was quite impossible for the propertyless majority to emancipate themselves from the control of the rich. They argued  that the community should own and control all the means and instruments of creating wealth, to be used in the interests of the whole people, and that, so far as possible, this end should be striven for by peaceful methods in order to minimise the chances of reaction.  There is no short cut to the social revolution. The revolts of impatience and insufficient organisation only play into the hands of the ruling class, as all experience has shown. Education and understanding among the people, combined with the general social advance to the stage of economic development  are the indispensable conditions that renders socialism attainable.

The Socialist Party argues that if socialists cannot gain the support of a majority of the people in a democracy then will find it even more impossible to obtain such a majority by the use of armed struggle or the general strike. The tactics of force and violence requires even greater sacrifices from workers. Surely it is much easier to persuade a person to vote for socialism than it is to give their life for it. When  force is pitted against force, the power at the disposal of the ruling classes comes much more into play than under democracy.

It would be nonsensical for the Socialist Party to contend that workers are obliged to use democratic methods under all circumstances. Such an obligation we undertake only if our class enemy also  respects the democratic methods. We are not advocates of legality at any price. We know that we cannot always create historical situations to suit our desires, and that our tactics must correspond to different situations. “By peaceful methods if possible, by forcible means if necessary” is the reply of socialists. In circumstances when socialist are compelled to meet violence with violence, we must still seek first and foremast to win the support of the majority. This is the essential prerequisite of victory.

Where democracy does not exist the most urgent task of socialists to establish political freedom. It is not necessary for socialists to foster any illusions about what  democracy has on offer for this purpose. It makes little difference whether or not we choose to regard a representative assembly of the people, elected by universal equal suffrage, and coupled with freedom of the press, speech and organisation, as mere “bourgeois” democracy. The fact is that such institutions is suffice for  the workers to emancipate themselves. The so-called peaceful methods of conducting the class struggle, contesting elections, strikes, demonstrations,and similar methods of bringing pressure to bear stand a better chance of being maintained in any country the more democratic the institutions, and the greater the political and economic insight and the self control of the people.

To be sure, democratic institutions will change their character when society will be organised on a socialist basis. Today they are essential instruments of struggle for the working class. In socialism they will be means of social administration. 

I deserve my millions

Chris Sullivan chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland’s corporate banking division, defended the £3.4 million he collected in 2010 and insisted he worked hard for his money.
“My life is far from easy,’ he says. ‘I worked my way up from being a humble bank clerk. I have worked very hard and with very long hours.”

The Real World

The materialist conception of history (or historical materialism or the economic interpretation of history) has never consisted of the crude view that hunger alone, the eagerness to satisfy the material needs of the stomach, is the driving force of history. But the materialist conception of history certainly arises out of the basic observation that people (as Engels said at Marx’s funeral) “must have food and drink, clothing and shelter, first of all, before they can interest themselves in politics, science, art, religion, and the like.”

The supporters of the materialist conception of history have never been so dogmatic as to declare that economic forces are the only forces that make history. What they have argued is that, among the factors of history, economic forces have the final say.

Those who advocate the materialist conception  of history do not deny the influence of the mind, never ignore the power of ideas, never under-estimate the importance of the mental or spiritual factor in the course of history. On the contrary, when recognising that history is made by human beings, they acknowledge in these human beings the importance of all human attributes, including, therefore, mind, intelligence, consciousness, and ideas. What they objected to was the concept of a purely mental world in the nebulous form of an “absolute idea” or in theological terms, “God”, should be interpreted abstractly as the essential factor of historical evolution. In their view, neither, the idea nor matter was “in the beginning.” However, "God" didn’t create the world and hasn’t been watching over the development of mankind. On the contrary, man created the idea of the gods as a fantasy to compensate for lack of real control over the forces of nature and of society.

The mistake of the philosophers was to separate ideas off from the material circumstances in which they had arisen, and then to see history as simply the history of a succession of different ideas. For the materialists, all life was an inseparable and eternally mobile interweaving and mutual conditioning of force and matter, combined into an integral unity. And the human being who constituted the core of this living whole was for them a social human being, one who had countless interrelations with  fellow human beings. The materialist’s contention is not that ideas do not matter. It is that ideas arise out of people’s material activity, and cannot be detached from that.

 The materialist conception of history showed that the forms of society, social institutions, human behaviour and human ideas, that show themselves in a particular epoch, are dependent upon the economic relations peculiar to that epoch. The materialist conception of history is that view of history which ascribes the driving power of all social change to the economic development of society in production, and exchange, with its creation of classes and the resulting class struggle. In this explanation of history the mode of production and exchange is taken as the basis of all social relations, and therefore private ownership of land and capital being general in historical times, all history is made up of contests between slave and slave-owner, capitalist and feudal-lord, and wage-slave and capitalist. History, then, is a record of class struggles, and these struggles occur over the ownership of the means of production and distribution. This period of class societies could not be ended until it had led to an enormous growth of the productive forces. Until then any attempt at getting rid of class exploitation was bound to fail. “This development of the productive forces is an absolutely necessary practical premise, because without it: privation, want, is merely made general, and with want the struggle for necessities would begin again, and all the old filthy business would be restored ...Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of the productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with them.” Marx wrote in Geman Ideology

Primitive peoples worshipped the sun and other physical phenomena because the natural laws behind these things were not yet known. The early sailor and the modern worker are very different in their mental outlook. One was often superstitious; the other is not. That is because the sailor came into contact with Nature under conditions which have not yet been fully understood and controlled. The vastness of the sea, the sudden storms and the great waves and winds, determined his ideas. In the modern world natural forces have been harnessed, and machinery start and stop at the wish of the operator. Modern men and women have grown less superstitious and increasingly secular.

If, as materialism holds, everything in the universe consists of matter in motion, then the human mind must likewise be a material phenomenon.  The mind of the individual does not and cannot exist except as a function of the brain and the body. The operations of the human mind, remembering, dreaming, learning, reasoning, etc., have the same material character as such functions as eating;  swallowing, digestion  and excreting. Many schools of thought make a mystery of the mind, treating it as some supernatural power. Although the activities of the thought process have their special features and peculiar laws they are in themselves no more enigmatic than other kinds of organic behavior. Human beings think as naturally as they work, eat and reproduce themselves. Through the brain and nervous system the mind is connected with the body, through the body with society, and through society with the rest of nature. These interactions of existence provide the mind with the materials and motives for its activities just as they furnish the stomach with the food. Every human mind remains permanently linked to these material foundations. The most extravagant speculations of thought, the wildest dreams, the most refined ideas cannot go beyond the boundaries of material suggestion nor find any sources of material for its productions outside of those given by the material forms and forces which encompass man on all sides. Nature is the mother of all things and all ideas, and to it they eventually return.

Of course, human reflection, intellectual and philosophical speculation are far more complex and highly developed modes of organic functioning than the simpler natural cited above. But to the materialist, to the scientific thinker, there are no impassable barriers. People do not  reason for the pure pleasure of thinking. Men think for practical purposes, in order to act properly and attain their ends. Man’s intellectual capacities; ideas, and philosophies have developed along with and out of man’s relationship with nature. If their thought did not more or less correctly represent objective reality, if it did not help them to function more efficiently, if it did not serve man’s ends and thus satisfy vital needs, mankind would long since have ceased to cultivate their mental powers. These would have withered away or diminished in importance like the appendix.

The materialists view matter as the primary reality, regarding sensation, consciousness, and reasoning as secondary and derivative qualities. Where the materialist states that mind is a product of natural evolution, the idealist asserts or implies that it possesses some sort of supernatural power. The materialist looks upon mental operations as functions and forms of biological behavior. Idealism segregates reason from the rest of human activity and endows it with a unique status and categorically different powers. Thanks to mysterious para-normal powers, idealism declares that the mind has insight into special realms of being, outside the real material world. This can take the belief in talking with the dead or claiming communication with “God” - the mumbo-jumbo of spiritualism and spirituality.

It's A Mad, Mad World

 

Many opponents of the the world socialist movement think we are are a little mad. A world based on production for use? No profits? No Money? Crazy! But what of present day society? 'A racing pigeon named Bolt officially became the most expensive pigeon in the world earlier this week when a Chinese businessman bought him at auction for $400,000.' (Business Insider, 22 May) We  live in a society wherein millions of people try to exist on less than $2 a day and yet a member of the capitalist class can spend $400,000 on a pigeon. Who are the mad people? RD

The housing problem

Comfortable decent housing is probably the one basic need which, were it properly satisfied, contributes to good emotional and mental health. The fact remains that such a happy situation only applies to the small to the small minority of the population who have the means to buy beautiful homes. The vast majority suffer a housing problem of one sort of another, whether it be living in inner-city slums or soulless council schemes or being plagued by the fears and insecurities caused by trying to pay the rent or pay off a mortgage. Housing is one problem of capitalism which has been a constant source of difficulty and part and parcel of working class life. Few members of our class escape some aspect of housing trouble.

We read that fewer homes are being built leaving thousands of  people frozen out of the property market. Last year fewer than 15,000 homes were built. It is predicted the number of under-35s renting from private landlords will overtake those with a mortgage by 2014. By 2020, it is estimated more than 50% of Scottish young people will live in private rented homes. It is estimated 465,000 new homes are needed in Scotland by 2035 to meet demand. However, the build rates highlighted today point to a potential shortfall in the region of 140,000. Fewer homes are being built now than in the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The first fallacy to dismiss is the belief that “housing shortage” is the beginning and end of the problem. This is not the source of the problem nor the full story. The facts tell us the industry suffers many problems which have been related to one thing; the contradictions and conflicts of the system of capitalism. If the lack of houses are a product of the inability of the building industry to supply to us the housing we want, then this is because the building industries are clearly responding instead to the realities of capitalism and not to the needs and demands of people.

When socialism is established the people in a local area will make decisions affecting that area specifically, the people in a certain region will make decisions for that region and everyone will make global decisions. When socialism is established it will have two important projects concerning housing. One will be to find homes for all those who have none. It would have to be decided, how many, what type or style, what materials they will be made from and how much of each is required. Obviously, with this will go the many and various decisions concerning town planning, roads, recreational facilities, shopping centres (though we may not call it shopping then). This will entail vast changes from top to bottom in every part of society. Nowhere will this be apparent more than over how we group in communities. Cities as we know them to day will probably no longer exist as people won’t want or need to be condensed in a particular area. Whenever there is a need for a new type of house, a town or a building for the use of the community, architects will submit plans and models which can be voted on by the community as a whole in a given area. Though there may be competition between the various architects and planners, it will be from the premise of who can best beautify the locality. One can be certain that there will be new types of dwellings. Along with the disappearance of cities as we know them will also go the high-rises, those up-turned shoe-boxes where people are crammed in like sardines, to be replaced with buildings where people can at least live like humans.

What's so scientific about socialism?

As a doctrine socialism has passed through two main phases - the utopian and the scientific. What is scientific socialism? Under that name we understand the communist teaching which began to take shape at the beginning of the forties out of utopian socialism. Despite the criticism of capitalist society, the predecessors of Marxism did not understand how  society could provide the forces which could overthrow it. These attempts bear the same relation to modern scientific socialism that astrology or alchemy do to astronomy and chemistry. They resorted to devising schemes and communities but Marx and Engels showed how the development of the powers of production under capitalism would result in the formation of a strong working class and the realization by them intellectually and emotionally of their exploitation and need for a new society the foundations of socialism would come to be created.

Marx was in favour of capturing political power. This was his distinction from utopian socialists that represented socialism before him. It was also suggested the fall of the Paris Commune had to do with the lack of political power. Workers using a party to capture political power doesn't imply statism, hierarchical organisation, a new ruling-class, workers serving the party (rather than the other way round), party loyalty or anything. Marx and Engels showed at the same time the victory of the wage slaves was not going to fall mechanically into their lap when a certain stage of historic development had been reached, but that the workers must prepare themselves for this victory by fighting day-to-day against the capitalist in all spheres of social life, class against class. Marx did not create the working class movement. Nor did he create class consciousness. Rather, he created the theoretical (scientific) expression of them. Marxism is the scientific theory of the revolutionary movement which aims to overthrow the capitalist system and establish a new socialist order in its stead. Marxism provides a scientific theoretical analysis of the laws of motion and the internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production.

Scientific socialists apply the inductive method, that is inference of general laws from particular instances, reasoning and  proceeding from particular facts to a general conclusion. They stick to facts. They use the  inductive method to draws their mental conclusion from concrete facts.They live in the real world and not in the spiritual regions of idealism or within the realms of academia. The fundamental proposition of inductive scientific socialism may be thus formulated: there is no eternal principle or an a priori idea of the divine, just and free; there is no revelation or a chosen people, but there are material factors which govern human society. The materialist conception of history is scientific induction and not idle speculation.

Socialism is a movement based upon the historic evolution of the past and the economic conditions of the present. It is not, therefore, something that has been hatched in the brain of a poet or in the imagination of some philosopher. It is true that many in the past sought to outline ideal social systems wherein all the inhabitants would be happy and free from poverty. The distinction between those early idealists and modern socialism is the difference between utopianism and science. Scientific socialism builds upon reality. It looks upon society as ever-changing, and it is able to explain why society has changed in the past and why it must change in the future. The reason why socialism is able to explain the past and the present and to foreshadow the future is because it establishes itself upon the facts of history and the truths of economic science.

The whole practical question of socialism may be summed up in the following three points: 1) Has the working class arrived at a clear conception of its existence as a class by itself? 2) Has it strength enough to engage in a struggle against the other classes? 3) Is it about to overthrow, together with the organisation of capitalism, the entire system of traditional thought.  

Profits Before Schoolkids

'In March the National Rifle Association coordinated a demonstration against new gun legislation in Connecticut, the state where 26 children and staff were gunned down at an elementary school in December. Before boarding buses headed for the state capital, gun owners met up at a parking lot in nearby East Hatford - a parking lot owned by sporting goods store Cabela's.'     (Forbes, 22 May) The location was no accident--they were guests of the owners. With 40 stores and a strong Internet and mail catalogue business, Cabela's sells everything from fishing rods to wool slippers. But guns are the real money-maker, and while fears of future gun restrictions have spurred sales for the entire industry, no company has benefited quite like Cabela's.   Shares have increased by 95% in the last year and are up more than 70% already in 2013. The company's two biggest shareholders, founders Richard and James Cabela, have seen the value of their combined 25% stake jump to $1.2 billion from $750 million at the start of 2013. With profits like that the lives of school kids mean nothing to the owning class. RD