Socialism - the Political Case

FOR A REVOLUTION FOR THE MAJORITY BY THE MAJORITY

Many of the arguments against the case for socialism are in reality criticisms of parliamentary action. The two spheres of activity must not be confused. Parliamentary action believes that by placing a series of reforms upon the Statute Book—  “one step at a time” — the economic position of the workers can be improved, and that they will be finally emancipated by such reform measures. Such a line of activity is the aim of the “reformers” or State-"Socialists". Many reformists pose as socialists with claims of helping the workers by nationalising or controlling the means of production through the State. They endeavour to argue that "evolutionary socialism” is superior to revolutionary action. Every advance in nationalisation is heralded as socialism in practice; every extension of State control greeted as a conquest by the workers. Thus a false conception of socialism becomes the means of misleading the working class. So eager have these State-"socialists" (or more accurately State-capitalists) been to bestow the label of "socialism" upon profit-making institutions that any Labour or Tory could say "we are all socialists nowadays." Any demands, such as the reduction of taxes or increased business regulation has been advocated as "socialistic" legislation.

Marx in his criticism of the French crisis of 1848 described how the capitalist class promoted  reforms under the title of socialism. He says: —
"Whether the question was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again, the theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready and unchanged: Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced socialistic; socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and, likewise, socialistic is national financial reform. It was socialistic to build a railroad where already a canal was; and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a stick when attacked with a sword."

It has been customary for people to be told that they must look to the State for salvation. For years Old Labour have assured us that the hope of the workers lay in State control. Nevertheless genuine socialists have consistently argued that State ownership takes all control away from the workers and leaves them at the mercy of unsympathetic and irresponsible ministers. It is impossible for State officials to understand the nature of the problems arising in the industries, or to appreciate the grievances of the workers.

The attempt of the State to control industry is therefore the attempt of the ruling class to dominate Labour.  It seeks to make socialism a term at once contradictory and confusing; and it accomplishes this by declaring the most essential things necessary to the development of capitalism as state intervention and nationalisation are all "steps" in the direction of socialism rather then the reality that they are merely the general centralisation and concentration of capital.

 Capitalism due to the ever increasing conflict for markets and the intense competition involved will tend to accelerate rivalries and lead to the need of the productive forces to be controlled with greater urgency. The desire to control national production, the fear of industrial unrest, and the wish to enforce discipline upon the workers may compel the capitalist class to extend State control. The extension of State control will bring with it armies of official bureaucrats, who will only be able to maintain their posts by tyrannising and limiting the freedom of the workers. And instead of having to overthrow a system buttressed by a handful of individual capitalists, the workers will be faced with a system reinforced by a gigantic army of State-subsidised officials, who will fight to maintain their status and power. Such indeed is the logical outcome of nationalisation. Socialists deny that State ownership can end in anything other than a bureaucratic despotism. Whenever a politician is appointed to control any industrial concern he has to select a technical expert and
permanent officials who know something about that industry. These officials are appointed by the State — i.e., from above; they are only answerable to the State minister who has to depend upon them for all his information regarding his department. The officials are conscious of their power, and they use it. There is no method whereby it is possible to have democratic State control. These officials, when appointed, simply act as rulers appointed above the heads of the people who do understand the industrial processes. State Control can never be democratic control; hence it becomes a bureaucratic autocracy. It is a social despotism organised from above.

By its victory at the ballot box, and its consequent political domination, the few members of the capitalist class are able to rule over the majority. State departments are in the hands of unsympathetic bureaucrats who are appointed by our masters. The bureaucrats have no organic connection with communities or industry and are unable to understand working-class problems. Being appointed by the master class, who control the State, the bureaucrats can only maintain their jobs by serving those who control them. Here, again, is another problem, the destruction of bureaucracy, which can be only solved if the revolutionary organised workers defeat their masters at the ballot box.

Capitalism cannot be controlled. But it can be destroyed and replaced by a workers' co-operative commonwealth, an association of producers.

Socialism will be fundamentally a system democratically owned and controlled by the workers electing directly from their own ranks into industrial administrative committees and those carrying on the social activities and industries of society will be directly represented in the local and central industrial councils of social administration. In this way the powers of such delegates will flow upwards from those carrying on the work and conversant with the needs of the community. When the central administrative industrial committee meets it will represent every phase of social activity. The transition from the one social system to the other will be the social revolution. The political State throughout history has meant the government of men by ruling classes; Socialism will be the government of industry administered on behalf of the whole community. The former meant the economic and political subjection of the many; the latter will mean the economic freedom of all — it will be, therefore, a true democracy

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is convinced that the present political State, with most of its attendant institutions, must be swept away. The political State is not and cannot be a real democracy. It is not elected according to the social wants of the community. It is elected because the wealthiest section of society can suppress all facts through its power over the mass media. By its money the capitalists can buy up large newspapers and these trump up false election issues. The electorate is not asked to vote upon facts but only upon such topics as the media, representing Capital, puts before the viewers and readers.

We cannot build towards socialism and leave political control in the hands of the ruling class. We have seen what power the control of the State gives to the employers in its struggle with employees. It is through its political strength that the capitalists can deprive us of civil liberty, the loss of which makes the peaceful agitation for the revolution impossible. The maintenance of what limited rights and feedoms we possess is part of the political struggle. Political action must be used to combat the capitalist class in any attempt to filch away the rights of industrial action and other civil liberties. And to be used as a precautionary measure for when the socialist movement grows more powerful and the capitalist chooses to resort to the use of force and other methods of suppression. The coercive control flows directly from Capital’s control of the State which it secures at the ballot box. Therefore, in order to achieve a peaceful revolution, the working class must capture the powers of the State at the ballot box and prevent the capitalist class from using the nation’s armed forces against the workers. This can be described as the destructive function of the  role of political action. But this pre-emptive destructive political function is necessary in order that the constructive element in the revolution may not be thwarted.

 Socialism will require no political State because there will be neither a privileged property class nor a downtrodden propertyless class; there will be no social disorder as a result, because there will be no clash of economic interests; there will be no need to create a power to make "order." Thus, as Engels explains, the State will die out. With it will end the government of men and make way for the administration of things. The German social democrat August  Bebel declared: — "Along with the State die out its representatives — cabinet ministers, parliaments, standing armies, police and constables, courts, district attorneys, prison officials, tariff and tax collectors; in short, the whole political apparatus. Barracks, and such other military structures, palaces of law and of administration, prisons— all will now await better use. Ten thousand laws, decrees, and regulations become so much rubbish; they have only historic value. The great and yet the petty parliamentary struggles with which the men of tongue imagine they rule and guide the world are no more; they will have made room for administrative colleges and delegations, whose attention will be engaged in the best means of production and distribution, in ascertaining the volume of supplies needed, in introducing and applying effective improvements in art, in architecture, in intercourse, in the process of production, etc. These are all practical matters, visible and tangible, towards which everyone stands objectively, there being no personal interests hostile to society to affect their judgment."

The constructive element in the social revolution will be the action of the workers in the organs of their own making seizing the means of production in order to administer the wants of the community.

But, to repeat once more,  in order to tear the State out of the grasp of the ruling class the workers political organisation must capture the political machinery of capitalism. The work of the political weapon is purely destructive, to destroy the capitalist system. To think that Parliament can be used as the means of permanently improving the conditions of Labour, by passing a series of acts, is to believe in parliamentarism. The Socialist Party is not a parliamentary party. It believes in entering Parliament only as a means of doing away with all the institutions which stand in the way of the industrial union owning and controlling the means of production. It is general elections which affords the workers the opportunity of overthrowing those political institutions standing in the way of their emancipation. The Socialist Party seeks to educate the workers in order that they may organise to combat capitalism in every field of its activity.

Our anti-political friends wish us to devote our energies solely to the industrial field of battle because they imagine that the workers are sold-out when they enter politics. But the workers can equally be betrayed industrially as well as politically. The history of the trade union leaders indicates this point. Until the working class is conscious of its own interests—until it clearly realises what it wants and how to get it—then they are the tools of the Labour Party careerists and other political charlatans. The moment that the wage-workers understand their class interests they will not be betrayed either industrially or politically. Because “leaders” are only able to act treacherously when workers are kept in ignorance and confusion. If the working class does not recognise and understand its own  interests, it will, indeed,  be betrayed in Parliament, just as they are often sold out in their place of work by conciliatory union leaders.

 Every argument against political action can be used against industrial (or syndicalist) action. They react upon each other. There is nothing inherently dangerous in political action. All the arguments brought against it prove only that the socialist movement has neglected its educational work; it has paid insufficient attention to the creation of a sympathetic media and revolutionary press; it has not sought to organise workers as a class but sectionally, by occupation and trade or through one-issue campaigns or even by lifestyle; and the result is that these weaknesses are glaringly reflected on the political field. When our anti-political friends contend that the political field makes for the confusion of workers they are unconsciously passing censure on every other field of socialist activity. The critics of political action, unable to perceive the law of causation, which links together the various weaknesses operating in the different channels of the labour movement, places all the blame on the political field. They therefore decides to ignore political faction and  by doing so they neglect the whole problem.

The Socialist Party takes the political field with one demand in its programme—socialism. It emphasises that only socialists must vote for its candidates even if it means our candidates will not be returned to Parliament. If we receive only a few votes from class-conscious socialists in any constituency, so be it , that must be the extent of its success. If we simply appealed for any votes regardless of understanding and entered into alliances, compromises, and electoral pacts arrangements with non-socialist parties this would mean the return of a candidate, perhaps, but most definitely not provided with a mandate for socialism. Our political object is the capture of the political machine in order to tear the State, with its armed force, out of the hands of the capitalist class, thus removing the murderous power which capitalism may looks to use in its final conflict with workers. Therefore, the only revolutionary value of political action lies in its being the instrument specially fashioned to destroy capitalism. Political action, too, brings the propaganda of socialism into the daylight and lifts the revolutionary movement beyond that of being a secret conspiracy. Political action, by insisting on free speech, prevents the capitalist class from forcing the movement underground—because once there the State would crush it. And, above all, the political method by bringing revolutionary socialism upon the political field places it on that ground of social action where all conflicts tend to be settled peacefully. If socialism is ushered in by violent means it will be because the capitalist class repudiated the civilised or political method.

Adapted from some of the writings of Glasgow-born William Paul, when he was still in the Socialist Labour Party, before he joined the Communist Party.

A Greek Tragedy

Supporters of capitalism are always telling socialists that the buying and selling system of the profit system is the most efficient way to run society. This despite wars, world poverty and unemployment. 'Greece's unemployment rate hit another record high in May of 27.6%, according to the country's statistics body. The figure, from the Hellenic Statistics Authority, compares with a jobless rate of 23.8% in May last year. Among those in the labour market aged 15-24, the rate is 64.9%, as Greece sees its sixth year of recession.' (BBC News, 9 August) This is not peculiar to Greece. Last week, figures from the official Eurozone statistics agency reported that Greece's unemployment rate was 26.9% in June, compared with a Eurozone-wide figure of 12.1%, according to the same BBC report. Millions of workers throughout Europe are been debarred from producing wealth. Think what production could be  inside a socialist society. RD

If You've Got It, Flaunt It

At a time when many workers are desperately trying to get together enough money for the deposit on a house the owning class are continuing in their usual spendthrift fashion. 'Britain's most expensive parking place has gone on the market for £300,000, almost twice the price of the average home. The open-air spot is 11ft by 21ft and is in Hyde Park Gardens, London, where many houses cost millions of pounds.' (Times, 8 August) If you think that was unusually expensive the same report mentions an underground parking space near Harrods that was priced at £200,000 in 2011. RD

No New Chains

 While the banks may be part of the problem it is the capitalist system as a whole  which is at fault. Socialism starts of with the basic  truism that our present system divides society into two classes, the “have all” and the “have nothing” class, and that it is the great mass of the people that do all the useful work who belong to the “have nothing” class. In this system we have one set called capitalists, and another set called workers; and they are at war with each other over a division of the product. Therefore socialism is class conscious. This does not mean that socialists must hate every capitalist individually, that some should be picked out as “scapegoats” while the economic power and political encroachment of all the others should be silently submitted to. It means that while we understand that every individual capitalist is the result of the present system as much as the wage worker, we still must fight the capitalists as a class, because the producers cannot reasonably expect anything but exploitation from the exploiters as a class. In short, socialism recognizes that the development of capitalist society substitutes tyrannical monopoly by a minority for individual property of the many.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain in common with all political parties, is a class party. The Socialist Party did not create class lines or class distinctions and regardless of whoever or whatever is to blame for the situation, there is no denying the fact that society is divided into these two well defined groups.  As a matter of fact, this condition was not brought about through the plans or cunningly devised schemes of any group in particular. The banker, industrialist and  property speculator are just as truly products of this system as the impoverished worker.  But we frankly admit that our own  political organisation is but an expression of class interest. The party therefore exists for the sole purpose of representing the producers of the world , that is to say, the working class. Seeing clearly the age-long struggle between the producers of the world’s necessities and the parasites upon their backs, the Marxian philosophy of the historic “class struggle” is the foundation of its propaganda and organisation work.

We in the Socialist Party do not advocate a policy of partial remedies such as minimum wage laws, or stringent banking and financial regulations plus all the kinds of legislation that has marked the attempts of the  ruling class to placate the workers. In the end, an enlightened and class-conscious proletariat will be satisfied with nothing less than the collective ownership and democratic management of the means and instruments of production and distribution.  There will be no material change in the condition of the people until we have a new social system based upon the mutual economic interests of the people: until you and I and all of us own in common those things that we collectively need and use.

The Socialist Party therefore calls upon all workers to unite under its banner so that we may be ready to conquer capitalism by making use of our political  power, so that we may put an end to the present barbaric system by the abolition of capitalism, the restoration of the land, and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution, to the people as a collective body, and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production and social disorder — a commonwealth which, although it will not make every person equal physically or mentally, will give to every worker the free exercise and the full benefit of their faculties.  We challenge those who are never tired of repeating that want, hunger, and necessity are imperative to make the bulk of people do any work at all, and declare that  “human nature being always essentially lazy”. Don’t tell us that some people are too lazy to work which we deny but even so, what do you think of a social system that produces people too lazy to work? If a person is too lazy to work don’t treat him with contempt. Don’t look down upon him with scorn as if you were a superior being. If there is a person too lazy to work there is something the matter with him or her and have been corrupted by this system. You could not, if you tried, keep a normal person inactive, and if you did he or she would go stark mad. Our conduct is determined largely by our economic relations. If you and I must fight each other to exist, we will not love each other very hard.  Business transactions are about  competition and what is more natural than that we should try to get the better of our fellows and cheat them if we can? And if you succeed that makes you as a success to be admired and emulated by others. When we have stopped clutching each others’ throats, when we have stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends. We will be comrades, we will be brothers and sisters, and we will establish the greatest civilization the human race has ever known.

The Socialist Party will fight open and above board everywhere against all capitalist parties alike. They cannot and will not assist capitalist politicians of one colour in one country and of the
other hue in another country. In short, the Socialist Party will be simply socialists and nothing else. Nature has laid out a bountiful spread for all to enjoy. There is little you can think of that cannot be produced in abundance. There is a plate and a place at the table with food for all, and any system of society that denies people the right and the opportunity to freely help themselves to Nature’s fruits ought to be abolished.

 What does the Socialist Party propose to do for the worker. Nothing! We simply want to awaken the workers to the fact that they are robbed every day in the week and if we can do that they will go to the polls on election day, and, instead of casting a vote to tighten the chains, they will vote for their emancipation. All the Socialist Party does is to show workers that they are victims of this system, that their interests are identical, that they constitute the millions and that the millions have the votes. The 1% have the money, but we, the 99%,  have the votes; and when we, have sense enough to know how to use the votes we will have not only the votes but will take the world’s wealth to be shared by all. If the working class keep on voting in the same old way, then the capitalists  will just  keep on getting what they produce. Some trust in governments to save them but Parliament is made up with few exceptions of opportunists and careerists. Now, in this competitive system the lackey sells him or herself to the highest bidder, the same as the worker does. Who is the highest bidder? The corporations, of course.

 From the narrow field of trade union struggle workers must enter the broad field of class struggle. But the workers themselves must take a wider view of the world. From their trade, from their work within the factory walls, their mind must widen to encompass society as a whole. They have to face the State; they enter the realm of politics. Effective unions will never exist till the workers are revolutionary socialists, just as effective political action can never come till the masses are thoroughly class-conscious and are fully determined to stop all thievery by the capitalist class and build instead  the co-operative commonwealth. If ever there was a time for workers to unite to fight their battle against capitalism and end wage-slavery, that time is now.

Food for thought

A fire in a factory in north-east China, where 119 people died, seems to have been eclipsed news-wise by the collapse of a building in Bangladesh, but is no less terrible in its blatant lack of preventative measures. Many of the deaths at the Baoyuan poultry plant were caused by blocked and inadequate exits. As one survivor said, " People were all rushing, pressing and crushing each other. I fell over and had to crawl forward using all my might." This is similar to the infamous fire at New York's Triangle Shirt Waist Factory in 1911 where 140 died because of a locked door. This clearly shows that nothing has changed in a hundred years of capitalism because the capital to fix it would have to come out of profits and that can't happen. To emphasize this point The New York Times of Sunday, July 28th . contained an article entitled, "Halfhearted Reform In Bangladesh". The world pressure has prompted the Bangladeshi government to make union forming to counteract the rapacious demands of capitalism. Unfortunately, the changes fall far short of what is needed and will be essentially ineffective. Surely, it's time to abolish a system that allows, no encourages, this monstrosity! John Ayers.


Poultry Plant Fire in China is Latest Tragedy for Dangerous Poultry Industry 2013-06-07 [UFCW]

Workers struggle with Chinese instructions 2013-06-07 [The Namibian]

Probe Into Poultry Plant Fire Amid Uproar Over Safety 2013-06-05 [Radio Free Asia]

Slaughterhouse blaze: Relatives demand answers over reports of locked exits 2013-06-05 [ABC]

We are not alone

Socialist Courier came across this article by Richard Smith at “Capitalism and the destruction of life on Earth”  on the Real World Economic Review. It is well worth reading in full but these are some pertinent extracts. We would, however,  not accept some of what Smith suggests to address the environmental problems such as his advocacy of nationalization for the large key industries and the continuance of small businesses.

Extracts

Corporations aren’t necessarily evil, though plenty are diabolically evil, but they can’t help themselves. They’re just doing what they’re supposed  to do for the benefit of their shareholders. Shell Oil can’t help but loot Nigeria and the Arctic  and cook the climate. That’s what shareholders demand. BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and other  mining giants can’t resist mining Australia’s abundant coal and exporting it to China and India.  Mining accounts for 19% of Australia’s GDP and substantial employment even as coal  combustion is the single worst driver of global warming. IKEA can’t help but level the forests  of Siberia and Malaysia to feed the Chinese mills building its flimsy disposable furniture (IKEA  is the third largest consumer of lumber in the world). Apple can’t help it if the cost of extracting  the “rare earths” it needs to make millions of new iThings each year is the destruction of the  eastern Congo – violence, rape, slavery, forced induction of child soldiers, along with  poisoning local waterways.  Monsanto and DuPont and Syngenta and Bayer Crop Science have no choice but to wipe out bees, butterflies, birds, small farmers and extinguish crop diversity to secure their grip on the world’s food supply while drenching the planet with their Roundups and Atrazines and neonicotinoids. This is how giant corporations are wiping out  life on earth in the course of a routine business day. And the bigger the corporations grow, the  worse the problems become.

In  Adam Smith’s day, when the first factories and mills produced hat pins and iron tools and  rolls of cloth by the thousands, capitalist freedom to make whatever they wanted didn’t much  matter because they didn’t have much impact on the global environment. But today, when everything is produced in the millions and billions, then trashed today and reproduced all over  again tomorrow, when the planet is looted and polluted to support all this frantic and  senseless growth, it matters – a lot.

Only human nature, ain't it?

Human nature is something that ordinary people have very badly – which is why we need tough laws.  All the ills of present-day society are attributed to the imperfection of human nature. This is what we are taught.

Marx explained that "each new class which puts itself in the place of the one ruling before it, is compelled, simply in order to achieve its aims, to represent its interest as the common interest of all members of society i.e. ..to give its ideas the form of universality and to represent them as the only rational and universally valid ones". Ideas become presented as if they are universal, neutral, common sense. However, more subtly, we find concepts such as freedom, democracy, liberty or phrases such as "a fair days work for a fair days pay" being bandied around by opinion makers as if they were not contentious. They are, in Marxist terms, ideological constructs, in so far as they are ideas serving as weapons for social interests. They are put forward for people to accept in order to prop up the system. Ideas are not neutral. They are determined by the existing relations of production, by the economic structure of society. Ideas change according to the interests of the dominant class in society.

No. 1308 August 2013

Whole issue as print ready pdf: 

Socialist Standard August 2013.pdf

• Editorial: What Can the Unions Do?
• Pathfinders: Analogy Aversion
• Letters
• Election Statement
• Halo Halo!
• South Africa: Marikana Miners’ Massacre
• Cooking the Books: A History of Slumps
• Material World: I Wannabe a Plutocrat!
• Greasy Pole: A Dissatisfied Novice
• Unions Should End the Link With Labour
• Egypt: Why Did the Generals Depose Morsi?
• Debating: A Lost Art?
• Shipwreck!
• An Unlikely Story
• Bit Rich!
• Obituary: Eva Goodman
• Cooking the Books: The Decline of Manufacturing - Good or Bad?
• Mixed Media: The Shame Show
• Book Reviews:
• Film Review: The Condition of the Working Class
• Proper Gander: Hidden Cameraderie
• 50 Years Ago: Mr. Wilson on Class
• Action Replay: Entering the Straight
• Voice From the Back
• Cartoon: Free lunch

Food for thought

The Brazilian saviour of the poor, Lula de Silva, a mineworkers' leader, rose to become president of Brazil. Although he put in reforms to help the poor, not out of poverty, of course, and presided over a period of economic prosperity that made Brazil the new economic miracle for a while (surely a curse for developing
nations) people are demonstrating in massive crowds that overshadowed the event, the Confederations cup of soccer. This shows again that no matter who gets control of power, if you are going to run capitalism, you are going to do it in the interests of the capitalists. John Ayers.

1937: The Clydeside apprentices’ strike

Another page in the Scottish workers history can be read here on the Libcom website.

http://libcom.org/history/articles/clydeside-apprentices-strike-1937

The 1937 apprentices strike transformed the status of apprentices from separate individuals with practically no employment rights, to unionised workers. The apprentices were not forced back to work on the employers’ terms; they succeeded in forcing major concessions on earnings and trade union rights from the employers.

The Dark Truths

The capitalist class have traded their soul for the accumulation of profit. The world is not ruled by justice or morality, it is ruled by power. Capitalists control presidents and parliaments. They disdain the opinions of the common peoples of the world. They ridicule the organisations that have been established to protect the Earth and promote peace. Their end determines their actions; their laws supersede all others.

Tadeusz Borowski was a Pole who survived Auschwitz and Dachau.  In his writings Borowski painted a picture of the concentration camps where humankind was without benevolence, without compassion; lacking empathy, lacking mercy; inexorable, ruthless, and malevolent; a savage, brutal animal devoid of morals but obedient to laws. Borowski believed there was no crime a man would not commit to save himself:
“The world is ruled by neither justice nor morality; crime is not punished nor virtue rewarded, one is forgotten as quickly as the other. The world is ruled by power and power is obtained with money. To work is senseless, because money cannot be obtained through work, but through exploitation of others. And if we cannot exploit as much as we wish, at least let us work as little as we can. Moral duty? We believe neither in the morality of man nor in the morality of systems.”

For Borowski Auschwitz, in contrast to the myths that sprang up immediately in the war's aftermath, is not a place of martyrdom or heroism. It is a place where inmates higher up in the camp hierarchy, the Polish political prisoners and others with special privileges, jeer at the Jews and Gypsies lower on the totem pole; where even a minor offense will be brutally avenged; where a prisoner, wondering if his girlfriend might have been sent to the gas chamber, muses, `So what, what's gone is gone.’ The most terrifying thing in Borowski’s stories is the icy detachment.

 Borowski  explains “You know how much I used to like Plato. Today i realize he lied. For the things of this world are not a reflection of the ideal, but a product of human sweat, blood and hard labour. It is we who built the pyramids, hewed the marble for the temples and the rocks for the imperial roads, we who pulled the oars in the galleys and dragged wooden ploughs, while they wrote dialogues and dramas, rationalized their intrigues by appeals in the name of the Fatherland, made wars over boundaries and democracies. We were filthy and died real deaths. They were 'aesthetic' and carried on subtle debates. There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice in silence, nor moral virtue that condones it.”

Time to take control and make a change. The capitalists have the power to-day and the working class gives them that power at every election. When workers  raise themselves to the position of ruling class, by capturing political power, with that power in their possession they will set about the task of building a new order of society which will conform to the interests of all.

The World Commune

Today we are in a global recession and governments everywhere are engaging in reducing spending and imposing austerity cuts. But why should it always be the workers, the actual producers, us poor wage-slaves, and never the real scroungers, those in the City of London and on Wall St, who are called upon to sacrifice themselves for the common good? The answer to this question is perfectly simple. It is because we are living in a capitalist world, a capitalist system, and the Government and all the political institutions of which it represents, exist to maintain, capitalist interests. To make profit is the sole object of all production. Investors and hedge-fund managers are not concerned with supplying human needs. All they are concerned about is making profit by the exploitation. It is truly absurd that a mere handful of plutocrats should be masters and owners of the wealth of the world. All misery, all injustice and disorder, results from the fact that one class monopolises the means of production and of life, and imposes its laws on another class and on society as a whole. We are seeing signs that the working class wakening up to the fact and is beginning to rouse from its long slumber. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always maintained that the working class should jealously guard the right and the power to strike; that they should refuse to be shackled by any sort of compulsory arbitration, or any other restriction on their right to withhold their labour; and we have always given support to workers who have been on strike. Victory will come to the working class only if it is conscious and willing to struggle.

 Socialism will not come into existence unless the majority of the people are willing to struggle for socialism and that means that they have some idea of what it is. If the people who vote for a socialist do not do so because he or she is a socialist but because they do not know that he or she is a socialist, of what use can that be for achieving the socialist goal? Socialism must depend upon the consciousness of the working class and not upon their lack of knowledge. The idea that we should first be elected to office and then teach socialism to the masses is so utterly absurd that it should not even be discussed. It can be stated with the greatest of assurance that a party described as a  socialist which refrains from teaching socialism with the idea that they will do so after elected will forget all about socialism once in office.

The first condition of success for socialism is that its adherents should explain its aim and its essential characteristics clearly, so that they can be understood by every one. We must do away with many misunderstandings created by our adversaries. The work of the SPGB is to help to educate the people by every effective means; and the knowledge we have to help them to is threefold--to know their own, to know how to take their own, and to know how to use their own. Part of our function is to educate the people by criticizing all attempts at so-called reforms, whose aim is not the realisation of equality, but the hindering of it. State capitalism’s or nationalisation, or by whatever name it may be called, aim is to make concessions and  administrative changes to the working class while leaving the present system of capital and wages still in operation.  With state ownership exploitation will continue as in private enterprise. Class relations which leaves the working class as a subject class is not socialism.

Socialist society will be voluntary in the sense that all people will agree in its broad principles when it is fairly established. A world socialist society is the only solution for the contradictions in the present capitalist  society. Only a socialist society can utilize rationally the natural resources and productive machinery of the earth in  the interests of the peoples of the earth. A federation of socialist  communities can alone solve the conflict between  the efficient development of productive forces and the restrictions of artificial national boundaries. All differences of class must be abolished by transferring the ownership of the means of production and of life, which is to-day a power of exploitation and oppression in the hands of a single class, from that class to the whole community. The rule of the minority must be substituted the universal co-operation of everyone. And that is why the essential aim of socialism is to transform capitalist property into social property. The rights of all individuals are guaranteed to-day, to-morrow and for ever.

Socialism will be an emancipated world, a society of economic and social equals wherein class divisions, privileges and disabilities will for the first time in history be impossible; a system of social ownership of the means of production industrially administered by the workers on an organised and harmonious plan, ensuring from every man according to his capacity and to every man according to his needs, under the motto “All for each and each for All”. The social revolution is the essential objective of the World Socialist Movement when the class war has been for ended, when humanity shall no longer cower under an oppressor and when none shall be called master and none servant. Socialism makes possible a society where there are no national prejudices or racial antagonisms or religious persecutions. It removes the CAUSE of these poisons. It makes possible a free society of human beings.

The Invisible Unemployed

Unemployment may be falling in Scotland in recent months but there is an ongoing increase in the number of people in part-time work and in temporary jobs.

There were 652,000 part-time workers in Scotland in the year to March 2010, but this had risen by 36,000 by March this year. The number of temporary workers has jumped 10,000 since June last year and stood at 128,000 in the year to 20 March. That is near enough a third of all Scottish workers.

 Some workers will choose to work fewer hours, it is estimated that about a 250,000 Scottish workers are “underemployed”.

National figures show that 330,000 more people are underemployed in the UK than in 2010, including 200,000 with dependent children.

Keith Dryburgh, policy manager at Citizens Advice Scotland, warned “Citizens Advice bureaux are increasingly seeing people who want to work longer hours but cannot find them in a difficult economic climate. These are people who are struggling to make ends meet, and yet are often ‘invisible’ in the government’s statistics about employment.”

It's not all over yet

The eight-year programme of cuts to budgets for running Scottish public services is only 40% over.

The analysis, by the Centre for Public Policy for Regions (CPPR) in Glasgow shows 60% are still to be applied between this year and 2017-18. The deepest cuts in that will be towards the last two years of the spending period. A £2.7bn real terms projected cut in resource spending still to come will be increasingly hard to accommodate, especially given the £1.8bn already experienced since 2009-10.

Professor John McLaren, one of the authors of the study, said: "The day-to-day, or resource, budget cuts still to come include some of the harshest annual reductions seen over this period".

Food for thought

Thomas Walkom of The Toronto Star in writing about the current recession, quotes Bank of Canada governor, Stephen Poloz, referring to Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter who famously called boom and bust capitalism a process of creative destruction, "We've certainly had the destruction. But the creative side of the equation has been delayed" Agreed, but whose destruction are we talking about? The same article gives us a clue, " Employment insurance has become
particularly irrelevant. A new study by the Canadian Labour Congress calculates that only 35% of the jobless now qualify for EI. In Ontario, the percentage is 25, in Toronto 20." (although everyone and their employers contribute!). John Ayers

Begs belief

Glasgow and Aberdeen are pressing for new by-laws to tackle the perceived problem of street-begging. The two city councils hope to enlist support of others to persuade the Scottish Government that new measures are required.

A law already covers begging which is obstructive, or causes fear or alarm.

A Revolutionary Idea

There is no other social power equal to a revolutionary movement in modern society. Armies crumble under revolutionary pressure as soldiers refuse to fire on peaceful protesters; police repression is shown to be powerless, and long-standing status quo political parties are cast aside and made redundant. If successful, a revolutionary movement can fundamentally change society. The Socialist Party of Great Britain endeavours to instill into the minds of our fellow workers the hope of the speedy advent of the socialist revolution.

We are all permeated by an uneasy feeling that all is not quite right with the world. Humanity is divided into two classes — the employers and the employed. We are socialists, and our purpose as a political party is to advance the case for a socialist society, and by socialism we mean the common ownership of wealth production, and this involves the complete replacement of the capitalist system, and the conducting of all industrial  relations on a co-operative basis. The interest of each is that of all. The capitalist class, who own most of the land and the tools of production, also own the government and rule the working class, not for the well-being of the working class but for the well-being and profit of the capitalists. It is only by using their political power that the capitalist class make their exploitation of the workers legal and the oppression of their system constitutional. And it is only by using their political power that the working class can make their own exploitation illegal and their own oppression unconstitutional. It is only by the use of their political power that the working class can abolish capitalist  rule and privilege, and establish a form of society based on the collective ownership of all the land and the tools of production.  Organized in the political party - the Socialist Party - workers can, through the ballot box, abolish the capitalist system of ownership with its accompanying class rule and class oppression, and establish in its place socialism.

The label “revolution” implies that the overwhelming majority of people have decided and are dedicated to a specific path for society. This means that the “masses” are passionately intervening to change society, overcoming fear and repression until their objectives are met. In this sense revolution is the highest form of democracy, since it’s the clearest expression of the people’s will, expressed through ongoing massive deliberate action. Revolution is a display of power by working people, who collectively choose to assert themselves into public life in order to change it. In non-revolutionary times working people do not actualise their power; they aren’t even aware that they have any, as they passively ignore any role in social life as individuals, silently delegating their political power to capitalist-bought politicians. The ultimate sign that a situation has entered a revolutionary period is that the masses directly intervene in social life as an independent, powerful force, through ongoing collective action. The people seek to actualise their power. There is no revolution unless people are massively asserting their power in the streets, workplaces, and neighborhoods. A revolutionary movement is also inevitably a battle for political power.

The revolution can only issue from the masses, and it is only through the masses that it is carried out. Workers cannot be driven, lured, or bulldozed into it. “The mass must learn to fight, to act in the struggle itself.” wrote Rosa Luxemburg. Socialism has come to build, not to destroy.

Food for thought

Eighty-two-year-old Alan Gosling died after being evicted from his Toronto Community Housing Corporation subsidized apartment in June, 2009. He failed to keep up with paper work verifying his low- income status. Locked out, Gosling lived in a stairwell until he was then taken to a shelter where he picked up an infection that killed him. A recent enquiry into the treatment of seniors at TCHC homes found, "The current strategy of sending tenants a constant stream of
letters, some of which use threatening language, needs to change." So it took four years to come up with that little goodie. Under capitalism if you ain't got the money (or you are useless to the production of surplus-value), you don't count. John Ayers

The Task and Goal of the Socialist Party

It's a commonplace sentiment that politics is broken. Every week brings more evidence of disillusionment. The debased nature of politics, however, is only the most superficial symptom of our problems. It is clear that we face problems with the capitalist system and not simply political problems. These days, no matter how hard we work, how much we manage to save or how carefully we plan for the future, we are getting no-where.

Propaganda by the system’s apologists is an old proven means to modify the consciousness of population. It has been practiced under the disguise of “objectivity” - data are selected, articles are written and fed to the press, “balanced" TV programmes are delivered. In addition to mere skilled disinformation we are plain old lied to deceived.

The struggle for political supremacy is not between political parties , as it merely appears on the surface, but it is a  struggle between two hostile economic classes, the capitalist and the working class. Deny it as they may or ignore itif they so choose,  the struggle in which we are engaged today is a class struggle, and as more and more  come to understand  they will rally to the political standard of the workers’ party to find their true place in the conflict and strike a united  blow against wage-slavery and achieve full and final emancipation. Nothing can stop the march of a popular socialist revolution. Our revolution will not be the fruit of a lucky chance but rather of  bitter prolonged struggle. Our revolution will not be the  work of a minority for one does not make the revolution for the masses; it is they who make it. The working class must be emancipated by the working class.

The ballot expresses the people’s will. The ballot means that workers have a voice to express its wishes. Centuries of struggle and sacrifice were required to acquire this freedom and we should use it wisely. The first step in this direction is to sever all relations with the capitalist parties. Labour, Tory, and the Nationalists alike, differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests. They however have the same principles under varying colors, and are equally corrupt united as one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to the working class. It is an ignorant worker who supports any of these parties for he forges his own chains and is the creator of his own misery. Workers who support the capitalist politician  are guilty, consciously or unconsciously, of treason to their class. They are voting into power the enemies of labour.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not a capitalist party. Its mission since its foundation in 1904 it is to conquer capitalism on the political battle-field, take control of the State and take possession of the means of wealth production, abolish wage-slavery and emancipate all workers and all humanity. In the world, today, reformism dominates the workers’ movement. The overthrow of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party and on this principle we shall not compromise. The Socialist Party is honest, both in its statements about what socialism is, and in its desires to have within the Socialist Party only socialists.  Reformists conceive of political action in terms of a modification of the political and economic regime of capitalism. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, regards political action to capture the state power in its entirety.

The working class constitutes the majority of the population, however, they are unable to marshal their strength because the class is divided and disunited. Nevertheless, the working class has a militant history of fighting for improved wages and working conditions,  for union organisation, for recognition of political rights. Once again, we see an upsurge in the working class as the economic conditions worsen with the current crisis. But not only must we unite to defend our basic democracy, our wages and our working conditions we also have to struggle towards socialism.  The working class has to organise itself as a united fighting force to achieve a decent living and working conditions and  destroy the capitalist system of wage slavery and establishing socialism. At present, the objectives of the workers are on the economic and not on the political level. They seek to protect wages and working conditions rather than fighting for a better world.

The Socialist Party’s task is simply to help the workers march faster and without faltering toward the socialist goal. We decline to advocate palliatives or as Thomas Paine put it, “administering medicine to a corpse.” The Socialist Party defiantly challenges the capitalist class, relying upon the awakening working class to muster under its banner.

It is as Eugene Debs said:
"Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but, notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as the setting of the sun.”

Remembrance

Sixteen million people died in the First World War. No fewer than  one in 40 of the nine million British and  Commonwealth troops came from the single city of Glasgow. 200,000 men from Glasgow fought, 17,695 were killed and many many more were wounded with lasting injuries and lost limbs. We should remember the futility of their deaths in “the war to end wars”

16,000  British  men are recorded as being conscientious  objectors. The Richmond Sixteen  were 16 men taken from  Richmond Castle in North Yorkshire where the Non-Combatant Corps was based, to an  army camp in northern France, refused to  unload supplies. They were court-martialled  and, as an example to others, sentenced to  death by Lord Kitchener. They were  only saved from this fate by Kitchener’s own sudden death and the prime minister,  Asquith, who  their sentence to  10 years’ hard labour. We should remember the social stigma these heroes had to bear for the rest of  their lives.

Food for thought

A recent story on The Guardian website claimed the US Foreign Intelligence (?) Surveillance Court granted the FBI unlimited authority to access data on phone calls from April 25 to June 19. They are now collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon communication customers. In other words, privacy laws can be
subverted any time the powers-that-be want. Of course, nobody other than those giving the orders likes it. There is a solution to a world of snooping on each other but it won't be found in capitalism. John Ayers.

No Old Bangers Here

The present economic crisis in the UK has been so severe that many workers face unemployment, wage freezes and in some severe cases repossession of their houses. No such problems exist for the owning class. 'Wealthy Britons have spent £91 million buying new Ferraris this year, making Great Britain the biggest European market for the Italian car company. According to Ferrari's  global sales figures for the first six months, 415 models have been sold in the UK, an increase of 6 per cent, with the average purchase price standing at £220,000.' (Times, 2 August) RD

Fast Food Strike

Capitalist Civilisation - An oxymoron

We pride ourselves on our system, which we call “civilised,” and compare it with those primitive forms of society which we call “barbarian.” We point to our great works of art, our wondrous discoveries in science, our massive buildings and our machinery of all sorts.

Yet our “civilisation” has a class of people called capitalists – those good, kind, benevolent employers, to whom we go cap in hand, cringing for the privilege of being permitted to work for them. His place in our social system is to extort a profit out of the worker by buying our services as much beneath their true value as he can possibly procure them. The more extensive his trade, the greater will be his power over his employees. The wealth he has accumulated from his labourers gives him the power to regulate commerce. He has so much wealth he can live in idle leisure if he so wishes. This the labourer cannot do, for our earnings have nearly all gone within a matter of a few days.

 These grand works of art exist, true enough but rather than enjoy their beauty, they are bought and speculated as an investments. Wondrous scientific discoveries are constantly being made, but the reward is to the owner of the patent and not to the people. No sooner is a thing produced than it passes into the hands of others. The builders do not live in the fine houses they construct, but live in wretched inner-city tenements or tiny suburban  boxes.

We are engaged today in a class war; and why? For the simple reason that society has been mainly divided into two economic classes—a small class of capitalists who own practically everything and workers who possess very little. Between these two classes there is an irrepressible  conflict. Unfortunately, the worker has not fully understood the nature of the conflict, and for this reason has failed to accomplish any effective unity of his class.  It is a vain and hopeless task,  wasting time and energy, to endeavour to harmonise the interests of the boss and his hired hand.  Nor is it part of the mission of the Socialist Party to conciliate the working class with the capitalist class. We are organised to fight that class.

War and strife of all kinds mark this civilisation’s success and regardless of government they all rest upon appropriation and exploitation. All law is made to protect property and proprietors and there is no law for the poor. The exploitative employer is the economic master and the political ruler in capitalist society. Plutocracy rules.

The average worker imagines that we must have a leader to look to; a guide to follow. We have been taught to be dependent. We have relied too much on leaders and not enough on own self-reliance. As long as we can be led by an leader, we can be betrayed by a leader. Not all leaders are dishonest or corrupt. That would be a too sweeping a statement but we should not place our trust in any and instead take responsibility for own decisions.

 We are engaged in a barbaric competitive struggle in which workers  are fighting each other to sell themselves into slavery and fighting each other to keep soul and body together.  And this is called civilization! What a mockery! There is no real civilisation in the capitalist system.

Surely, the present system cannot go on for ever. The present system is destroying us and  the planet we inhabit. We, wage-slaves have to emancipate ourselves. It can be done. It must be done. It shall be done for the last day of the capitalist system and the first day of the socialist commonwealth is in our own hands. Today there is nothing so easily produced as wealth abundance wealth enough for all.  Today  there is no excuse for poverty.  And, today, we can begin to change this. 

Fact of the Day

The 10th Duke of Buccleuch - a title created in 1663 for the illegitimate son of Charles II - is now Europe's largest landowner with holdings valued at more than £1bn, according to the Independent

Throw off the chains!

Many are not in trade unions and many in their desperation have turned on the union as the cause of their misery. Why should they side with their employers? Why enrich the boss who has the power to dismiss you at will?

Because you get a wage, and that wage suffices to keep you working for the capitalist and you can pay the rent and get fed. You have been turned into a wage-slave. He belongs to another class, the ruling class,  and you belong to the lower class, the subservient class. You are in an overwhelming majority and they only a few yet, they own practically everything and rule the land. And they will keep on owning and ruling the land as long as you  allow them to; and you will allow them to as long as you persist in voting for their politicians, instead of uniting and acting solidly with and for each other and against the capitalists. It is because of your ignorance that you don’t understand your own interest and  believe you need rulers to control you. But you don’t need them. The working class do all the producing and manufacturing. The bosses could not exist second without you. A capitalist without workers cannot exist. While the capitalist could not exist without you, however, you could do just fine and would actually begin to live without them.

Capitalism is based upon the exploitation of the working class; and when the working class ceases to be exploited, there will no longer be any capitalists. What has the investor of a factory got  to do with its operation? Absolutely nothing. They simp1y live off the profits and dividends of what is produced there, because you will allow it to be so. He does nothing and gets everything, and you do everything and get nothing. Some deal! Without you society would cease. Society does not need the idle capitalists. They are parasites. They are worse than useless. They simply take what you make, leaving you in poverty. You make  things in great abundance, but you cannot possess them. You can only consume that part of your product which your wage, the price of your labor power, will buy.

If you think  that you ought to have a master to rob you of what you produced—if you think that you are so helpless that you would die unless you had a master to give you a job and take from you all except just enough to keep you working for him; if you think that workers ought to fight each other; if you think that unity, the unity of the union  would be a bad thing for the working class; if you think that your interest is identical with the interest of the capitalist who robs you; if you think that you ought to be in slavish submission to the capitalist who does nothing and gets what you produce; if you think that, then certainly you are a happy wage-slave. As an individual worker you cannot escape from wage-slavery. It is true that one in a million  may become a capitalist but he is the exception that proves the rule. The wage worker in the capitalist system remains the wage worker. There is no escape for you from wage-slavery by yourself.

Having said you cannot alone break out of chains, if you will unite with all other workers who are in the same position that you are;if you will join the organization that represents your whole class, you can develop the power that will achieve your freedom and the equal freedom of all.  No matter who or what a worker may be, if he or she works for wages they are in precisely the same economic position that you are, your class; your comrade.

The Socialist Party has declared war upon the capitalist class, and upon the capitalist system. We say: Arise! It is in your power to put an end to this exploitation. Make yourselves the masters instead of being the slaves to the machine. Abolish the wage system, so that you can be free.  Build the houses and live therein;  plant the orchards and vines and eat the fruit thereof. The workers who sustain and maintain the world, will take possession of the world and turn all into the common property of all. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for. Our demand is modest: We demand the Earth for all the people.

Adapted from here 

Health and safety in sport

Recently, Socialist Courier, touched on the fact that health and safety of rugby players are deliberately overlooked.  Once again more facts are being produced about the long term health risks of contact sports and once again it focusses on head injuries and concussion.

A brain injuries expert has discovered what he believes to be the first confirmed case of early onset dementia caused by playing rugby.

Dr Willie Stewart said the discovery suggested "one or two" players competing in the Six Nations every year may go on to develop the condition.

He examined sections of brain tissue for abnormal proteins associated with head injuries and dementia.The former rugby player had higher levels than a retired amateur boxer.

The boxer had been diagnosed with dementia pugilistica - more commonly known as punch drunk syndrome - which is thought to affect up to 20% of boxers who retire after long careers. Symptoms, which usually appear between 12 and 16 years after the boxer's career begins, can include memory, speech and personality problems, tremors and a lack of coordination. The condition has been recognised for more than a century, and until recently had been thought to only affect boxers who suffered repeated concussive injuries through being punched in the face.

But Dr Stewart said: "What we are finding now is that it is not just in boxers. We are seeing it in other sports where athletes are exposed to head injury in high levels.Those sports include American football, ice hockey and also now I have to say I have seen a case, the same pathology, in somebody whose exposure was rugby."

Obviously the positives of team sports such as rugby outweigh the negatives they also carry but when sport becomes an industry and the individual participants welfare becomes secondary to that industry's interests than our position is that an injury to one, is an injury to all. That entails all means are used to minimise  risk and and eliminate lasting physical damage and the profits and costs be damned!

The Day To Day Struggle

Politicians are always claiming that because of their endeavours we are all better off financially than we have ever been, but the facts disprove this fantasy. 'More than half of UK adults are struggling to keep up with bills and debt repayments, a major survey of people's finances has suggested. Some 52% of the 5,000 people questioned said they were struggling, compared with just 35% in a similar study in 2006, the Money Advice Service said. In Northern Ireland, some 66% said they were struggling.' (BBC News, 2 August) RD

Banking on ethics?

If you think the preceding post calls for a better type of bank and believe the Co-operative Bank, alas, you are mistaken. The difference is simply in the degree not the essence. The Co-operative Bank is a relatively small and “conservatively” run bank that has promoted its ethical business practices.

Former Co-op Bank chief executive Neville Richardson’s left the bank in 2011 with a package worth £4.6 million, including a £1.4 million payment for ‘loss of office’, and the same amount as ‘compensation’ for leaving. The banks financial downgrade to “junk” status by Moody was mainly based on the deterioration in the performance of the loan portfolios the Co-op Bank acquired with its takeover of the Britannia Building Society in 2009 when Richardson was chief executive of the Britannia at the time of the deal.  Like any other business,it has to beat the competition, make profits and accumulate capital. Large institutions like local councils have a fiduciary responsibility to not leave taxpayers’ money in a bank where there are any questions about its solvency.

It looks as if the Coop Bank's difficulty has arisen from "loan repayments" being less than expected, i.e some of their loans not being repaid in full or on time. I would think that there are many businesses and people who would love to have a loan from the Coop Bank. The trouble seems to be that it is having to use the funds it has to increase its capital rather than to make loans. The Co-operative Bank unveiled a rescue plan to tackle the £1.5bn hole in its balance sheet. Most of the capital to be used to plug the hole will come through a "bail in" - a process where bond holders will be offered shares in the bank.

The deal will result in a stock market listing for the group. Many will argue that the culture and practices of the bank are bound to change once its shares are owned by commercial investors. In general, the bank will be more focussed on making profits because of the "need to generate an appropriate return on equity". The bank has always focused on making a profit, that's what co-ops do: it's just a question of who gets the profit. The capital is in the hands of the capitalists, and the bank needs capital to keep going.

An estimated 15,000 retail investors, many of them pensioners, who hold Co-op bank PIBS (permanent interest bearing shares) and preference shares stand to lose at least 40% of their investment plus a large chunk of their income if the plans proposed by the mutual parent, Co-op Group, go ahead. Dividends on the PIBS and preference shares have already been suspended, leaving thousands desperate to know how they will survive. Many are dependent on this income which ranged from around 5% to as high as 13% a year, to supplement their pensions. Until now, PIBS have been regarded as relatively safe – nothing like as risky as shares. As capital issues emerged at the Co-op, the price of its bonds began to fall sharply, hitting the small investors. The PIBS now trade at 60p compared to their face value of 100p and the 160p they were at their peak.

Ethical concerns do not come before business.

The Real Thieves

For many of us Wells Fargo simply recalls all those cowboy western movies we used to watch of stagecoaches being held up by masked bandits.

However Wells Fargo has surpassed the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) as the world’s largest bank by market capitalization. It has also amassed almost 40% of the U.S. mortgage market by early 2013. And the real robbers has been Wells Fargo itself.

One for all, all for one

A Labor Day is coming when our starry flag shall wave,
Above a land where famine no longer digs a grave,
Where money is not master, nor the workingman a slave...

All workers have but one enemy — the employing class. All the workers must get together against their common enemy. The struggle of the working class is world-wide. The workers  cannot wage a successful struggle against their own exploiting class and at the same time put their trust in organizations that have been and are hampering and betraying the struggles of their brothers and sisters in other countries. We must join hands with the workers of the world. They have fought our battles which they knew were theirs. We must fight their battles which we know to be ours.

The employers pay as much as they have to pay, in order to secure "the hands" that they need, in order to carry out their profit-making enterprises. They pay what they have to in the open market. In the open labor market your wages are determined by your own economic necessity. If you are destitute enough to offer your labor power for lower price than the other fellow, wages will come down. Standing alone with empty pockets you are no match for the boss with pockets bulging with money, and backed up by an extensive employer organisations and trade  associations.

 Workers learned this long ago that they must match the cartels of the employing class whose aim is exploitation and tyranny and began to start unions, pledging one another not to work below a certain price. If they worked together to get all available workers into the union and if they practised solidarity and bargain collectively, they were able to shift some of the burden of economic necessity from their own shoulders to the employer’s and made him pay the “going rate”

Reformists maintain that we can arrive at “socialism” by winning reforms one after the other. Reformism is trickery used to keep the working class under wage slavery. What they don’t say is that whatever the capitalist has to give up with one hand, he will just take back with the other. Nor is that to say we will no take all the reforms the capitalist is forced into conceding. Those so-called “socialists" advocate activities limited to achieving  immediate demands, denying  the tasks of raising the consciousness of the working class. The fight against reformism  is about stopping the creation of illusions about capitalism. The Left accuse us of the charge that such opposition to reforms is “dividing” the working class,which in itself pre-supposes a preceding unity, and this never existed. Instead of dividing workers we are arousing them from their slavish submission to capitalist domination. Better a thousand times to be divided fighting for freedom than united in the bonds of slavery. The issue for the Socialist Party, therefore, is not that of a “uniting the whole of the workers,” but that of expressing the interests of the working class.  Every socialist knows that to solve the unemployed problem we need the social revolution. Can we immediately unite the whole working class for that? We cannot. There are those that insist on intermediate stages such as nationalisation  and state-ownership.  We know and have pointed out that the State, merely furnish forth better wage-slaves and better organisation for the profit-takers. Even if State employees are well-paid, and are assured of continuous employment, they are still only privileged menials, so long as they are unable conjointly with their fellows to control the entire management of the industrial community. State control of this sort may be better or it may be worse than private control, but brings with it no complete change from competition to co-operation such as we are striving for. Moreover, there is an ever-present danger of  a bureaucracy imposing authoritarianism from above. Furthermore, we cannot  mislead workers  and induce them to think we, too, are merely tinkerers with present forms of social development.  Rather we are working and fighting for a complete social revolution, which shall abolish the State and establish a free association of producers in its stead.

The class struggle is a political struggle. Capitalist society is built upon our sweat and blood, our misery and want. All our victories on the economic field are turned against us, and our economic slavery is reinforced by an absolute political dictatorship of capitalism. Thus our economic struggle must of necessity become a political one. The proletarian struggle ceases to be a struggle for higher wages and shorter hours, and becomes a struggle for the supremacy of the working class.The workers must organise an independent working class mass socialist  party consisting of all workers. A socialist party makes no compromises with the capitalist class. We ask no favors of capitalism and grant it none. We are a movement of revolt against the existing social order, scorning all alliances with th ruling class  and working with all available means for the emancipation of the working class and the abolition of capitalism. The object of a Socialist Party is socialism. To that end the education and organisation of the proletariat and their conversion 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. We declare ourselves for the abolition of the wages system.

While we shall not ourselves advocate a policy of demanding palliatives. The Socialist Party does not oppose every movement of the working class towards improving its condition – even in present circumstances – or in defence of its interests. But our sole purpose is to be the political instrument of the working class.

 “The emancipation  of the working class must be the work of the working class itself,” says the Communist Manifesto. And the “working class” is not a few hundred elected representatives who control society’s destiny with rousing speeches. Even less is it the two or three dozen leaders who occupy government offices. Only with the working class actively co-operating and participating in the overthrow of  capitalism can the socialization of the economy be prepared. If the methods recommended by Socialist Party are not the best we are ready to adopt any methods that can be proven to be better, until then our men and women will go to Parliament with a the sole mandate to establish socialism, not to plead for amelioration or beg for alms. We will not ally ourselves with any non-socialist party that does not share our common socialist aim. It is better for a socialist to fight and be beaten as a socialist than to fight and win under another banner. The struggle for working class emancipation, which finds its expression through a socialist party, must continue, and will increase in intensity until either the ruling class completely subjugates the working class, or until the working class prevails over the capitalist class. There is no middle ground possible.

We wrest control of government from the capitalist class not simply for the purpose of continuing the class struggle on a new level, as has been the case in all previous political revolutions when one class has superseded another in the control of government. It does not mean that the workers and capitalists will merely change places, as many believe. It means the inauguration of an entirely new system of society, in which the exploitation of one person by another will have no place. It means the establishment of a new economic motive for production and distribution. Instead of profit being the ruling motive of industry, as at present, all production and distribution will be for use. As a consequence, the class struggle and economic class antagonisms as we now know them will entirely disappear.  The class struggle must necessarily cease, for there will be no classes. Each individual will be his or her  own economic master, and all will beat the service of the commune, co-operative, or collective. There will be a free community of fellow-workers working for the common good, sharing the fruits of common  ownership and  enjoying the personal emancipation from compulsory toil  and drudgery.

To be free, you must dare to be free. The chains holding us down in wage slavery are our submissiveness and our lack of revolutionary spirit.

We British Workmen

We British workmen, so they say,

Are free; and who can doubt it?

For, if we do not like our pay,
We’re free—to go without it.

Unlike the helpless negro slave.
Our tyrant-driven brother,
If one employer prove a knave,
We’re free—to find another.

H. S. Salt
Labour Leader, 26 May, 1894

The Blue-Bloods of Scotland Mobilise

The Duke of Roxburghe and other members of the nobility have lobbied the government on its moves to help individuals and communities buy land which  has been in the hands of the aristocracy for generations. A Land Reform Review Group (LRRG) has been set up by the Scottish Government to examine ways of increasing community ownership of the land. A forthcoming review of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act will look at granting an absolute right-to-buy for tenant farmers. That would give them the right to buy-out landowners, even if they are unwilling to sell.

The duke owns the Roxburghe Estate, an enterprise with a £10.1 million turnover with Floors Castle, near Kelso, at its heart  and includes the Roxburghe Hotel and a championship golf course.

 The Earl of Seafield at its head, warned against the “fragmentation” of the land and played the ecological environmental green card to justify his extensive ownership of land as of his shooting and hunting grouse moors were run naturally.

James Carnegy-Arbuthnot, director a family company that owns the 3,250-acre Balnamoon  near Brechin described the extension of  right-to-buy legislation as a “highly vexatious proposal in the eyes of landowners” and described“This amounts to the dispossession of land from one person to the advantage of another and has no place in any democratic system.

Atholl Estates, which oversees 145,000 acres in Highland Perthshire, was critical of increasing community ownership as a means of redistributing land, saying: “It certainly should not be used as a tool to politically engineer property ownership away from one group of people to another as this fundamentally undermines Scotland’s credibility as a nation that respects the private sector, free markets and the protection of property rights as a cornerstone of human rights and financial security.”

 Douglas and Angus Estates, which are owned by the family of the former Tory prime minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home and currently under the stewardship of David, the 15th Earl of Home, remarked the current ownership arrangement put the estates at the heart of community life.

The agent for Kinnordy Estates, Kirriemuir, owned by Lord Lyell, former Tory minister said: “In the instance of Kinnordy Estate and its locality to the town of Kirriemuir, I do not believe there is justification for the wider public community to have a stake in ownership, governance, management or use of the land… land and estate management must remain in the hands of those qualified for the task (by merit of both qualification and experience) as demonstrated on Kinnordy Estate.

Land-reform campaigner Andy Wightman said: “I want to live in a land where class distinctions are no longer legitimised by the recognition of aristocratic titles and where the principle of equality underpins access to land rights… I want to live in a country that finally puts an end to the centuries of landed power and returns the land to the people of Scotland – both men and women.”

Half of Scotland is owned by just 500 people, many of them those relics from feudal time who believe they have a birth-right to “their” land.

What Will A Socialist World Look Like

Marx refrained from offering future generations any instructions or blueprints. Nowhere in Marx is there to be found a detailed account of the new social system which was to follow capitalism. Marx wrote no “Utopia”. Socialist society of the future will be for the socialist generations themselves to decide upon and organise. It was Auguste Blanqui, the French revolutionary who said: “Tomorrow does not belong to us.”

However, we can project general principles and note what will be redundant in socialism. We can outline the broad features of the new society and the way in which it would develop.  Actual socialist society, like all previous forms of society, will come into existence on the basis of what already existed before it. We do not start with a blank page. Capitalist society has actually prepared the way for socialism. Production has become increasingly social and the process of production has linked  together a very large number of people in the course of transforming raw materials into the finished article and  crated a greater and greater interdependence between people.  It is because the fact that capitalist production is now the co-operative work of all society that it can no longer be the property of one individual or group but instead it should be the common property of all.  Production is carried out by workers and  the transfer of ownership to society as a whole does not essentially alter their work. Therefore the working class can take over immediately. In a socialist world production will not be not for profit but for use. There will be no new division into classes, because in a socialist society there is nothing to give rise to it. Socialism will not be perfect but there will no longer be a struggle between opposing classes. The State will shrivel away.

Capitalism condemns those of us to poverty, enforced idleness, and hunger which it cannot employ for the purpose of enriching the capitalist class.  Our capitalist society is based on the waste and the squandering of resources and energy. Consider the waste of militarism and war. Just think of it! Billions a year wasted on the arms trade under the present system. Billions expended on advertising to promote consumerism. Millions of  people, engaged in all kinds of useless, non-productive occupations in capitalism such as sales-persons.

Laziness is a social malady, a legitimate response in our system, which offers ample role-models encouraging laziness. It assures all riches, all the pleasures of life to those who work the least possible, to the idle rich and to the social parasites. Sloth develops from the intolerable conditions of forced and excessive labour in unhealthy factories. How can a people work with enthusiasm when they know that their work will go to the enrichment of others? The typical grasping individualist, with no sense of social or collective responsibility, is the capitalist surrounded by competitors, all struggling to survive by cheating and corruption. These ideas of the dominant class – the competition and rivalry instead of solidarity – tend to infect the workers, especially those favoured by the employers for special advancement.

When the producers know that the products of their work will belong to them they will throw overboard the reluctance which forced labour engenders in them. Work well-regulated and properly 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 man. Even within capitalist society there is what is known as “solidarity” among the workers – the sense of a common interest, a common responsibility. The workers have at their disposal a thousand means of organising administration, control and division of products – Workers councils, factory committees, trade unions, co-operatives, etc., etc. There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome in a society that is based on labour and not on profit.

There would be a certain amount of necessary work to be done which would be usually repellant; some of this, probably the greater part of it, would be performed by machinery; and it must be remembered that machinery would be improved and perfected without hesitation when the restrictions laid on production by the exigencies of profit-making were removed. But nevertheless some of this work may not able to be done by machinery and so  volunteers would have to be relied upon. It is not foreseen that there will be any difficulty in obtaining them, considering that the habit of looking upon necessary labour from the point of view of social obligation would be universal, and  such work will be spread amongst many which would remove objections to work usually disliked.

The future alone can tell what will be the precise forms and special methods of organisation.  However, try and imagine the new society as an organised body of communities, each carrying on its own affairs, but united by a delegated federal body. It is to be understood that these two bodies, the township (or community) and the federation, would be the two poles but between there would be many other expressions of the decentralised principle, -- as in districts and regions  that were linked together by natural circumstances, such as language, climate, or the divisions of physical geography.

 The Socialist Party task is convincing people that a socialist is desirable and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles in practice. The Socialist Party accepts that, for the moment,  workers do not believe in their own capacity to undertake the management of affairs and unprepared to take responsibility for running society in their own interests.

Remember Our Past, Organise Our Future