Social Democracy

The apologists for capitalism will argue that it is the natural order. That people like and want it.  That the privileged few are better than the rest of us and deserve what they have.

Money is power, but it is also a result of power. More money, more power, more money, more power — a revolving door if you are among the wealthiest 1 per cent. In every system throughout history, economic and social power always became political power.  The world’s inability to deal with our looming environmental crisis are a result of the concentration of economic and social power in the hands of fewer and fewer people.  Oil and coal make money for powerful people. If a minority holds most of the economic and therefore social and political power the result will be that the minority will inevitably reward itself. Its power will grow and ever-expanding inequality will result.That’s how the system works.

 What can we do to fix it? High taxes on high incomes, inheritance taxes on the wealthy, taxes on all forms of property, nationalizing sectors of the economy to bring them under “public” control? these measures may reduce the power of the very rich and perhaps narrow the gap between rich and poor. But capitalism survives. In the past capitalists survived so well that they eventually reversed many of these sort of reforms. They won cuts in their tax rates, the privatisation of state-owned industries and the weakening of unions. Even in  countries that once proclaimed themselves “socialist”, free-enterprise capitalism prevailed once more and a new capitalist oligarchy emerged to replace the party apparatchiks and nomenklatura.

The answer is to this question of who has the power is more democracy. Real democracy. Economic democracy. Workplace democracy. Community democracy. Social democracy as it was originally conceived - socialism

The Madness of Class

Under Scotland's Mental Health Act, someone with a mental illness can be detained against their will if a doctor and a mental health officer agree that they suffer from a mental disorder. This must be for the maximum benefit of the individual. It should also respect the wishes of their relatives or carer.

Lady Hamilton, wife of the Duke of Hamilton, said a psychiatrist had suggested they go to hospital to check the duke's medication and she was led to believe this would just be for a few days but after she filled in an admissions form she was told her husband had actually been sectioned for 28 days.

"I said, 'It's alright pet. You're here voluntarily, you can come home if you want to'. Then a voice behind said, 'No he can't. He's been sectioned for 28 days and he may not get out then'."

"I thought, if this can happen to the Duke of Hamilton, what chance has Joe Bloggs got?"

Lady Hamilton managed to have her husband discharged on a 'pass' on condition that she arranged 24-hour care for him at home.

The Hamilton dukedom is the third oldest in the UK and the senior title in Scotland, dating from 1643. Indeed, and this titled aristocrat should now also be questioning all the privileges in life a duke gets compared with Joe Bloggs, not just only the possibility of paying privately for 24-hour private care.

Food for thought

Capitalism is a system of greed and corruption , if more proof were needed, comes from Heather Mallick's column in the Toronto Star, September 28. She writes about how banks pay massive fines as part of the price of doing business and then keep on doing whatever they want to. JPMorgan Chase, she writes, is negotiating the fine it will pay US regulators re mortgage -backed securities. The figure is around $11 billion, and comes after a $920 million fine last week for its London Whale loss. In Britain, the PPI (payment protection insurance) scandal has caused banks there to set aside sixteen million pounds (more than the cost of the London Olympics). Yet we are in the middle of austerity measures that seek to strip or modify every benefit the workers have gained for sixty years and health, education, and social programs are starved for money. Time to put this lot to bed! John Ayers.

 

It is a waste

Yet another report on unnecessary food waste. This time from India.

 40% of India’s fruits and vegetables and roughly 22% of wheat are lost annually due to poor cold storage facilities and infrastructural bottlenecks, according to a study done by a UK-based institute. 1.2-2 billion tonne of food items, or 30-50% of total production, is lost each year. Losses of rice in South-east Asian nations can range from 37% to 80% of production, depending on the stage of development, totalling around 180 million tonne a year, the report also said. About 550 billion cubic meters of water is wasted globally in growing crops that never reach the consumer

‘‘This is food that could be used to feed the world’s growing population – as well as the nearly one billion people in hunger today. It is also an unnecessary waste of land, water and energy resources that were used in the production, processing and distribution of this food,’’ said Tim Fox, the head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. There is the potential to provide 60-100% more food by eliminating losses and wastages while freeing up land, energy and water resources, the report said.

Despite the economy tripling in size between 1990 and 2005 to become Asia’s third largest, 42% of children under five years are underweight – nearly double the rate of sub-Saharan Africa.

Food Banks Return

We all see the TV adverts from the Red Cross, UNICEF and Oxfam for donations to aid the starving in third world countries but what we do not expect to see are calls for aid and donations by Scottish based charities and organisations to help the poverty stricken and starving in Scotland. We live in a country that is supposed to be part of a developed nation yet it is cutting benefits alongside price hikes by energy companies.

Food banks are returning to Scotland’s streets. Not to feed the homeless and

those sleeping on the streets, but families who cannot put food on the table because they choose to heat their home rather than freeze.

 According to Margaret Lynch, chief executive of Citizens Advice Scotland, she said: “The reason for the rise in food bank cases is that household incomes are not keeping up with the cost of living. Half of those who use food banks are actually working, but their wages are too low to sustain them. The other half are people on benefits, whose low incomes have been squeezed even further by harsh policies like the bedroom tax. And with more welfare cuts on the way, this situation looks set to get even worse.”

"Its Human Nature..."

It is claimed that socialists are unrealistic who hold fantasies and dreams that things will change overnight, imagining people work together for the common good without being forced to by the carrot or the stick.  The most common claim is that a socialist society founded on equality and, cooperation is contrary to human nature and people are greedy. If you look at society today then the argument seems justified. Many people do see life as a rat-race in which the key thing is to take what you can for yourself, regardless of others.

It is curious that this claim is usually made by those who also insist that "everybody is different”. The fact is that all human nature is determined by conditions of life, education and experience.  It may seem that the. only human nature in present society is capitalist,  but that is because the capitalists  impose their views upon everybody. Often the theory of human nature is one spread by the capitalists to make the working class cynical about socialism. However, capitalism also involves people working alongside one another. Socialism does not require people to be either altruistic nor egotistic; selfish nor unselfish.

If society is run and controlled by the people, in the interests of the people, then society will encourage another side of human nature: cooperation and concern for others.  It is recognised that it will be up to the workers and their communities to organise work and to regulate their reciprocal relationships. Force can do nothing, agreement is necessary. We can’t impose socialism. It will occur through free  associations among themselves.

Socialism does not presuppose a complete change in human nature and the entire elimination of selfishness. We shouldn’t expect a miraculous transformation of human personality. Socialism only calls for enlightened self-interest, recognising that it can serve itself only by serving the common interest, which will completely change its character, so that it will cease to be the narrow selfishness of to-day, which so often defeats its own ends. The interests of each individual will, by the new circumstances, be best served by serving the common interests.

 Socialism’s first concern must be production -  we must live. Work is life and also the tie that unites men and women in society. To be sure, we possess, even today, sufficient means of production to satisfy all reasonable needs, i.e., to provide a well-being to all greater than that of today. But all this well-being must be created by labour and by the transformation of industry. There will no longer be, as is the case today, men and women condemned to long days of stupefying labour and fatigue.  People will pass from one job to another, from manual labor to study and artistic recreation. But in working, in studying, in cultivating the arts, etc, their goal will always be to make them useful. We shouldn’t lose sight of the extent and variety of socialism. There will be trial and error, even conflicts before agreement can be reached just to determine what must be produced, which needs deserve preference, and what limitations individuals should impose on their desires.  We will not immediately fall upon a perfect system but experience and agreements will tell the individual and the labour associations what society has need of at a given moment.

Thus understood, the revolution obviously can’t be the work of a party or a coalition of parties: it demands the assistance of the entire working class. Without the majority we can carry out a coup d’etat or a putsch but not a revolution. The workers have no need of chiefs: they are quite capable of charging one of their own with a particular task. Solidarity and co-operation cannot be decreed by a law, and though it can be applied by public opinion it is nevertheless necessary that public opinion be in agreement with individual sentiment.

Every strike is an act of dignity, an act of  revolt, and serves to get workers used to thinking of the boss as an enemy and to fight for what they want without waiting for grace from on high. A striker is already no longer a slave but a rebel already engaged on the path of socialism and revolution. It is up to us to help them advance along that road. When the workers demand improvements, pay increases, reductions in working hours, abolition of work rules; when they go on strike to defend their dignity or to affirm their solidarity with a colleague is fired or mistreated by bosses, we have to say to them that none of this ultimately resolves the question. We must use the occasion to advocate the need for the revolution, for the abolition of private property and government. We must do everything possible to widen and generalise the movement into making the revolution. Our programme is the social revolution and is our immediate goal while agitation among the working class are our means. We must prove to the world that socialism isn’t a utopian dream or a distant vision, but a vital and living force, destined to renew the world on the principles of well-being and human fraternity.

“Don’t tell me that some men are too lazy to work. Suppose they are too lazy to work, what do you think of a social system that produces men too lazy to work? If a man 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 man too lazy to work there is something the matter with him, He wasn’t born right or he was perverted in this system." Eugene Debs 

The Unwanted People

"I never ever realised how much hatred there is towards me." - Noah

Katharine Quarmby’s book “No Place To Call Home” shows so clearly that there is a long and horrible history of hatred towards Gypsies and Travellers, from medieval days when they were killed, enslaved and branded in Britain to the slaughter of perhaps half of Europe's Roma in the Holocaust.

In Britain, they are our most excluded group. Gypsies and Travellers are at the bottom of the pile when it comes to education, health and housing, with lower life expectancy exacerbated by living on polluted sites.  Women die 12 years before the national average, while children are at higher risk of dying in infancy and adults more likely to kill themselves.  Travelling people are frequently victims of abuse and violence that they do not bother reporting. "Gypsies and Travellers are often victims, not perpetrators, of crime," Quarmby writes.

 She tells the story of one boy taken by officials from his family's tent in Fife and placed in children's homes, where he was sexually abused. His mother spent the rest of her life hunting for him, dying at the age of 41 without seeing her son again. Scottish authorities have never apologised for such disgraceful actions, which continued into the 1960s.

Gypsy elder Billy Welch thinks the solution lies in travellers opening up and opting in. After all, two-thirds of them now live in settled sites. Only 30 families in Britain travel all year round. Times are changing. "We live in a democracy," says Welch, "and we don't use it. We are our own worst enemy."

Food for thought

It's nearly fifty years since Ralph Nader wrote his sensational book, "Unsafe At Any Speed", his expose of the auto industry and their ignoring of car safety in return for sales – hence profits. Recently, his autobiography, "Told You So", was published and it shows Nader has changed little over the years. To some he may seem uncorrupted (he refused the services of a prostitute hired by General Motors to way(lay) him, he doesn't own a car (too unsafe) or real estate, and lives on $25,000 a year. Nader has campaigned for anti-pollution laws, founded several public interest research groups, made public a forgotten study on the appalling conditions in the meat processing plants, founded a national anti-nuclear umbrella group, put all his income into his advocacy groups, campaigned for health care, attacked corporate crime, attacked NAFTA and the decline of democracy, and the list goes on. It's easy enough to say we need people like him, in fact, we need him as long as we need capitalism, which is not at all. In the final analysis, Mr. Nader is a corrupt man. Like most of us, he was corrupted into believing capitalism was the best of all economic systems. Nader's great failure is in thinking it would be better for all if greed and dishonesty at the highest levels could be eliminated. The plain fact is that capitalism is a profit-oriented system that thrives on, and is based on, greed and dishonesty. It would be much better if Nader were to pour his vast efforts into working for the abolition of such a system. John Ayers.

No Remedy except Revolution

At the present time, the spokesmen for the ruling class are making an all-out effort to convince us that there is a “recovery” taking place. With the current economic crisis capitalism cracked across the world they are crying for a return to normalcy, and normalcy to them means the former golden age of unlimited exploitation and oppression of labour. They believe they can turn back time. They do not perceive that they are creating new antagonism and bitterness and preparing the ground for renewed and intensified working class revolts against their despotic misrule. There can be no return to capitalist normalcy. The profitability of capital must be restored before the accumulation process can be resumed.

The struggle between labour and capital involves the system’s very existence, bound as it is to its continuous expansion. Objectively, the ordinary economic struggle takes on revolutionary implications and thus, political forms, because one class can only succeed at the expense of the other. The burden of the crisis rests entirely upon the shoulders of the working class. Capitalism has proved again that it cannot and will not provide for the working class. Of course, the workers might be prepared to accept, within limits, a decreasing share of the social product via the austerity cuts, if only to avoid the miseries of drawn-out confrontations with the employers and its state. But this might not be sufficient to bring about a new economic upswing. The working class should fight the class struggle as it is fought by the bosses. The working class has a long way to go to reach the stage of class consciousness, and a will to struggle. But that it is on that road and will continue to travel it, is indisputable.

 A host of politicos have also come out for “fighting back,” demagogically trying to profit from the discontent of the people. They peddle the view that the crisis can be solved by electing them. They say the banking system should be nationalised under democratic popular control. Only on this basis would it be possible to get rid of the spivs and speculators that are holding working class people to ransom. A  nationalised banking sector would be run for the benefit of the majority, rather than for the super-rich. Those struggling to pay their mortgage would have it converted to an affordable rent; small businesses could get cheap loans, and public works such as a massive house-building programme could be cheaply financed.  The Marxist economist Andrew Kliman opposes this. He writes: "Some leftist economists called for state control or nationalization of the financial system, rather than just regulation, of the financial system... But there cannot be socialism in one country. What results when you try to have socialism in one country is state-capitalism, a state-run system that is still embedded in the global capitalist economy, and which is still locked into a competitive battle with capitals elsewhere in the world. A state-run bank is still a bank."

 Some Left parties and the TUC claim that companies are being irrational when they suppress wages, and they do not mean the simple fact that workers are having a hard time to make ends meet. They point out that somebody has to buy the commodities with which capital makes its profits. Their proposal is: wage increases create more effective demand and this benefits everyone – workers have more wages and capital more profit. Capitalism could be a nice symbiosis if companies were not so short-sighted.

What is remarkable about this theory is that it is only ever proposed to support rather limited wage demands: a minimum wage, a wage increase of 3% or even an unconditional basic income of a few hundred pounds. Why are the proponents of this theory so humble? Why not an hourly wage of £50, a wage increase of 100% and an unconditional basic income of £5000? If the theory was right, then this would make the economy go pop. Their humbleness shows that they themselves do not really believe their own theory. Rather, these advocates are looking for a reason to have their interest in higher wages recognised in the national discourse.

The theory is also simply wrong. For one, a single company has no advantage if it increases the wage. Even the workers of Nestlé spend only a small part of their wage on Nestlé products. Of course, if other companies pay their workers higher wages, then Nestlé might make more sales. However, it is not the logic of a single capital to pay its workers more for this effect.

Yet, sometimes competitors must be obliged for their own benefit. This is why the Left looks to the state which ought to enforce such wage increases. Workers get more money because the state mandates it. All companies sell more commodities to workers and, hence, attract more money from them. However, the imagined advantage for everyone is not realised: what companies pay more to their workers, they get back through their sales. Though these proponents of higher wages in the interest of capitalist success would not admit it, from the standpoint of the rate of profit, the ratio of advance and surplus becomes worse.

And of course, as it's the pursuit of maximum profit that drives the capitalist economy, reducing the rate of profit will have negative consequences. Which is why this won't work or even be tried. So what's the point of campaigning for it instead of for socialism? People need to know not just what to be against, but what to be for and we have to look beyond mere political and legal changes to changes in the actual relations of production. What is require is not leaders but popular consciousness. The core issue is not one of “taking power,” but of what happens after. People are not just the muscle that brings down the old power, but must become fully equipped, theoretically and intellectually, to govern society themselves.

Developing socialism within capitalism as advocated by proponents of co-operatives and worker-owned enterprise cannot be done. The economic laws of the larger system will not allow it. If you buy from the capitalist world “outside,” you also have to sell to it in order to get the money you need to buy from it, and you will not sell anything if your prices are high because your costs of production are high. To fight for socialism is consciously to struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and its state institutions. The idea that socialism equals state planning, ownership, and control is not a Marxist conception.

It seems that most people want to see another world, but think it can come about, if at all, by voting it in, or by workers becoming their own bosses, or by paying everyone the same amount, or by means of whatever political, legal, and administrative measures they have been led to believe can accomplish the redistribution of power and wealth and really make their lives better. Despite the new priorities, new forms of organisation, new forms of ownership, new laws, and the new name you give your society, it remains capitalist. It remains capitalist because the economic laws that govern capitalism continue to govern your society. And they continue to govern your society because new priorities, new forms of organisation, new forms of ownership and so forth are not enough––by themselves––to overcome the economic laws of capitalism. These well-intentioned changes  would merely be capitalism in a different form or they would not be viable and lead back to capitalism.  And the reason why they wouldn’t work, Marx argued, is that these supposed alternatives to capitalism all try to get rid of capitalism without getting rid of its mode of production.

Food for thought

Economic advisor to the Indian government, Jayati Ghost, recently co-authored a book titled, "Economic Reform Now: A Global Manifesto to Rescue our Sinking Economies." As Ghost points out, " China is suffering from a banking crisis and in India the situation is even more dramatic. Economic growth has almost halved and panicking investors are abandoning the rupee. Is the Asian era over before it has even begun?" – No comment needed. John Ayers.

The UK

Clear thinking brings clear action

The Socialist Party of Great Britain wants to make the revolution as soon as possible. When we speak of revolution, we speak of the capture of power by the working class itself. Many who call themselves socialists urge the formation of a “revolutionary party” but such a party cannot be revolutionary. The “revolutionary party” is based on the idea that the working class needs a new group of leaders who vanquish the capitalist class for the workers and construct a new government. According to this theory, the leaders will build a workers’ state and create the socialist society by means of decrees; in other words, the working class is still incapable of administering and organising for itself its work and production. The working class are not deemed capable of revolution, so it is necessary that the revolutionary vanguard, the party, make the revolution for it. From experience of history and the failure of past “revolutionary parties”. These often well-meaning activists merely conclude that they will have to do better. They do not realise that the failure of these parties is due to the fundamental conflict between the self-emancipation of the working class through its own power against the substitution by a vanguard  because they see the majority of workers indifferent and inactive. But the working class are inactive only because they cannot yet comprehend the course of the struggle and the unity of class interests.

The Labour Party throws all the blame for the crises upon the ConDem Government and contends that it could permanently improve the material comfort of the people if it were returned to power. The Labour Party occupies a most important and strategical position in appealing to the workers because it is the most important and only real influential opposition to the present government.  Past Labour governments  revealed it as the defender of capitalism and profit, and oppressors of the working class. As socialists we know that the Labour Party cannot solve any single important economic problem at present bearing upon the working class. We know that their servile acceptance of the propertied interests can only result in the perpetuation of capitalism and its many problems.  The Labour Party as a government will not only prove as helpless as the present one, but it will become identified as the Party of Capitalism, just as it was before. The Labour Party has become discredited in the eyes of the many.

There is only one  class to defeat the capitalist class. Whatever its faults, it is the working class alone that can take power and establish the Cooperative Commonwealth.  Steadily the workers move along the road to socialism. Circumstances compel them to take that road. Economic laws operate whether they are known or not, but if we understand their operation we can bend them to our purpose and assist society along the course it tends to travel. As a Socialist Party we must bring this knowledge to the workers. The Socialist Party must carry its propaganda to the workers; the workers will not come to us.

Whenever the power of the governing class asserts itself, then the workers must fight. The distinction between political and industrial action is false; they are the two poles of the same movement. Although engaged in the class struggle, often in conflicts on a gigantic scale, the trade union movement acts without coherence, and with a dim perception only of its reason and purpose in the struggle. Workers, in spite of the long traditions of trade union­ism, are gradually becoming aware of the inadequacy of their trade unions in modern class-warfare. Trade unions cannot effectively express the class interests of the workers. However, when a worker votes for a Socialist Party candidate he or she votes against the whole of the capitalist class and for his own class without regard for craft or industrial divisions. The essential thing is the direction in which things are moving.

What is Democracy? It is the rule of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is the workers’  battle-cry in the fight against the capitalist class. The establishment of a genuine democracy the working class can possibly enable us to painlessly to do away with capitalism. The establishment of a full and unrestricted democracy is best means of achieving socialism. Our work in the Socialist Party is one of education, organisation, and agitation.  We, as Marxists,  hold the interpretation which alone can help the people to crystallise their scattered dispersed ideas of rebellion into an ordered, co-herent demand, backed up by political and industrial action. Never before have the capitalists provided such favourable conditions for the spread of socialist knowledge. Through the class war workers themselves, via their own varied organisations, elected solely by themselves , will take and hold for the benefit of the whole community the power that administers all things which are necessary for the life of the community and it will be the workers of the world who have won the world for the workers.

The socialist revolution will not be brought about by an act of parliament nor through the trade unions but in one form or another by the masses themselves, outside Parliament, outside the trade unions and, probably also, outside the Socialist Party. Revolution must involve a majority of the active population. How and when this will come about, is not within human competency to forecast. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If there were a general will to establish a socialism a way would be found even by those very people who either have never heard of socialism or think themselves its enemies. Wherever a wage worker confronts an employer strife and conflict is born. Not ideology but necessity brings the masses into revolutionary motion. 

The Power of Capital

The lesson on the power of the capitalist has been re-learned at Grangemouth.

Unite's general secretary Len McCluskey said shop stewards had decided to accept the company's survival plan "warts and all" in the wake of the closure decision. That included a pay freeze, ending of a final salary pension scheme and other changes to terms and conditions which had initially been rejected by staff in a union vote.

Workers who struggle to maintain and better their conditions should be commended, but until the working class consciously and politically organise to end the wages system the same battles will have to be fought over and over again. The bitter experience of the Ineos workers may lead some of them to question the basis of capitalist society, but from start to finish all this struggle was attempting was to get the best from a bad situation. Workers are learning by bitter experience. They are learning very slowly. Our job is to shorten the time and try to speed up the process. 

Food for thought

High in the Himalayas is the kingdom of Bhutan, the prototype of the mythical Shangri-la, a country, due to its isolation, was free from the turmoil and strife that beset the rest of the world. It survived for centuries without paved roads and electricity and with barter for currency. It wasn't enough for Bhutan's king to leave well enough alone – in the early sixties he decided to bring his happy land into the modern world. By 1999, it was decided that Bhutan needed something they never had before, a psychiatrist! Since then, Dr. Chenco Dorji has treated more than 5,300 depressed, anxious, psychotic, alcoholic, and drug-addled Bhutanese. Welcome to the modern world! Welcome to capitalism! John Ayers.

Socialism is what?

What is socialism must be the query each of our readers must ponder over. There is a tendency to confuse socialism with reform of one sort or another, to make it respectable and palatable. The Socialist Party draws the clear line between socialism and reform and revolution. Socialism means but one thing, and that is the abolition of capital and the turning over of production to the control of the workers and community.   Anything else is not socialism, and has no right to use that term. Socialism is not the reduction of the working-week nor the enforcement of minimum or living wage. None of these, nor all of them together, are socialism. They might all be done by the government tomorrow, and still we would not be any closer towards socialism. They are merely reforms of the present system, mere patching-up. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. While not opposing any reforms or improvements which may be secured under capitalism, the Socialist Party steadfastly refuses to divert resources away from its main battle, for revolution, in order to carry on the struggle for reform. It refuses to  abandon its main demand in order to campaign for immediate demands.  to the tempting baits so deftly twitched before the noses of the working class to lead them astray into side issues and blind alleys. The one demand of the Socialist Party is socialism and the unconditional surrender by the capitalist class of the machinery of industry. We reject the criticism that our refusal to engage in the innumerable one-issue reform campaigns makes us less interested in the humanitarian movements. The Socialist Party is based on the material programme which will make the realisation of those numerous groups and organisations aspirations an accomplished fact. Socialism alone will supply the basis for any permanent improvement in the condition of humanity and the Earth.

Socialism means a higher civilisation by multiplying and making use of all the means of culture of present society. Socialists do not propose a return to primitivism, we do not  intend to go backwards and start communistic utopian colonies. Socialists do not propose to run away from the capitalists; we intend to stay right in the battle and confront capitalist society. Nor do we advocate the arrest the progress of humanity which is going on before our very eyes. We want to lighten the burdens on the shoulders of the wage workers and producers in general.

Socialists are class conscious. This does not mean that the socialist must hate every capitalist individually although many are richly deserving of our contempt. 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.

The ballot, if used rightly, forms a far more powerful weapon in most countries than in any other. Socialism will not come through force. The ballot box is by far a safer weapon than the rifle. It must be with the socialist vote that the wage slave class seeks to rid itself of its chains.

Food for thought

On September 3, The Toronto Daily Star reported that 100,000 kilograms of dead fish have been scooped up from China's Fuhe River. The Hubei province's Environmental Department blamed the Hubei Shuanghuan Science & Technology Company. Officials said that a sampling of its drain outlet showed an ammonia density that far exceeded the national standard. Other incidents this year involving dead animals in rivers have added to public disgust and there are suspicions about the safety of drinking water. It is well known that, as China grows economically, inadequate controls on industry and lax enforcement of existing laws have worsened China's pollution problem. If this is the price we pay for capitalist development, then let's stop paying for it and opt for socialism. John Ayers

Ineos Closes Grangemouth

STUC general secretary Grahame Smith today called for the closure of the Grangemouth refinery to be treated as a similar economic emergency to the Royal Bank of Scotland collapse. Downing Street, however, has indicated there will be no bail-out for Grangemouth. Scotland’s biggest industrial plant  is worth about £1 billion to the Scottish economy. One member of staff claimed that Grangemouth Petrochemicals chairman Calum Maclean had been "smiling" when he made the closure announcement.

Smith said: “As many have noted over the recent period, the Grangemouth complex is too important to the Scottish economy to be closed on the vindictive whim of an unaccountable billionaire. When the stability of the economy was threatened by the failure of RBS and HBOS, government was quick to act. Now when the stability of the Scottish economy is threatened by the industrial blackmail tactics of INEOS, government must again find the will to act.”

The local Labour MP for Linlithgow and Falkirk East, Michael Connarty, hit out at the firm’s handling of the crisis. “It was very strange - like 1920s gangland boss type of management and not sensible negotiation as it should have been.”

Unite has accused the company of "playing Russian roulette" with the future of Grangemouth.

The billionaire majority owner of Ineos, Jim Ratcliffe, is now one of the richest people in the UK. His “super-yacht” Hampshire II is moored at the French Riviera port of La Ciotat.

The sad reality of capitalism is that if massively rich capitalists cannot have massive returns on their investment they walk away and find other sources of profit to exploit. Part of the blackmail tactics was to pressure the government into financing the upgrade that Grangemouth required to compete more effectively. Perhaps that will happen but then the government also will be adding their power to Ineos to force the work-force into accepting cuts in their pay and conditions. As for the promised 15,000 pounds compensation offered to workers for accepting reduced wages, the small print says up to 15,000. I hazard a guess that only a few employees will be entitled to the maximum.

What is Socialism?

Definitions matter because imprecision leads to carelessness when clarity is necessary. The term “socialism” has been bandied about by all and sundry, to the point of risking losing its sting, its cutting edge, and becoming instead the catch-all for every social movements or the  political gymnastics antics of individuals claiming to be socialists. To use the term without explanation is to get one’s self and one’s cause seriously misunderstood. The word socialism dates from the early decades of the nineteenth century and was first used by Robert Owen but socialism is not the product of the isolated thinking of an individual.  Rather it is the product of many thinkers and activists.

Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. Socialists do not merely wish to patch up the present system and keep it. Old political parties, and new ones that are  springing up everyday advocate reform measures. The Socialist Party of Great Britain are not “reformers” — we are “revolutionists.” By revolution we do not
mean violence or bloodshed. The future may indeed see violence but if such should be the case it would be not the result of the instigation of socialists, but rather the result of the refusal of the ruling class to accept the will of a socialist majority. For socialism offers a possible, a peaceful solution. Socialism will arise from  the capture of the political power by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class. This is the essence of socialism. Whoever sees clearly and holds firmly the necessity of the organisation of the working class into an independent political party, distinct from and opposed to all capitalistic parties to capture democratically the powers of government” in order to carry out the principles of socialism; whoever holds this position of the Socialist Party.

Socialism is an economic proposition, however, the real strength of socialism lies in the  consistency of socialists in pointing out the concreteness of human society in each of its phases of development – in exhibiting socialism, not, indeed, in its details, but none the less in its general tendencies, as a coherent doctrine of social life, to which nothing human is foreign.  It is because the aim of socialism is the recognition of the economic change as being the basis upon which the other changes will he effected that the chief stress is laid upon the latter, and not because socialism has no interest in anything other than the technical economic transformation itself. The intellectual, emotional, artistic sensual  sides of human nature can not escape the influence of their material environment and their dependence on it, Even though these intellectual developments may follow an independent line of causation of its own this obtains only up to a certain point. In the long run material conditions of life assert their importance in modifying the “spiritual” side of things human. The socialist conviction involves a complete revolution in all departments of human life, and that though beginning with the economic change it does not end there. Socialism entails no compulsory abandonment either of current superstitions or of prevailing family relations, but merely leaves the way open for the transformation of traditional ways and modes of life by others more consistent with human freedom and more adapted to the new times than those that have been left behind.

 Socialism is the equal participation by all in the necessaries, comforts, and enjoyments of life and the people themselves will be organised to this end, with the means of production and distribution commonly owned by all and run in  the interest of the whole community. It is  commonly to be heard from the man-in-the-street the idea that socialism involves a spartan way of living and that we are against  luxury which  presupposes a saint-like quality  on the part of the individual. Even the old belief of the general liquidation and dividing up equally of existing wealth as being the economic goal of socialism, is not yet extinct. Nor is charity and alms-giving, whether good or bad, right or wrong, socialism.

 The direct aim of all practical socialists to-day is the transformation of private ownership and control by individuals or the State  of the means of production and exchange into their common ownership and control by the community at large. The word socialism, for many, has come to be applied to any activity of the state or municipal authority in an economic sphere. Hence any industrial or commercial enterprise undertaken by a governmental body is labelled socialism nowadays. State-ownership does not mean socialism. The State is an agent of the possessing classes and industrial or commercial undertakings run to-day by  the government are largely ran in the interests of these classes. Their aim in all cases is to show a profit, in the same way as ordinary capitalistic enterprises. This profit accrues to the possessing classes in the form of relief of taxation, mainly paid by them, interest on loans, etc. In other words these industrial undertakings are run for profit and not for use and their employees are little, if at all, better off than those of private employers.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always maintained that the change from capitalism to socialism would be a fundamental change, that is, we would have a complete reorganisation of society, that this change would not be a question of reform; that the capitalist system of society would be completely changed and that that system would give way to a new system of society based on common ownership and the democratic control of the means of production and distribution.

What is capitalism? Capitalism is that system of society in which the means of production and distribution are owned by a few individuals for their own profit. You take the large industrial plants. You take the land, you take the banks, you take the railways, you take all of the factories that have to do with production, take all the means of distribution, and you will discover that they are owned by a few individuals or corporations, by financial institutions, for the profits that can be derived from these institutions. Socialists maintain that all our institutions are based on labour-power of the working-people. Labour- power is essential to make them valuable and to provide profits for those that own and control them. All of our institutions are based on the labour-power of the working person. Without that labour-power society could not exist. Not a wheel could turn. Value could not be produced. That is very easily recognisable. Suppose Bill Gates with all of his wealth and all of his stocks and shares and bonds,would go to the Sahara Desert and pile his securities sky high to the billions of dollars, and stay there himself, do you think that value would be produced? Do you think that the assets would be valuable? Do you think that he could get for himself the comforts of life? Not at
all. Bill Gates could stand there, look at his paper mountain of shares and he could not get something to drink, and he could not get anything to eat. But you can take a group of workers. Taken them from any section of the world, bring them to a place and tell them to get busy and make life worth living. And what will you have? What will you find? That the workers will get on the job, they will use their labour-power, by their creating ability they will build a society in which workers of every degree enjoy the comforts and pleasure of life. All of our wonderful institutions, our boasted civilisation, has been the result of the creating ability of the working men who use brains and muscle power. Capitalism controls the creative power of labour for its own particular advantage.

Our era is that of the passage of capitalism to socialism, the era of the struggle between two opposing social systems, the era of socialist revolution and that of the overthrow of capitalism. The fundamental question is which will win out – socialism or capitalism?

Food for thought

In the continuing debate about chemical weapons used in Syria, horror is the usual reaction-' against the rules of war', say some. It is a truly diabolical event but does that make blowing people up or developing bullets that rip a body apart, legitimate? Let's get a real perspective on the whole business of war here! John Ayers

THE PRODUCT OF CAPITALISM

An example of how awful capitalist production is can be grasped from a recent example from China. School was cancelled, traffic was nearly paralyzed and the airport was shut down in the northeast Chinese city of Harbin on Monday as off-the-charts pollution dropped visibility to less than 10 meters in parts of the provincial capital. A dark, grey cloud that the local weather bureau described as "heavy fog" has shrouded the city of 10 million since Thursday, but the smoke thickened significantly on Sunday, soon after the government turned on the coal-powered municipal heating system for the winter. "You can't see your own fingers in front of you, the city's official news site explained helpfully. In the same vein, a resident of Harbin on Sina Weibo, the popular microblog platform, "You can hear the person you are talking to, but not see him." (New York Times, 21 October) Awful? Yes, but as long as the profits come rolling in - who cares? RD

Revolution! Not Reforms!

 The aim of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to establish socialism and abolish the right of one person to rob another. Our aim is the unity of the working class movement, and the political unification in one party based on socialist principles. The trade union struggle is the defensive struggle of the workers against their employers. It is an expression of the irreconcilable antagonism between the two great classes of modern society.  At first resistance took the form of isolated outbursts, of smashing machines, of blindly striking out at the capitalists. But soon the individual workers learnt that their oppression is common and that their resistance must be collective. At this point the workers combine into unions, the first, most immediate form of organisation available to them. Through the unions the workers wage a united struggle of resistance, confronting the employing class with one voice, demanding better wages and working conditions, testing their strength through downing their tools, and wringing concessions from the government for improved labour laws for the entire working class. Even when the trade unions are under rank and file control, they cannot on their own,  protect and advance the long-term interests of the working class, cannot touch the foundations of capitalist exploitation. The trade unions can bargain with the capitalists over wages, but they cannot bargain away the wages system. They are geared only to look after the workers immediate interests, to wage a defensive, economic struggle. That is the limit of trade unionism in general. And this is the reason why the working class must have its own political organisation, an organisation which combines the struggle for the workers immediate interests with the struggle for the long-term interests of the entire working class into a consistently waged class struggle. Our task is not only to fight for better terms in the sale of labour-power, but to fight for the abolition of the capitalist system that compels the working class to sell themselves as wage-slaves. We must utilise the economic struggle to teach the workers that their fundamental economic interests can only be satisfied by the destruction of the entire capitalist system and the creation of a socialist society.

Nowhere in the world has socialism been established. The struggle for socialism is the struggle for socialist consciousness. The Left has failed to raise the prospect of what could be achieved by socialism but, rather, advanced arguments for the more efficient management of capitalism. Our argument with the Left and the policies it is advocating is not that they would not benefit the working class, but that measured against the criterion of achieving socialism which is, after all, what socialists  has as its goal, they fall far short. In other words, we would argue that whatever the rhetoric of the Left-wing, it nevertheless remains an ideology of capitalism, and has been utilised as a method of ingratiating capital to the working class. The Labour Party no longer even claims to represent working class interests. On the contrary, it sets out not to present a class interest, but a non-existent “national interest” common to all classes.  Their motive for production would remain profit, the relations of production would remain capitalist relations. There is nothing new here, since Labour Governments have always sought to bolster capital with public subsidy. Nowhere are the problems inherent to the capitalist mode of production dealt with; there is no mention of the class struggle – only of the national interest. All that the Labour Party has laid claim to do up to now is to be able to manage the capitalist ship of state better than anyone else. It has never seen itself – either in its policies or its propaganda – as being, despite its name, a party which represents the working class. It has consistently been a party for “the nation as a whole”. It has claimed to represent the capitalist millionaire ruling establishment as much as the working class.

The class struggle was not invented by Marx. It is a fact, which exists whether we wish it or not. While capitalism lasts, so too will the inevitable class struggle. The change from capitalism to socialism, from capitalist dictatorship to the democratic  rule of the working class, is a revolution and the most far-reaching revolution in human history. That is the objective of the SPGB. 

A CANCEROUS SYSTEM

The World Health Organisation may be a very scientific and worthy organisation but it is also a very naive one. 'Pollutants in the air we breathe have been classed as a leading environmental cause of cancer by the World Health Organization. It said the evidence was clear they cause lung cancer. Sources of pollution include car exhausts, power stations, emissions from agriculture and industry - as well as heating in people's homes.The WHO said the classification should act as a strong message to governments to take action.' (BBC News, 17 October) Governments inside capitalism have one priority - protect the production for profit system at all costs. The continuing use of asbestos after it was well known as a killer substance is ample evidence of that. RD

ANOTHER CUNNING RUSE

The former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn, now part of the government's Social and Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has said that working parents in Britain "simply do not earn enough to escape poverty", and that two-thirds of poor children are now from families where an adult works. 'In its first report, the government's Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission warned the target of ending child poverty by 2020 would "in all likelihood be missed by a considerable margin" - leaving as many as two million children in poverty. Poverty is defined as having a household income that is less than 60% of the national median income. The latest government figures on poverty, released in June, show the median UK household income for 2011/2012 was £427 a week - 60% of that figure was £256 a week.' (BBC News, 17 October) Surviving on £37 a day may be difficult for a family but the former Labour health secretary has suggested some benefits currently protected from cuts - such as free TV licences and winter fuel allowances for pensioners - could be means tested. Wow, cut benefits to the poor to assist those even poorer - brilliant! RD

The Socialist Revolution – Why we need it and how to get it

What will such a socialist society look like?

To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation is not socialism. Nationalisation is simply state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. Nor is the “Welfare State” socialist.  “Welfare” in  capitalism means to improve the efficiency of the worker as a profit-maker and is not socialism but another form of state capitalism. It can be an improvement on capitalism with no welfare or safety net , just as a 40-hour week is an improvement on a 60-hour week. But it is not socialism.

Capitalism by itself will not “evolve” into socialism. We do not think it any longer necessary to attempt proof of the need for revolution if we are to achieve socialism, i.e. to develop a classless society. It has to be transformed into socialism by the conscious action and struggle of men and women. The means of production and distribution —the factories, mines, land, and transport—are taken from the capitalists and transformed into social property. This means that they belong to and are worked by the whole of the people, that the fruits of production likewise become social property, used to advance the standard of life of all the people. When we speak of the means of production, the wealth of the country, we mean that wealth which is necessary for the production of the necessities of the people. The industries, the railroads, mines, and so on. We don’t propose the elimination of private property in personal effects. We speak of those things which are necessary for the production of the people’s needs. They shall be owned in common by all the people. No longer can the capitalists by virtue of the fact that they own the means of production, live off  the labour of the working class. No longer are the workers compelled to sell their labour power to the capitalists in order to live. What is produced is no longer divided between the workers’ wages and the surplus taken by the capitalists. The workers are no longer property-less but now collectively own the means of production and work them in their own interests and in the interests of society. For society is now composed or workers by hand and head, i.e. of an associated body of wealth-producers.  Socialism cannot be imposed on the people from above. It develops from below. Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work.  Mankind for the first time will be taking charge of its own destiny. We will no longer have things happening to us. We will be deciding what is to happen.

Workers are in a position to establish a socialist society, on the one condition that they themselves wish to do so, i.e. that they understand that this is both necessary and possible. Capitalism, by its method of production, has brought isolated workers together and constituted them as a class in society. Capitalism has made the workers a class in themselves. That is, the workers are a distinct class in society, whether they recognise this fact or not. "I" began to merge with "We" and personal desires with collective strivings.  Historical development calls upon this class to reorganise society completely and establish socialism. To do this, the workers must become a class for themselves. They must acquire a clear understanding of their real position under capitalism, of the nature of capitalist society as a whole, and of their mission in history. They must act consciously for their class interests. They must become conscious of the fact that these class interests lead to a socialist society. When this takes place, the workers are a class for themselves, a class with socialist consciousness.

Workers do not in general accept or seek socialism, but increasingly many do reject capitalism and its values. The need for change is widely realised. It is up to socialists to win them over with a clear, thoroughgoing understanding of capitalist society, their position in it, and the need to replace this society with socialism, explaining what is needed is a social revolution, the replacement of one ruling class by another. We can use only the power of persuasion and no other power. History is filled with revolutions and in almost every case they made possible the progress of society.  Capitalism is maintained by class power and will only be displaced by other class power. The socialist revolution is simply the overthrow of capitalist despotism and the establishment of workers’ rule. The fact that we want a majority of the people to accept our ideas proves beyond all doubt that we want a peaceful transformation.  There may be the possibility that the social revolution will be accompanied by violence but we hope that the ruling class when confronted by a majority determined to establish a new social system will see the advisability of giving in peacefully. The Socialist Party does not advocate violence. We want a peaceful transformation. We want to take over the means of production peacefully but if a minority try to use violence to prevent the majority from achieving this peaceful transformation, then the majority will be prepared to respond in kind to the violence of that minority who may endeavour  to thwart the will of the majority. We are, of course, not pacifists. However, socialists shall try to exhaust all possibilities for peaceful change. The revolution is to be achieved democratically with the support of a majority of the masses.

Ineos - the Capitalist Black-mailer

Yet again Ian Bell of the Herald appears to be on the bell with his latest article which the following are extracts, as reading The Herald online is now protected by a pay-wall subscription.

“When the Unite union threatened a strike for this weekend, the company asserted that Scotland would be shut down by a reckless action. Yet with the threat averted, Ineos elects to close its site regardless. It, too, has demands.

Ineos would blame trades unionists for that, of course. Ineos always blames trades unionists. The  Swiss-based concern and Jim Ratcliffe, its multi-billionaire (worth upwards of £3 billion in 2010) ,main shareholder and chairman, have no record of embracing unions. Instead, since 1998, Ineos has grown by cutting wages, stripping out pension schemes and altering working practices.

Ineos wants to be rid of a pension scheme it deems "unaffordable". Once again, it wants to pay less in wages. Not for the first time, duress is inherent in each and every company statement. If workers do not comply, a £300 million investment required for "long-term survival" will not be forthcoming.

The union analysis shows a company describing capital expenditure as a loss. This is an unusual, if perfectly legal, accounting practice, to put it no higher. It shows that the deferring of a tax allowance of £117m implies an expectation of a half-billion profit in the years ahead. It shows that the growth in both sales and operating profit could hardly be healthier. But Ineos won't have it: all such views are "naive" and fail to grasp why a conglomerate would shuffle money between its divisions.

What is plain is that, having faced down the possibility of a strike for which it was strangely well-prepared, the footloose multinational is now exerting maximum pressure on its workforce, the politicians and the general population. The charge is that unions, those which once supposedly "held the country to ransom", have nothing on Ineos.

This is industrial relations in the modern style. If employees are a bar to profit, reduce their cost. If politicians quibble, make them aware of how much they depend on the company to keep the public quiet. Grangemouth contains Scotland's only refinery. Until we cure the oil addiction, it could hardly be more important. But it operates on the whim of a billionaire with his headquarters in Switzerland.

Grangemouth workers do well enough, by most standards. Why should they not? Like their colleagues in oil extraction they do hard, essential work on which the country depends, work from which multinationals extract profits vastly greater than any wage bill. Ineos prefers not to regard productive labour in those terms. Workers are the human nuisances in otherwise flawless accounting procedures.

Now, even for decently-paid industrial workers such as the people at Grangemouth, the terms have been altered. The deal is that there is no deal. One million of the young unemployed, and among those younger and a little older, know this far better than the rest of us.

At the heart of it all are the big employers. They've had all the tax breaks, subsidies and helpful legislation they could ever demand. For thanks, they avoid their obligations, reduce their workers to peasants, and treat government as a helpline. These are oligarchs regarding the inhabitants of a democracy as serfs. The question becomes: for how much longer will the serfs tolerate that treatment?”

Our time is now.

Alex Salmond told the SNP  conference that it was Scotland's time to be independent.

Marx helped to replace an early international organisation of the working class that had the fairly passive slogan “All Men Are Brothers” with the watchword with the instructive “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”  They did so because history was demonstrating conclusively that the proletariat is the revolutionary class, that the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is the struggle propelling mankind forward to the communist society which will liberate mankind from the reign of classes forever. The struggle of the working class takes place on a world-wide scale to defeat the capitalists on a world-wide scale. Socialists  “always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole”. This means the simple solidarity of one worker with another, irrespective of nationality.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain views the modern world as one inter-linked and inter-dependent economic unit. No country is self-sufficient. It is impossible to solve the accumulated problems of the present day, except on a world scale; no nation is self-sufficient, and no nation can stand alone. We believe that the wealth of the world, the raw materials of the world, and the natural resources of the world are so distributed over the earth that every country contributes something and lacks something for a rounded and harmonious development of the productive forces of mankind. We visualise the future society of mankind as world  socialism which will have a division of labour between the various regions according to their resources, a comradely collaboration between them, and production of the necessities and luxuries of mankind according to an overall world plan.

We think that the solution of the problem of the day—the establishment of socialism—is a world problem, we believe that the advanced workers in every country must collaborate in working toward that goal. We have, from the very beginning of our movement, collaborated with like-minded people in all other countries in trying to promote the socialist movement on a world scale. We have advocated the international organisation of the workers, and their cooperation in all respects, and mutual assistance in all respects possible.  The Socialist Party is opposed to all forms of national chauvinism, race prejudice and discrimination.  Nationalism  belittles, humiliates and rejects all that is foreign, and proclaims everything of its own as "pure". There is  no country superior to any other.

Everywhere in the world, a study of the national question reveals the use of differences by the ruling class as the foundation for its strategy of "divide and rule," of fomenting strife and friction between the toilers of various nationalities. In the ideology of race, the dominant classes have a much more potent weapon at their disposal than even religion and language. The latter, as social phenomena, are historically transient; whereas race, a physical category, persists. Unlike the white immigrant minorities, the black or brown immigrant, wears the badge of colour, which sets the seal of permanency on his inferior status.

In next year’s Independence referendum  there are only two groups officially sanctioned to campaign – those for the YES and the others for the NO.  It prevents the working class from freely propagating its own position. We unequivocably reject this.

A YES vote is a vote to reorganise capitalism in favour of Scotland’s bourgeoisie, which is after its share of the wealth. The SNP would use its power to collect tax to continue to subsidise Scottish capitalists. In an independent Scotland, the SNP would ask us to further tighten our belts in the interests of the “nation,” i.e. to profit Scottish employers. In an independent Scotland exploitation will still exist. The privileged handful that dominates our country will continue to profit from our exploitation .

Many workers are still drawn towards a YES vote despite the SNP’s alliance with capitalists. At least, they say, it is a step in the right direction, since independence will put an end to 300-odd years of “oppression”.  Scottish workers in order to maintain the competitiveness of Scotland’s business interests will always come second. Nor can the SNP’s plans for separation cannot eliminate the inequalities faced by the vast majority of Scottish workers.

Independence and separation means dividing the working class. This would divert the revolution from its socialist objective by weakening it in the fight to overthrow the capitalist class. Workers must unite to become the greatest possible force against capitalism. But separation would leave  the working class more isolated in the fight against the capitalist class.

A NO vote means simply supporting the status quo and a vote for Westminster and UK bosses. A choice of the pox against the plague.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain affirms an independent working class position that refuses to line up behind either of the two capitalist camps. We are fighting ALL nation chauvinism and for the unity of the WORLD working class. Our alternative is to continue the battle for socialism in Scotland and Britain, in Europe and throughout the globe.

Spoil your referendum ballot with the revolutionary slogan “world for the workers”

Socialist education - a lesson from an anarchist

“To escape its wretched lot,” wrote Bakunin in ‘God, and the State,’, “the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The two first are drink and the church, the third is the social revolution.”

A social revolution is necessary yet we are faced by the old problem. A socialist society, a co-operative commonwealth, needs socialists for its realisation.  We are shackled and gagged by the system under which we work. The socialist does not preach, we educate. Our  aim is a real social reconstruction and in spite of all the hindrances thrown in the way by those interested in the preservation of the existing order, we must enable our fellow workers to attain a full and clear knowledge of the facts about society. The state exists to defend the existing order; and the people who draw profit, rent, and interest, control education. Our masters will not teach the truth. They are indeed incapable of seeing the truth as the subject class sees it. Antagonism of interests between two classes of society means antagonistic views as regards the desirability or otherwise of “reconstruction” The socialist movement has its basis in the antagonism of interests existing between capital and labour. He and she must grow class conscious, must become fully aware of the existence and nature of the class struggle, must learn how they can employ their energies in the movement by which class rule will ultimately be overthrown. Our aim,therefore, is simply the education of the workers in the interests of the workers. This movement of independent working-class education is world-wide.

The people would make the revolution, but to help on the birth of the revolution we must, according to Bakunin, “first spread among the masses thoughts that correspond to the instincts of the masses.....what keeps, the salvation-bringing thought from going through the labouring masses with a rush? Their ignorance, and particularly the political and religious prejudices which, thanks to the exertions of the ruling classes, to this day obscure the labourer’s natural thought and healthy feelings .... Hence we must aim at making the worker completely conscious of what he wants and evoking in him the thought that corresponds to his impulses. If once the thoughts of the labouring masses have mounted to the level of their impulses, then will their will be soon determined and their power irresistible.” (Memoir of the Jurassic Federation)

Bakunin in effect says that socialist education will be the midwife of the social revolution.

The so-called flood of immigrants?

• In the year to 30 June, 45,100 people came to Scotland from the rest of the UK and 42,100 people left Scotland for other parts of the UK.
• In the same time, 35,900 people came to Scotland from overseas and 26,200 people left Scotland to go overseas.
• This movement of people increased the population by about 9,700

Class War

Ineos using the old tricks to get what it wants – a broken union and compliant workers

The current Ineos dispute is a classic case of corporate blackmail and union-busting combined.

A company that has expanded rapidly in a short space of time by buying other companies’ operations is now in the process of cutting labour costs in order to try to square the circle. It wants an increased return on its investments and to pay off the debt incurred in buying the new operations. The surest way of doing so is to reduce workers’ terms and conditions.

It’s using all the oldest tricks in the book to break the union and undermine pay and pensions.

First, it targets one of the union’s officials on spurious grounds. To get rid of him would decapitate and demoralise the union. Next, it pleads poverty. Then it presses the nuclear button by going for a cold shutdown, effectively saying to the workforce: “Unless you give us these concessions, don’t expect to have a job as the temporary shutdown just might become a permanent one.”

In making its case, it has dispensed with talking to Unite because Unite won’t agree to give the company exactly what it wants. It tries to paint Unite as being unreasonable, despite the union frequently offering talks at Acas and being willing to discuss some concessions.

Instead, it walks away from talks and informs workers directly: here’s the deal – we want your individual responses by Monday because we’re meeting our shareholders on Tuesday. This is a metaphorical gun to their heads.

No doubt the company hopes that when workers consider their response over the weekend, the wives, partners, parents and families will be saying: “Don’t you think it’s better to have a job (even with these concessions) rather than no job at all?”

If Ineos wanted to change terms and conditions in an equally brutal but more conventional way, it could have issued Section 188 redundancies that lawfully allow a period of redundancy consultation whereupon all workers are re-hired on inferior terms and conditions. Hundreds of public and private employers have done this since the financial crash.

It’s not nice, but it does not mean derecognising Unite. If Unite does give in, this will be the beginning of a slippery slope. The workforce will not be in a position to refuse requests for further concessions.

Given an inch, Ineos will gladly ask for a mile.

• Gregor Gall is professor of industrial relations at the University of Bradford.

No "Free" Scotland

Alex Salmond opened the SNP's annual conference with a rousing call for independence – but quickly had to leave for talks that are an illustration of the lack of economic independence Scotland would possess.

Switzerland-based since it moved its HQ in 2010 to reduce its tax bill, after the Labour government refused to allow it to defer payments at the peak of the credit crunch in 2008,  Ineos has put proposals over pay and pensions to workers at the Grangemouth complex, which has 1,400 employees and many more contractors. The proposal includes freezing the basic salary and offering no bonuses until at least the end of 2016. The shift allowance would also be reduced from £10,000 to £7,500 per year, while pensions would be transferred from a final salary to a defined benefits scheme. It has also asked for guarantees that no further strike action will be held by workers. The company has said Grangemouth is "financially distressed" and must reduce costs. The company had told staff they could lose their jobs and be re-employed on poorer terms unless they agreed to the new conditions by 18:00 on Monday. Ineos delivered a  warning that the plant will have to be shut within three years, with heavy job losses, unless the company secures a government loan guarantee and cuts. The union disputes the company's analysis of the financial situation at the plant, and says that the company as a whole is making large profits. Unite  released an analysis of Grangemouth's finances by tax consultant Richard Murphy. He disputed Ineos's claims and said Grangemouth Chemicals – the only accounts he could find – made a profit in 2012 and was expecting £117m of tax gains that could only occur if the company earned £500m over the next few years.  Murphy said total labour costs, including exceptional pension expenses, were 16.9% of revenue and total labour costs "should not be a critical cause for concern".

Pat Rafferty, Unite's Scottish secretary, said: "This is cynical blackmail from a company that is putting a gun to the heads of its loyal workforce to slash pay, pensions and jobs...It is increasingly clear that the company is deliberately generating a dispute and hiding behind fancy accounting to attack its own workforce."”

For the Socialist Party of Great Britain neither geographical boundaries, race, nor creed makes rivals or enemies; for us there are no nations, but only varied masses of workers and friends, whose mutual sympathies are checked or perverted by groups of masters whose interest it is to stir up rivalries and hatreds between the dwellers in different lands.  The Socialist Party embraces all humanity. Socialism, founded the class struggle, has thoroughly killed in our hearts all national sentiment. It is better to be a traitor to your country than a traitor to your class. What matters it to the poor who are starving whether the country in which he or she is hungry is owned by this ruler or that ruler, if his or her miserable status changes not?

What are nationalities or nations? Among peoples there are no nations and nationalities any more, in the sense of a racial community. The Italians are a hybrid people: Romans, Greeks, Germans, Arabs, Celts, Phoenicians (Carthaginians);  so are the Spaniards: Celts, Iberians, Carthaginians (Phoenicians), Romans, Germans; so are the French: Celts, Greeks, Romans, Germans; so are the British: Celts, Romans, Germans; so are the Germans: Celts, Germans, Romans, Slavs.  No one any longer has a fatherland or motherland in the large and heterogeneous modern nations.

The love for the land of our birth is foolish, absurd, and the enemy of progress. We are taught that Britain is the land of the brave, the country of generosity and chivalry, and the refuge of liberty and we all, in the innocence of our hearts, believe it even though the same things are said of their countries by Germans, by the Russians, and the French. Our history  books on every page  reek with race hatred, national vanity and idolatry of the military.

All countries whatever may be the government ideology  with which they are labeled – are composed of two groups of men, one by far the less numerous, the other embracing the immense majority of the people.

The first group is seated at a well-spread table, where nothing is lacking. At the head of the table, at the place of honour, are seated the great financiers. Some are Jews, yes; others are Catholics; others, again, are Protestants, some even atheists. They may be in disagreement on religious or philosophic questions, and even on questions of interest, but, as against the great mass of the people, they work together like thieves at a fair. On their right and on their left are the cabinet ministers, the great officials of all the state services, civil, religious and military, and the gentlemen of the courts of law, judges and lawyers. And then there are the big shareholders of the mines, factories, railways and shipping companies, and the big stores, great squires and great landed proprietors, they are all at that table.

Far from that table are the beasts of burden, condemned to forbidding, dirty, dangerous and mindless toil, without respite or repose, and, above all, without security for the morrow; small tradesmen, confined to their counters 24/7, and more and more crushed out every day by the competition of the big stores; small industrial employers, ground out of existence by the competition of the big factory owners; small-holder farmers, brutalised by long hours of labour, 16 to 18 hours a day, and only working to enrich the big middlemen and the super-markets. Still farther off from the table of the prosperous are the great mass of the proletarians, those who for their whole fortune have only their arms and their brains; working men and women of the factory, exposed to long periods of unemployment; petty officials, clerks, and other employee, obliged to bow their heads and hide their opinions; domestic servants of both sexes, flesh for toil, flesh for cannon, flesh for lust.

Monstrous social inequality, monstrous exploitation of man by man, that is what a country is nowadays, and that is what the workers take off their hats to when the flag is carried by. They seem to say: “Oh, how beautiful is our country! Oh, how free”

The national struggle is harmful to the workers.  Nationalist slogans and goals distract the workers from their specifically proletarian goals. They divide the workers of different nations; they provoke the mutual hostility of the workers and thus destroy the necessary unity of the proletariat. They line up the workers and the bosses shoulder to shoulder in one front, thus obscuring the workers' class consciousness and transforming the workers into the executors of capitalist economic policy. National struggles prevent the assertion of social questions and  condemn the class struggle to sterility. All of this is encouraged by “socialist” propaganda when it presents nationalist slogans to the workers as valid and when it uses the language of nationalism in the description of our socialist goal. The re-establishment of an independent Scotland has no place in socialist propaganda.

The worker has nothing to do with the necessity of competition between the vying bourgeois classes, with their will to constitute a nation. For us, the nation does not mean the privilege of securing a customer base or market positions. Under the rule of capitalism the nation can never be synonymous with a labour monopoly for workers or guaranteed opportunities for work. In the trade union struggle, workers of different nationalities see themselves confronted by the same employer. They must wage their struggle united.The absurdity where the workers in the same workshop are organised in different trade unions and  stand in the way of the common struggle against the employer is obvious. These workers constitute a community of interests; they can only fight and win as a cohesive mass and therefore must be members of a single organisation. The separatists, by introducing the separation of workers by nationalities shatter the power of the workers in the same way.  This is not only true for the workers in one factory but for workers the world over. To all the nationalist slogans and arguments, the response will be: surplus value,  class rule, class struggle. When nationalists speak of the unity of the nation, we will speak of exploitation and class oppression. If they speak of the greatness of the nation, we will speak of the solidarity of the workers of the whole world. The class struggle and propaganda for socialism comprise the sole effective means of breaking the power of nationalism. The  power of nationalism will  be broken not by independence, whose realization does not depend upon us, but  by the strengthening of class consciousness.  Our politics and our agitation can only be directed to awaken class consciousness in workers.

The poor health of the poor

The gap between rich and poor is leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths in Scotland, health experts say. NHS Health Scotland examined 30 years of health trends and found large differences in preventable causes of death across social groups. It revealed that there was little difference in death rates from non-preventable diseases such as brain and ovarian cancer, but large differences in more preventable causes like alcohol-related deaths and heart disease. The common factor suggested for the persistence of health inequalities was social inequalities.

Dr Gerry McCartney, head of the public health observatory at NHS Health Scotland, said: "Health inequalities represent thousands of unnecessary and unjust deaths per year across almost all social groups in Scotland.”

Director of Public Health Science Andrew Fraser said these patterns of death were not inevitable. "The answers lie in tackling the causes of inequalities, and not just the recognised causes of disease. Patterns of death that are evident in this report are the end-points of circumstances that span Scottish life rather than focus on a particular disease group. Prevention is achievable, and inequalities are not inevitable."

Sadly, Socialist Courier would not agree that inequalities are not inevitable. Capitalism creates such inequality and until capitalism disappears, disparities in health will persist. Nor are we alone in our pessimism. Inequality Briefing – a collective project supported by a range of organisations and individuals, on their website states: "Inequality has been growing for the last 30 years. The gap between rich and poor is the widest since the second world war... If current trends continue, we will have reached Victorian levels of inequality in 20 years." It continues: "Inequality has an impact on all aspects of life in Britain today. It means that some families are going hungry, children are left behind. Health and life expectancy of the poor are lower than that of the rich. Social mobility is at its lowest point in a generation and those born into poverty are likely to stay there."