Socialism means...

What is socialism? What do the socialists want? The simplest way to find the answer to these questions is to ask yourself: "What do I want? What do the millions like me throughout the world want?"

Socialism is not a utopian ideal, a blueprint for society that exists in the minds of some people. It is a social necessity and it is a practical necessity. It is the direction that the people must take in order to save society from disintegration, in order to satisfy their social needs. To be a socialist, means to be conscious of this necessity, to make others conscious of it, and to work in an organised manner for the realisation of the goal. By socialism we understand the system of society the material basis of which is social production for social use; that is, the production of all the means of social existence — including all the necessaries and comforts of life — carried on by the organised community for its own use collectively and individually. We mean the common ownership and control of the whole of the world’s industry, the entire means of production becoming common property.  Socialism means a complete change in society in all its aspects.

Is it really possible to realise it?

Socialism is based upon the planned organisation of production for use by means of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is the abolition of all classes and class differences. Without production, society cannot live and the first step to be taken would be directed toward assuring continuous production so as to satisfy the needs of the people. If, however, production is to be carried on for use, to satisfy these needs, the question immediately arises: Who is to determine what is useful and what would satisfy these needs? Will that be decided exclusively by a small board of planners? No matter how high-minded and wise they might be, they could not plan production for the needs of the people. Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, constant control and direction by the people. Democratic control of the means of production and distribution would have to be exercised by the people to see to it that their decision is being carried out.  We believe in the ability of working people to manage their own productive institutions democratically. The workers cannot rid themselves of their sufferings without abolishing the domination that the machine has over them. They can do this only if they gain control of the machine itself. In doing so, they must destroy capitalism and proceed with the complete reorganisation of society. Profit returns would no longer enter into calculations. Capitalist production depends upon profit, upon the accumulation of capital and increasing opportunities for its profitable investment.

We, the workers, mental and manual, with our muscle, mind and skill, wrested raw materials from Nature and fashioned them into the things of social value. We are the creators. We build things great and small yet we who are greater than all stand in abject fear of our own creations. The starting point is a grasp of the elementary truth that men working in organised co-operation can produce far more than the same men working in independent isolation. The greater the number of co-operating workers, the more complete can be the sub-division and co-ordination of the labour process. The more complex the productive mechanism the wider the area from which to draw raw and incidental materials, and the more complete the technical realisation of natural potentialities, the greater will be the power of self-disposal of the community so equipped, and so co-operating. Interposed between us  and that enormous potential of abundance is the social obstacle of property and legal rights. We have damned ourselves because we have thought that the rights of the bakery owner and the bread seller were greater than the right of a person with an empty stomach. We are all prostitutes—and prostitutes for bread. Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to reform it. That failure puts a campaign for the socialist alternative on the immediate agenda. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society.

We speak of classes, but to be sure individuals own the instruments of production yet these individuals form a class bound together by common interests, as against the rest of society. Socialism does not mean mere governmental ownership or management. The State of to-day, nationally or locally, is only the agent of this possessing class and acts  in the interests of the employers. The Socialist Party indicts capitalism and challenges its political spokesmen of whatever name or brand to defend it. The Socialist Party denies the right of capitalism to exist. The division of society into property owners and property-less people lies at the root of the problems of the capitalist world.

Capitalism is founded upon production for profit. Whenever the owners of the world’s machinery of production and distribution fail for whatever reason to realize a profit, it is in their power to cease production or distribution and the world’s workers may starve for all they care. Capitalist society characterised by production for profit. Profit is derived from unpaid labour time. Workers’ labour power is purchased on the market by the owners of capital. The goods and services produced by workers’ socialised labour are  appropriated  by capitalists or the state. Wage-workers who, to live, must sell their labour power to the private owners of the means of production. They are parts of a competitive system, the motive of which is that of production for profit. The labour it uses is a commodity subject to all the laws of commodity production. The fundamental purpose of the Trade Unions, therefore, must be the pursuit of the interests of the wage-workers.They will continue to be produced so long as they can be sold for profit on the market. With socialism, production is planned (not necessarily centrally planned) and rational, and takes place for peoples’ use.

Capitalism is production for the market. The surplus-value created by the workers cannot be realized by the capitalist in the form of profit until the product has been sold on the market. For the capitalist there is no other way of disposing of the goods produced other than through the exchange market, the laws of which are not need nor beauty, nor quality. Capitalism produces only when there is a profit for the  owner of capital. When there is no profitable market for his product, the capitalist will not produce, no matter how great and urgent the need of the people for work, for food, for clothing and shelter, for a decent living standard, for security.

There can, in fact, be no social revolution without a fundamental change in the relation of the classes. In a revolution a class which held power loses it to the class which was previously below it.  For the first time ample leisure and a good standard of living can be the birthright of every child, whether it is born in Manchester, New York or Mumbai. A socialist system of production will by its superior efficiency make available not just ample consumables but (what is of infinitely greater importance) an greater wealth of leisure, enriched by the accessibility of all the cultural achievements of the human race.

 “Give us imagination enough to conceive; courage enough to will; power enough to compel; and then I say, the thing will be done.” - William Morris:

The welcomed immigrants

ONE PEOPLE FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

With training numbers cut, budgets frozen – it costs on average £70,000 to educate and train a qualified nurse in England – and the winter coming, foreign nurses represent a quick fix. Public spending cuts combined with nursing training places falling from almost 21,000 in 2009 to fewer than 18,000 this academic year means there is a significant shortfall in hospitals.

 One NHS employee said: “If you need a lot of nurses quickly, then the best thing to do is jump on a plane and bring them back from an EU country. They’re happy and the hospitals are happy.”

Howard Catton, RCN director of policy, said: “When employers are getting on planes to recruit nurses, you know you have a crisis in workforce supply. That is happening right here, right now.”

Forty trusts have already recruited from overseas in recent months, resulting in more than 1,360 nurses coming to work in England. A further 41 hospital trusts will follow suit. Spain and Portugal are the most popular sources. As more than 10,000 nurses fight for only 460 jobs in Spain because of its economic recession.

This story is nothing new. The NHS has always relied significantly on foreign workers. In 1963 the Conservative Health Minister, Enoch Powell, who later led the call for stricter controls on immigration, launched a campaign to recruit trained doctors from overseas to fill the manpower shortages caused by NHS expansion. Some 18,000 of them were recruited from India and Pakistan. Powell praised these doctors, who he said, 'provide a useful and substantial reinforcement of the staffing of our hospitals and who are an advertisement to the world of British medicine and British hospitals.'

Under the proposed new legislation for charging migrant workers for using the NHS, these nurses may end up having to pay for using the services of the doctors and fellow nurses in the very same hospitals as they work!!

.

What's this crisis about?

The real credit squeeze

Since the current recession arrived  economic academics and commentators have all of a sudden forgotten their earlier proclamations of having solved economic instability and now become "crisis conscious." These economists had believed that crises could be avoided, the swings of the economic pendulum damped, the irregularities of the cycle ironed out, the days of boom and slump ended, by some adaptation of the monetary or credit system, by state intervention, by increased "elasticity" of wages or by a more equal distribution of incomes with the help of taxation; in other word, by reforms which would improve the workings of the capitalist system without touching its basis - private property in the means of production. Their various proposals for guaranteeing a healthy economy and full employment were based on the conviction that nothing is fundamentally wrong with the economic system. It is a symptom of the general crisis of capitalism that this naive faith in the internal harmony of the capitalist system is shattered in the minds both of practical businessmen and of the theoreticians of capitalism.

Capitalism’s charlatans mistake the shadow for the substance and think that if only there is faith all will be well. They have not the slightest knowledge of the basis of economic crises. They fail to see that crises are not produced because of lack of faith, but that there is no faith because the markets are stagnant. At such a period everyone seeks to realise their assets into hard cash. Accordingly demands are made all round for obligations to be fulfilled. These demands sometimes overtake banks, who are unable to pay over, with the result that a financial crisis ensues. It is to stabilise the banks and ensure confidence that the recent bail-out and nationalisations and take-overs have been taking place in the financial world. But it is all in vain. So long as production is carried on for profit there is bound to periodically result “crises” on the markets of the world. Wall St and the City of London  may well seek reform of their regulation but they cannot avoid the convulsion that accrues from time to time, because the markets, both home and foreign, become congested. It is only when production is free from the market and orderly organised upon a basis of social well-being instead of private gain can we escape the anarchy of capitalism.

This system cannot ensure the harmonious growth of the economy, cannot ensure work and well being for all the working people, cannot avoid economic crises and the destruction of the productive forces and the values created by the sweat and blood of the working people. The strategy of the wealthy in the conditions of the crisis is aimed at intensifying exploitation, further increasing the concentration of capital and production, carrying out various changes to create the best conditions for the extraction of maximum profits, shifting capital to the areas of maximum capitalist profit whether at home or abroad.

The employers are shifting the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the working people and increasing the tribute it exacts from the whole of society. The exploitation of the workers is being intensified through the cutting of real wages, imposition of redundancies, the intensification of work through speed-ups etc., the imposition of worse working conditions, and so on, facilitated by the pressure of the vast reserve army of the unemployed. State expenditure is being transferred away from social spending such as on health, education, benefits and the burden of direct and indirect taxation is being increased to cover the state expenditure as a whole.

The capitalist class pretends that it has the solution to the crisis and promises “recovery” provided the workers accept the shifting of the burden of the crisis onto their backs. The government is demanding further sacrifices of the workers in terms of further reduction in real wages, further increases in productivity, etc., as the condition of ensuring recovery. But in reality neither has control over the course of the  crisis. The demand that the workers accept further unemployment and further speed-ups and further reductions in real wages, social services, benefits, etc., is simply a demand that the workers accept still more of the burden of the crisis on their backs so as to ensure the recovery of profits which is the real concern of business.

The motive of capitalist production is profit and the only issue of “recovery” for the rich is recovery of profits. Such “recovery” will not alter at all the condition of the working class as wage slaves, or change the conditions of the exploited in relation to the exploiters. The recovery of the profits  can only take place on the basis of the further intensification of exploitation, the further impoverishment and ruin of working  people.  Because of its political implications this point must be stressed, especially in connection with state spending on the social services. That capitalism is no longer able to finance an adequate welfare state, and is in fact driven to make severe cuts in this area, indicates not that spending on the welfare state is the cause of the crisis but signifies that capitalism can no longer provide the basic requirements (health care, education, social services, etc.) for the millions

Some on the Left imply that the Marxist analysis of economic crises can be put down to under-consumptionism which very briefly means capitalism reduces the ability of the people to consume these goods by continually driving down their wages and living standards until workers are unable to purchase the very goods they themselves have produced. As inviting as this explanation appears it is wrong.  Economic crises are due to the basic features of the capitalist system and one feature is the anarchy of production. Businesses decide what kind of things to produce and how many to produce either individually or in small groups. Production is not planned by any central agency. Over time, disproportions between the activities of various firms and different industries eventually occur. The effect of this unplanned method of production under capitalism causes either too many products or too few products on the market. If we take into account that even in modern monopoly capitalism with its high concentration of production and capital there are many thousands of independent productive units, every one producing for the unpredictable contingencies of a vast market, every one dependent on the decisions of millions of other private producers and consumers, and every one directed only by the desire to make the maximum profit, it is not so astonishing that this absurd system tends to break down. It is astonishing that it functions somehow, for some time. The whole process of production, normally a process of expanding production, can only continue if the mass of capitalist producers find on the market a sufficient demand to enable them to sell their product at what they regard as a reasonable profit and a sufficient supply of the means of production (machinery, raw materials and labour) and at such prices as will enable them to reproduce their capital, to continue their production on an enlarged scale.

This feature of capitalism – the anarchy of production and the arise of  disproportions in the economy affect the capitalists’ profits. When businessmen do not make the expected level of profits, they run down production. Order cancellations to sub-contractors, factory closures, and bankruptcies cause a chain reaction leading to economic paralysis, which is called a crisis. Part of the chain reaction of the economic slow-down and contraction is a falling level of working-class consumption. Another reaction is growing unemployment. However, it is the economic contraction which causes a decline in wages and working-class consumption and growing unemployment, not under-consumption by the working class that causes capitalist economic crises. Marx and Engels repudiated a crude, oversimplified theory of under-consumption. Marx points out that "crises are precisely always preceded by a period in which wages rise generally" and that this "relative prosperity" of the working class occurs always only "as a harbinger of a coming crisis." Engels stresses the point that under-consumption of the masses, i.e. the limitation of their consumption to the bare minimum, existed thousands of years before capitalism emerged, but only with capitalism does the new phenomenon of over-production emerge. Under-consumption is a chronic fact in capitalist society while crises recur periodically.

Why is the question important? The under-consumptionist line channels the working class away from militant class struggle and into dead-end reformism. Struggle is confined to making appeals through the system to this or that politician.

For the reason that if an organisation supports the line that under-consumption is the reason for capitalist economic crises then there is no need for revolution. All the working class has to do to solve its problems is to demand some tax relief and extra spending on the part of the capitalist state. It is a return to Keynesian intervention with increased government spending and investment in infrastructures. As long as the capitalists are in control, production is based on profits not social needs, and workers will never have cheap, abundant medical care, food, education, leisure activities, and so on. Just having higher wages or less taxes does not make capitalists produce more. Those can simply be “financed" by printing more money. Total production may remain the same while prices rises with the ensuing inflation.

In Marxist terms the real question at issue here is this: Is the capitalist system one founded on the production of goods and services to satisfy human needs, or is it one based on the production of surplus value in which the production of use values is purely incidental to the process?

As we know Marx answers this latter question in the affirmative. The production of wealth takes place only in so far as the production of surplus value takes place. So to the extent that goods, wealth and income are, via public spending, generated at the expense of surplus value, far from alleviating the crisis of capitalism such spending must only serve to aggravate its underlying contradiction – which takes the form of an inability to generate sufficient profit on the capital currently in existence. In financing its activities the state creams off a portion of surplus value from private capital. Even if we assume that taxation were reduced and private investment increased by an equivalent amount this would not necessarily lead to an increase in surplus value. For this would depend entirely on the conditions of production, the conditions for the extraction of surplus value, etc. Only by a concrete examination of these conditions can that question be answered one way or the other. If, on the other hand, the surplus value which was otherwise creamed off by the state was to lie idle in the hands of the capitalists this could clearly lead to no increase in surplus value. For such surplus value would no longer be capital but merely a hoard.

The progress of new technology, the growth of the productivity of labour, which is the necessary pre-condition of an improvement of the living standard of the people, of progress to a higher level of civilisation, becomes, under the contradictory conditions of the capitalist system, a curse, a cause of permanent economic insecurity, of mass unemployment and recurring crises. The cure of the evil is not to stop or to retard the development of productive forces, but so to change the basis of economic life that the satisfaction of the needs of the people, instead of capitalist profit, becomes the driving and regulating principle.

The Hoops seek Loop-holes

Ten days ago, at Celtic's annual general meeting a motion by the Celtic Trust calling for Celtic to ensure that each of its employees is paid the living wage of £7.45 per hour rather than the minimum wage of £6.31 per hour was thrown out by the rich men and money-changers who hold sway at Celtic Park. Jeanette Findlay of the trust stated during the debate that preceded this act of corporate and social irresponsibility that it was a decision that "shamed you and shamed us". Two of the three main reasons cited by the club for rejecting the living wage proposal were these: that it would cost £500,000 annually to implement, and that no other British club does it. Lest we forget; in the last two seasons, Celtic have spent around £10m on fees and wages for three strikers .

Celtic support still occupies the lowest rung of Britain's socioeconomic ladder. Its bedrock is in neighbourhoods of Glasgow's East End and Lanarkshire where the indicators of poverty and illness are among the highest in Europe. Many of those who are in work will be labouring for barely the national minimum wage. A top-up to the living wage would make a considerable improvement in their lives. This winter,they will encounter fuel poverty and food shortages. Many will need hand-outs from the increasing number of food banks in Glasgow. Yet, and let's be frank here, the so-called living wage isn't really a wage to live on at all.

The Living Wage Foundation calculates that it is the minimum required to allow a person to rent property, run a car and eat healthily. But then you might choose to include factors such as the ruthless exploitation by some landlords of the shortage of social housing, the extortion of the energy cartel, the vagaries of petrol prices and the onerous taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. A family of two parents and two children cannot survive on £7.45 an hour.

Celtic's group revenue increased by 47.7% to £75.82m this year and its profit before tax was £9.74m. The remuneration of its chief executive, Peter Lawwell, was £999,591. The members of the plc board each receive a £25,000 emolument for the onerous task of attending monthly board meetings and travelling all over Europe first class. They include Dermot Desmond, one of Britain's richest men, and Brian Wilson, the former Labour minister. (See here for list of directors)

Celtic FC  is a business, as is Rangers FC which also emerged from the Glasgow working class. Neither club has any connection to its origin any more. Bread and circuses and football is the circus. Football clubs are business designed to take money from the poor and give it to the rich, Celtic are no different. They are ideal for lining the pockets of the board.

Taken from here 

Salmond v Nehru

At a fund-raising do,  Salmond quoted Pandit Nehru, the first prime minister of an independent India: "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."

Socialist Courier can counter with our own Nehru quote: “What exactly is nationalism? I do not know, and it is extremely difficult to define. In the case of a country under foreign domination it is easy to define what nationalism is. It is anti-foreign power. But in a free country it is something positive. Even so, I think that a large element of it is negative or anti-, and so sometimes we find that nationalism, which is a healthy force, becomes—maybe after liberation—unhealthy, retrogressive, reactionary, or expansive.”

AN UNHEALTHY NHS

Half a million elderly people a year are being unnecessarily admitted to hospital as emergency patients because of stark failings in community care, an official Government report has warned. 'The review, into NHS and social care services in England, found almost one in 10 over 75s had been taken to hospital with avoidable conditions - a rise of over 20 per cent in just five years. The Care Quality Commission, which carried out the analysis, said their findings suggested that some GPs, care homes and community health services were failing to treat vulnerable people "in the way they deserve". Inspectors found safety concerns in one in five nursing homes. Problems included failing to give out medicines safely, not carrying out risk assessments and understaffing." (Independent, 21 November)The report also identified a link between high staff turnover and number of reported deaths of residents. No matter where you look at the NHS it is a service that is underfunded but it is elderly workers who probably suffer the most. RD

Big Business Versus Little Business

It is the historic function of Big Business is to expropriate Little Business. To survive a recession Big Business swallows up all the other businesses. It does this directly by forcing others into bankruptcy, or by mergers and consolidations. It does this indirectly by its control over government.

A recession, however, does not strike in all directions with the same force nor with the same effect. One factor which separates Big Business from all other businesses, and that is that within the framework of continued capitalist society it is practically invulnerable to bankruptcy - too big to fail.  It alone has the capital and reserves necessary to stand the strain. It has the full and complete support of government in any crisis. If Big Business goes, the whole economy goes. And so Big Business can not be allowed to go.

A typical small enterprise has usually expanded its plant on the basis of bank credit given it when times were good and turnover active.It has also given credit to others but when a slump arrives it greatly curtailed sales. It can only sell more if he can reduce prices, but if he reduces prices he must sell the material he has only hand below what he paid for it. The company might be willing to sell at a loss if it could collect its credits, but being in similar straits his debtors cannot pay either. They want an extension of time. Some may be worse off go out of business adding to the problem. In the meantime the bank is pressing for their loans to be re-paid. Finally, in desperation, the small producer decides to sell its goods at greatly discounted prices, even below costs, so as to clear at least part of its loans to the bank. Now the problem is to find customers for his special offers. Customers may buy more merchandise at the new sale price, but even if the raw materials, the fixed capital costs,  his plant and overhead expenses are far too heavy for regards the  reduced volume of sales even at the lower prices. Then the  the banks are no longer willing to make the same loans to him as before, at least, not on the same low-interest terms. The only alternative left is for the business to survive is to cut wages, increase the intensity of labor, lengthen hours, employ casual and temporary staff, and worsen working conditions. Which is exactly what all the other Little Businesses are doing, as well. Eventually there comes a time when the business goes under and the laid-off workers add to the lengthening unemployment lines, ready to under-cut one another for any opportunity for a job.

Big Business can cut costs not by simply cutting wages nor by worsening working conditions. A far better way is open to it: the way of new technology, and  the path of increased productivity though  the improvement of the means and process of production, so that labour can produce much more than before with the same amount of energy in the same time and for the same wage. There is a limit to the working day or to the speed of the laborer; there is little limit to scientific progress. Big Business is intimately interlocked in production sales and in finance. It controls the banks and financial institutions. It makes loans to itself, and, if necessary, the government will help it tide over any given situation with bail-outs.

 Big Business  takes advantage of the bankruptcy of others. It can buy out the auctioned materials or newly vacated factory sites for a song. It can expand its chain by purchasing all the branch outlets. It can merge and consolidate the smaller firms to itself. If can break the back of any rival. If extends the concentration and centralization of capital to the point that it manages the projects of the government itself. Big Business, in control, throws the effects of the recession , where it can, onto the shoulders of all others who do not possess the same amount of lobbying clout in government circles. In the case of the sub-prime mortgage scandal the Big Banks losses were underwritten by the government . The government will be left holding the bag, not Big Business.
Taxation is a universal necessity. The problem is not whether taxes should be raised, or the public debt increased, but rather who will contribute what share of the funds collected by government and through whom and for whose benefit will payments be made. It is one thing if Little Business is in control of government and wants to “sock the big corporations”, it is another matter when Big Business controls government, as it does and must under present-day circumstances. Is it no wonder that it is Big Business that ends up paying little corporate tax and using loop-holes to export its profits abroad? It is why it is the smaller businessmen who decry government spending and demand budget cuts for Big Business need not take a s trong position of cutting down government expenses during the crisis  since the burden will fall the heaviest on other sectors of the economy. Of course, Little Business will still  demand such measures as tax reduction and subsidies to help keep it going. They will demand protectionist policies to retain their domestic markets. Big Business, though, is already trans-national , they can beat off foreign rivals, they actively engage exporting and investing abroad. How can other countries pay for Big Business products unless  allowed to export themselves?

To pay social security and pensions, Big Business is once again more able to stand the tax strain than the other business groups. When they buy-out the smaller fish,  Big Business lays off hordes of workers. Thus, on the over-all picture, Big Business puts in less than its share and draws out more than its share. Why should it be opposed to such spending when once more the burden will be greater on Little Business?

Unable to defeat the influence of Big Business in the corridors of power, Small Businesses are left with the remaining way of cutting government spending and having what there is of it re-directed to their own benefit - by advocating slashing workers welfare benefits, of hurting those even more vulnerable than themselves!  So let us be clear what we say - A plague on both businesses.

The Dirty Five

A new study from Climate Accountability Institute has 'named and shamed' at least 90 corporations which it says are responsible for almost two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions

 The top 5 corporate offenders

1.     ChevronTexaco  

Unsurprisingly, Chervon Texaco is the top emitter of man-made carbon emissions among investor-owned companies. The multinational energy corporation is active in more than 180 countries and is one of the world’s largest corporations.

2.     ExxonMobil

Oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil comes in close second among investor-owned companies. In the past, ExxonMobil has been accused of downplaying the global warming threat as well as funding groups that refute climate change.

3. Saudi Aramaco

Third place goes to state-owned Saudi Aramco. Owned by Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco holds the world’s largest oil field and is estimated to be one of the world’s most valuable companies.

4.     BP

Oil tycoon company BP comes in fourth place. Ironically, the corporation was one of the first to come out and publicly support scientific consensus on climate change.

5.     Gazprom 

Russia’s Gazprom, a state-owned company, rounds out the top five dirtiest polluters. The company is the one of the largest extractors of natural gas. It most recently was the target of an action by Greenpeace activists protesting Russia’s oil drilling in the Arctic.

The Green economy or Greed economy

Scotland will become the first state in the world to put a price on the value of its natural environment and the benefits it provides. Academics have estimated that nature is worth between £21.5bn and £23bn a year to Scotland’s economy, but Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond wants a far more in-depth study. He pledged to calculate the monetary value of Scotland’s natural capital, the cost of depleting it and to communicate its importance across business and society. He will also set up collaborative projects to take “tangible action” to protect Scotland’s natural capital.

Supporters of the scheme argue that because most development decisions are based on narrow economic considerations, in terms of the direct costs and benefits, natural resources such as peat should be valued in the same way to ensure their importance is not overlooked. Peat bogs act as water regulators, soaking up rainfall and slowing water flows, helping to curb the frequency and intensity of floods. They also purify the water, store huge amounts of carbon and are important for biodiversity, by nurturing wildlife such as breeding waders. The idea that the whole of the natural world, trees, parks, forests, landscapes can be costed is at the heart of this “Natural Capital”.

The World Development Movement descended on the conference dressed as dodgy salesmen pretending to sell Ben Nevis.The problem with the idea of natural capital starts with the assumption that nature’s processes can be effectively managed as commodities.  Relegating our environment to mere natural capital leads to the next step,  to convert value into price and then sell chunks of nature on the market. All manner of financialisation strategies have emerged to securitise ‘environmental services’, most obviously in the carbon markets. The bait of revenue from natural capital is simply a cover for continued rape of natural resources. With the “green economy,” capitalism is going to fully incorporate nature as part of  capital. They are identifying specific functions of ecosystems and biodiversity that can be priced and then brought into a global market as “Natural Capital.” Ecosystems provide trillions of dollars in clean water, flood protection, fertile lands, clean air, pollination, disease control – to mention just a few. These services are essential to maintaining livable conditions and are delivered by the world’s largest utilities. So how does capitalism secure this enormously valuable infrastructure and its services? The same way it does for electricity, potable water, or natural gas. We pay for it.  It is to privatize the functions and processes of nature, label them environmental services, put a price on them and bring them into the market. Most promoters of “green economy” are very straightforward on this: if there is no pricing of some functions of nature, new market mechanisms and guarantees for their profit,  business will not invest in ecosystem services and biodiversity.

Green capitalists promote the view that cash strapped governments do not have the money to take care of nature and that the only way to get the billons of dollars needed for the preservation of water, forests, biodiversity, agriculture and others is through private investment. The future of Nature relies on the private sector, but the private sector will not invest the billions of dollars that they accumulated by exploiting labor and nature’s wealth, without incentives. And so, governments need to offer them this new business of making profit from the processes and functions of nature. And in steps the politicians like Salmond.  The green capitalist’s agenda is a cynical and opportunistic manipulation of the ecological and social crises. Rather than addressing the real structural causes of a profit-system, capitalists are  using “green” language to launch a new round of expansion. Corporations and the financial sector need governments such as the Scottish Parliament to institutionalize the new rules of the “Green Economy” to guarantee them against risks and to create the institutional framework for the financialization of nature. Many governments are willing partners in this project as Salmond has shown  as they believe it will stimulate a new phase of growth and accumulation.

 Given the lessons of the world economic crisis should we entrust the environment in the hands of the financiers? Describing climate change, global warming and world-wide pollution as market failures implies once the system is fixed business can resume as normal. The current environmental and climate crisis is not a simple market failure. The solution is not to put a price on nature. Nature is not a form of capital. It is wrong to say that we only value that which has a price, an owner, and brings profits. The market mechanisms that permit exchange among human beings and nations have proven incapable of an equitable distribution of wealth. The problem is not the price of nature, but s the values of democracy, of governance, of society, and of humanity. Green capitalism is  destructive because it is premised on the principle that t the rules of market will save nature. We need to overthrow capitalism and develop a system that is based on the Community of the Earth. Capitalism won't save the planet

Services Surplus to Requirement

In its normal state, capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid off. But during periods of economic crisis as we all encounter “hard times", its ending becomes an imperative.

Basically there are two sorts of unemployment. The first is the unemployment of the idle leisure class, the parasites and leeches, who while unemployed spends millions in conspicuous consumption. The second is the enforced unemployment of the wage slave.

We are told that there exists free labour. The employer is free to offer us terms of any kind – we are free to starve unless we accept these terms. Workers create profits, such huge profits that even in their wildest extravagances. Such is the “normal” paradox of capitalism that idle factories and idle workers side by side with the hunger of people throughout the world.

Capitalism greedily demands more and more profits, and uses faster machines to  produce goods and profits at a faster and faster rate. Workers are thrown on the streets. During periods of higher unemployment, there is a corresponding  increase of prostitution, murders and suicides. The defenders of law and order  point at the mounting crime wave, but of course do not dare to examine the economic cause or the capitalist system. During periods of unemployment, disease and death rate increase. Among workers these are always high, but during hard times they rise to terrible levels. Fed on adulterated foods, poorly housed, the workers become more vulnerable than ever to disease. During periods of unemployment the wages of those at work are slashed by the boss and the reply to any protest is: “there are plenty who want your job if you don’t”

Every worker must ask: What is to blame?

The skilled worker thinks it is the introduction of  new technology; the older worker blames the younger and vice versa; men accuse  women; white workers point the finger at blacks: the native born say the cause in the immigrant ; the deluded Labour voter  says it’s the Tories; the Tory worker says its the Labour government.

The False Allure of Palliatives

Hungry workers fall easy prey to glib charlatans. Amid the chaos all sorts of plans and cure-alls  appear from all sides to save the day. The “best brains” in the country are hired by the rulers to patch up the shaky capitalist economy. There is an attempt to hide the class struggle with the propaganda that all classes must cooperate for the good of the nation, must subordinate all their own interests to this end. Economically, it means the saving of the capitalist system at the expense of greatly lowering the standard of living of the workers. Too often the economic snake-oil peddlers suggest all manner of bank and money reform. They see the trouble with capitalism  in its system of exchange. As a matter of fact the exchange or money system is but a reflection of the production system, and is so closely bound up with this that they can no more be separated than the arm from the body. To change from one money system to another (a return to the gold standard, for instance) would only add new confusion. Some government interventionists follow Keynes and advocate an inflationary policy but in the end those who sell also have to buy, so that what they gain in one way they lose in another. This situation applies to industrialists, producers, farmers and such, and to the State itself. The unemployed find that the government is cheating them through inflation. With one hand the government hands out “relief” with the other hand, it so raisies up the cost of living. As for those working in the industries, their wages never can rise as fast or as high as the cost of living in periods of inflation. They suffer a direct loss in real wages and thus are made to bear the full expenses of the crisis.
All the supposed  panaceas suffer from the following fundamental defects:
1. They assume that all that is necessary is for some smart think-tank or expert to think up a “plan”, something perfect, and that by a mere argument the whole world system of production and exchange will be changed so that all will have plenty.
2. They assume that they can keep capitalism and yet eliminate its anarchy, chaos and contradictions. They assume that they can stop the development of capitalism and stop its evils.
3. They believe that they can redistribute the wealth of the country without sharp class struggles leading to revolution.  Capitalists understand that the system of distribution goes hand in hand with the system of production. If workers are given more than enough barely to live, they would not return to work in the factories for some exploitative boss to make money out of their labour. Factories are run for profit and not for humanity; and any attempt to take away the private wealth and ownership from the capitalists and give the control over the means of production to the workers will be met by class war. The reformists always forget to state that the bosses control the government, that the state is a capitalist state.

The Right To Work

 It is a big mistake for the unemployed to demand  “We Want Work!”. All our lives we have worked and toiled for the  capitalists. Now we are out of work  the demand is—more work!  “We want work! We must have work! Without work we are lost!” What master can object when his slave devotedly exclaims: “All I want is to work for you, to slave for you even more than in the past. My whole life is at your service.” The capitalist likes to see the workers work. It means his wealth, capital will be increased and that he can try to beat his competitor down better. It means that his workers are still under his discipline. The employer knows that every bit of work that the workers do increases his power and stability. It is not work that the capitalists fear—it is the class struggle. The boss fears that the workers will demand that the stuff which they produce should be turned over to them as the direct producers, that the factories should be owned and controlled by the working-class and the capitalists eliminated. The slogan “We want work!” takes attention away from the main job, that of wiping out the capitalists and their entire work system. How can you attack the system which hires labor and exploits it, when you are clamoring for work under that system, demanding and beseeching it? And if work is such a fine cure for unemployment, then how does it come about that just before the crisis began everyone was busy, everyone was at work and wages were relatively high? Is it not true that just before every capitalist crisis we have a period of feverish activity where everyone is working full speed under capitalism? hese people who shout “We want work!” fail to realize that it was precisely because everyone was working that we did have such a terrible crisis. The workers were being exploited harder than ever, they were turning over vast amounts of stuff to the bosses who had to sell this stuff and could not. Not being able to sell their goods at a profit, the capitalists were forced to close down their plants and increase the unemployment lines because the workers had produced too much, because they had worked too hard. The slogan “We want work!” implies that what is wrong with the present system of society and what has caused the depression is not overwork but under-work. Or, on the other hand they imply that it is not the work system that is to blame but the “system of distribution.” In both cases they attack the bosses not because he is driving the workers too hard but because he did not give them enough work. It must be constantly kept in mind that the demand for work, is the demand to work under present social conditions, with capitalist control and direction. But what is this capitalist control? It is a control that destroys the crops, that lays waste the soil, that rots the products, that rusts the machinery, that devastates the land, that kills the humans—that is capitalist control. To demand work under capitalism means to demand work that increases the destructiveness, the waste, the misery of the world.

The natural demand ought to be “No more work until we get what we have produced. The stuff in the warehouses is ours”. It is clear that we must demand not work but raise the slogan: “No work until we get control over production” The demand “We want work!” is a demand that blinds the workers and prevents them from seeing that they do not have to work much to eat, that the workers have produced plenty which the boss has grabbed for himself. What the unemployed must fight for is to end the capitalist control over the factories and industries. Unemployment crises are as old as modern capitalism, and thus it is clear the causes and roots of unemployment lie in how capitalism works. To feed the hungry and unemployed, we do not have to create new “work schemes”. There are enough factories, there are enough goods for all to have plenty. Instead of demanding work, it is up to the working class of this country to demand to get what they have already produced and to demand control over the factories and other means of production which they themselves have produced.

When the unemployed raise the demand “We want work!”, this acts as a tool in the hands of every employer who now can blackmail his work-force: “You see, there are plenty after your job, they like your job and are trying to get it. If you don’t behave I shall fire you and put them in your place". In other words, this slogan “We want work” throws the whole army of unemployed against those at work and divides the working-class into two antagonistic sections. Each time the factory workers want to strike against wage cuts or for better conditions, they are reminded that there are millions of unemployed who are praying, yea, are demanding, work and will do anything to get it. Thus the slogan “We want work!” helps to throw labour into a panic and fasten the control of the bosses more strongly than ever. The demand “We want work” means that the workers declare they would be very glad to return to the old state of affairs that existed, the return of the fiction of the “good old days”.

Conclusion

This article  has tried to make it plain that unemployment will never end so long as there is capitalism, and that to fight unemployment means to fight to overthrow the capitalist system. Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism will unemployment be done away with. A socialist society alone can eliminate the terrors of unemployment. Capitalism can be replaced and a new system offer employment and plenty for all. Unemployment calls for a radical cure not a reformist salve to heal the ulcer and retain the body of capitalism. The only cure for unemployment is the overthrow of the capitalist system. There can be no solution to the unemployment problem under capitalism. The solution can be found only in the socialist revolution on a world scale. Tinkering is useless. The problem of abolishing unemployment by having a revolution is nowhere near as difficult as the impossible task of trying to abolish it without one! The capitalist system cannot give jobs and cannot “cure” unemployment, or make our lives more comfortable. Let the workers, employed and unemployed, unite their mighty strength together to get rid of the parasitic system that condemns them in the midst of plenty to hunger like beggars for a crust of bread. To eliminate unemployment means we must to proceed with abolishing the market economy. Socialists know there is no other remedy but the one we advocate

POVERTY AND HOMELESSNESS

Personal debt in Britain has reached £1.4 trillion - almost the same amount as Britain's national economic output - according to a report that warns debt is wreaking havoc on people's mental health and wellbeing. 'Poorer people are "bearing the brunt of a storm" during which average household debt has risen to £54,000  nearly double what it was a decade ago, the report by the Centre for Social Justice think-tank warns. The report, entitled Maxed Out, found that almost half of households in the lowest income group spent more than a quarter of their income on debt repayments in 2011. More than 5,000 people are being made homeless every year as a result of mortgage or rent debts.' (Guardian, 20 November) When politicians reviewing the recent economic downturn speak of "us all being in this together" it must sound bizarre to those 5,000 people being made homeless every year. RD

Social Democracy

Democracy promotes the illusion that all the citizens have indeed equal rights, and that, therefore, it is impossible for a minority to tyrannise over a majority. If this does, it is exceptional and must be the fault of the majority themselves to have neglected their own interests. It is only a question of getting the right men in sufficient numbers on to the representative bodies, especially into Parliament, and that they, when there, should do the right thing, especially that they should only demand that which is in the interest of the majority of the people, and which the people will, therefore, support. Thus voting becomes not only the central point of all political life, it becomes the paramount interest; and from the point of view of bourgeois democracy, for whom the law is the result and expression of the popular will, and at the same time the determining force in social and political life.

 The Socialist Party is one of class-struggle, which is out to conquer the state-power in order to use it for the liberation of the proletariat, and has no holy reverence for the laws which regulate and protect private property. Nor does it believe that this system of private property ownership can be abolished from the world by merely exercising the vote. Where the political and economic associations of the working class are on a solid basis and well organised, filled with class-consciousness, there is no room for riot or insurrection.

 Violent action by individuals will find an echo and only flourish where the working class movement is weak and allows itself to be  controlled by passing incidents and circumstances. In such situations despair of the lack of power of organisation creeps in and individual activists begin to believe that they are only hindered by the majority, and could attain more by acting independently and autonomously. Such militancy is valueless.  Politically they are for the most part futile and mischievous. Often these tactics attract  unsocial elements who break the laws, not in order to serve the workers cause, but merely to cover their own crimes in the name of the revolution. If the revolutionary becomes a robber, the thief proclaims himself to be a revolutionary. Terrorism weakens the workers movement and it that of our enemy. Terrorism  unites the ruling class as they take refuge behind police and military absolutism. And this rule of brute force must always be injurious to the workers struggle as it is always the weaker party. A strong movement has no need for violent deeds on the part of individuals or minorities. The individualists who rushes ahead of the rest, or chooses “short cuts”, more often than not lose their way and become lost.

A dictatorship can only exist so long as it answers to the wish of the people. If that ceases to be the case, and if the will of the people expresses itself in a decided manner, it has to submit. If it does not do so, then the people possess the right to use force.  But this is not the case where the political process grants to all the citizens the same rights, where the expression of the popular will is not restricted by extra-legal forces. The Socialist Party is opposed to violence but if it ever becomes necessary for us to enlist such a strategy it will be to wipe out capitalism, the common enemy of the oppressed and downtrodden in all countries.

 The Socialist Party of Great Britain  is a democratic party to the highest degree, since it wants to organise the freedom of all and to give every individual the means to fully realise it. The socialist association of producers and the common property of the instruments of production have become the conditions for universal liberation. Social democracy, as its name implies, before its meaning was devalued by its adoption by various reformist liberal parties, is the application to the social life of the nation, of the fundamental principles of democracy. Social democracy must proceed from the bottom upward, whereas capitalist “bourgeois" democracy is organised from above downward. This conception of socialism answers all the fears of a bureaucratic state, ruling and ordering the lives of every individual , and thus gives assurance that the future will be an extension of the freedom of the individual, and not the suppression of it.  It is the fullest democratic control. Nation-states, territories, or provinces will exist only as geographical expressions, and have no existence as sources of governmental power, though they may be centres of some administrative bodies of resources.

Our present social system is altogether against the weak and certainly in favour of the strong. It is  a struggle in which a person possessing the least conscience wins the race. The weak are crushed down and on their prostrate bodies rise to eminence the unprincipled men, who crush them. The principles of socialism aim at giving exercise to the highest and very best qualities of human life. Times were when we could not advance the social system as we can do to-day. It was not clear that we could have a sufficient food supply without working a considerable more number of hours than we now find necessary. Now, we know no limit to nature’s productiveness. To-day the cry is advanced that we are over-produced. Too much food, while at the same time there are too many hungry people; too much clothes and an immense number going about in rags.

 Are we to be satisfied with this condition of things when it is in our power to alter it? Surely, we deserve  something better. How many young men and women have said that there is nothing for them worth living for, and that they would almost as soon die. How long is this condition of things to remain with us? What is a life worth, unless it has been doing something to add to the sum of happiness of the human family? This social system of ours is wrong in every aspect.  We have to make changes those changes to come quickly. The thoughts and actions of reformers  who let things run as they are retard progress by taking us in the wrong direction. There must be unity and co-operation if we are to take upon ourselves to take the responsibility of proving that we can accomplish what they are aiming at in all parts of the civilised world — to establish socialism. We think that we can do it. We can if we set our minds upon it.

“The best State-form is that in which the social antagonisms are not obscured, and are not forcibly or artificially covered up or restrained. The best State-form is that in which these conflicts can be fought out freely, thereby attaining their proper solution.” - Marx, “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”, June 1848.

Profits and Pollution before Penicuik

Proposals for a huge new opencast coal mine in Midlothian have been given the go-ahead. The plans will see 10 million tonnes of coal excavated over 10 years at the 500-acre Cauldhall site  which will cover an area the size of 1,000 football pitches, near Penicuik.

Nine councillors voted in favour of the mine, which planning officers recommended be approved because it is in the national interest.

An action group called Stop Cauldhall Opencast, said the decision was a "travesty of the planning process". Malcolm Spaven from the protest group said: "What's the point in Scottish and Local Planning Policy if it can all be torn to shreds at the whim of a planning committee?"

Green MSP for Lothian Alison Johnstone, who is a member of Holyrood's economy and energy committee, said: "The impacts on local communities from this proposal, such as noise, dust and heavy traffic, are completely unacceptable. It is utterly illogical to approve yet more coal mining given a whole host of factors. Cockenzie power station is switched off so there's nowhere local for this coal to go." She added: "Scotland has already failed its first two annual climate targets so more fossil fuel is the last thing we need, and we've seen landscapes across Scotland scarred by opencast being abandoned by companies that go bust. Hargreaves' plan is contrary to the local plan and the council's economic development strategy."

WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said it sent a "terrible signal about Scotland's commitment to tackling climate change".

ZILLIONAIRES AND NONSENSE

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson has told people to stop bashing the super-rich. 'Mr Johnson accused "everyone from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Nick Clegg" of bullying the group he defined as "zillionaires" and said the most rich of all should receive "automatic knighthoods". ........ Mr Johnson said the rich deserve our "humble and hearty thanks" for their contributions to charity and the exchequer - quoting figures that say the top 1 per cent pay 29.8 per cent of all UK income tax.' (Independent, 18 November) Since Mr Johnsons's zillionaires tend to get knighthoods anyway we wonder at his concern for them, especially when all their wealth has come from the exploitation of the impoverished minority. RD

“All for one and one for all”

Human nature is supposed to be such as to make socialism a mere utopia, a fantastic and unrealisable dream. Socialists explain that human ‘nature’ will reflect the character of the future society just as at present it assumes the competitive, selfish, grasping character of capitalist society. When you take into consideration the greed, the strife, the cheating and the violence that exist under the system of private property, you are amazed, not that the human animal is so bad but that, in spite of everything, man has not completely degenerated into a wild beast. Let no one imagine that we socialists assert that under socialism all men will be born with equal abilities. Just as at present there will be individuals with greater and lesser abilities, everyone will be educated to use his capacities to serve society and not to exploit others. For the person of greater talents, socialism, by doing away with the struggle for food and clothing, will mean a far greater opportunity for the exercise of those talents.

If the capitalists were to depend upon force alone to guarantee their privileged position, their situation would be precarious indeed. After all they represent only a small minority of the people. The overwhelming majority of the population would benefit by a change from the present system to socialism. Against such a decisive majority the instruments of force at the disposal of the capitalist class could not prevail. If the working masses would be aroused and determined to abolish capitalism, the police and the army would be helpless, even if we assume that all of the soldiers would be loyal to the capitalist class.

What the capitalist class must depend upon, more than on force, is deceit. All the force in the world would not avail the capitalists if they could not deceive and confuse the people. Even their police and their armies would not be reliable because the police and the army are composed of people who come from the working class and who permit themselves to be used against their class brothers simply because they do not know any better. The rulers of our present social order see to it that the workers are subjected to a system of schooling and training which succeeds in making them believe that the present system is the best possible system, and that if there is anything wrong with it, it is only of a minor character and can be easily cured by changing the people who are in control of things or implementing certain reforms. It is this deception, more than anything else, that assures the existence of a social order which brings so much misery and suffering to the vast majority of the people.

 What institutions exist for the purpose of deceiving the masses? There are quite a few, the most important being the church, the media, and the educational system. From early childhood every person is subjected to the influence of ideas which tend to make him or her respect authority, and to believe in things as they are. Obedience is the virtue stressed by religious teachers.

The members of the ruling class depend upon the schools, more perhaps than upon the churches, to instill into the minds of the working-class youth a proper respect for all the institutions and ideas which ensure the continuance of the present system. Above all, the educational system attempts to imbue the young people with an intense patriotism. To be ready to fight and die for one's country (which, of course, means the country owned by the capitalists) is pictured as the highest of all virtues. The average boy or girl is graduated from school firmly convinced that the economic, political and social ideas and ideals that they have been taught are correct and" necessary. They are prepared to fight, not in the interest of their class, but for things as they are, for the benefit of those who exploit them.

While the educational system, both religious and secular, molds the minds of the people in their earlier years, the   mass media is the chief instrument in the work of confusing and deceiving them in later life. Day in and day out the capitalist press TV and radio turns loose a veritable flood of lies and half-truths, the sum and substance of which is that capitalism is the best of all possible systems and that only people with vicious tendencies would want to change that
system. And there is very little that those of us, who want to establish a new social order, can do in order to counter-act the propaganda of the capitalism. To publish a paper,  to own a TV channel or radio station  requires tremendous capital. They are all owned by wealthy capitalists and depend for their advertisements on the big business people.  For every worker who has a
chance to read a paper advocating the ideas of socialism, there are tens of thousands who read nothing except the capitalist press. The cinema, too, subtly spreading the same poison that numbs the thinking workers.

Influenced by the false ideas propagated by the capitalist class the workers not only fail to struggle against their real enemies but actually permit themselves to be arrayed against one another. They allow themselves to be divided on racial, national and religious grounds. Prejudices are fostered amongst the workers and thereby the struggle against the common enemy is weakened. The best example of a prejudice that causes untold harm to the labor movement is the prejudice of the white and indigenous workers against the coloured and immigrant workers.

 Today the great majority of people imagine that in the last instance we can instill whatever ideas we may choose into a man's mind; that we can influence at our own discretion the development of ideas at any given time in any given people. But it is precisely this that is impossible. The fact is that we cannot and do not think what we please to think; we think what we must think. What obliges the individual to think in a certain way is the measure of his interests and opinions, which are in turn developed out of the social interests of a certain stratum or class in society. If our capitalist class stands opposed to Socialism, we socialists are the very last people to be astonished at it. No one can require a class to decide and act against its vital interests, nor do we in the least expect this.

It is only natural that people who sell their labour power and toil in servitude, who know that they are condemned without respite to this position which is anything but a pleasant one, for all their days that the thought must awaken in their minds: "Is this right? Is it reasonable? Is it to remain so for ever? Are we always to be the oppressed and expropriated, to the end that those who appropriate to themselves out of our labor all the wealth and enjoyment that this world can offer may live in opulence and ease?"

These, indeed, are very pertinent questions that produce the class consciousness of the worker and it is this  the socialist movement expand and develop. Not only must socialism be accepted as an ideal and the goal to aim for, it must also be understood as realisable, something that is feasible and achievable, as the practical solution of our social difficulties. Mankind can do all that it wills; but in order to will to do anything, we must first realise that it is necessary and possible.

It is not the object of the Socialist Party  to destroy civilisation. We do not desire to divide up and re-share out wealth as some  people suppose; we do not wish to throw humanity back into primitivism. Men and women should be free and equal without exception,and  they should be permitted to live their lives as civilised human beings. And in order to attain thisit is not just merely declaring it a  right but providing  the opportunity and furnishing the means of harmoniously developing and educating, in accordance with peoples needs, the physical and intellectual capacities which nature has given to them.

The socialist principle is “All for one and one for all”

Defend the Roma

When it comes to catch-all caveats "I'm not a racist" ranks alongside the most common.

No one's ever racist nowadays. But somehow racism still seems to exist and find its target. Few doubt that certain views pervade and practices persist but even fewer will own up to holding them or following them. A system of discrimination remains, yet no one, apparently, is running it. So while those who take responsibility for it are rare, those who suffer the consequences are many.

Nick Clegg, used his disclaimer. "I am a liberal,"and went on to describe the Roma as sometimes "intimidating" and "offensive".

The Guardian recently reported that South Yorkshire police say crime has not increased significantly since the Roma moved to town a few years ago.

After a chip-shop owner swore two teenagers tried to sell him a baby, the police scoured CCTV footage and records of babies born in the area and found nothing. A police spokesman said it "could have been a joke in poor taste". That didn't stop it making the front page of the Daily Express, however.

 The arrival of a large number of poor people does demand resources to facilitate their integration. Those challenges are most likely to fall on working-class communities that are least equipped to meet then, their capacity further diminished by the swingeing cuts of Clegg's government, including  the Migration Impact Fund. But the challenges are because the Roma are overwhelmingly poor, not because they're Roma.

The truth is the Roma have far more to fear from non-Roma than vice-versa. Gassed by the Nazis, forcibly sterilised by the Swedes, recently expelled by the French, they have long been persecuted. In the last six weeks, two Roma families in Ireland, accused of stealing children because they didn't sufficiently look like them, had their kids taken away from them by the state only to have them returned. In Serbia, skinheads tried to snatch a blond child from in front of his house for the same reason.

For decades the ‘Communists’ forced ‘integration’ on Roma people. They forced education on them. They forced them into guaranteed jobs. It failed. Indeed, the ‘Communists’ invented the crime of ‘Parasitism’ specifically for those Roma who refused to work under any circumstances.The plight of the Roma in eastern Europe was so bad that securing minority rights for the Roma was a precondition for countries from the region joining the EU. Polls show that 91% of Czechs had "negative views" towards them while a survey of Hungarian police officers revealed that 54% believed criminality to be a key element of the Roma identity. In the Czech Republic, 75% of Roma children were placed in schools for people with learning difficulties; in Hungary it was 44%. The mayor of Mendez, a small town in Slovakia, said: "I am no racist … but some Gypsies you would have to shoot."

Scapegoating foreigners proves easier than blaming the housing crisis on all those single mums getting purposefully pregnant to get a council house, because often than not a reader will actually have a single mother as a relation or a friend who is and they know very well it is not true. Blaming people you have little contact with is more fruitful a tactic for the divide and rule merchants. The Roma are powerless, they voiceless and  unrepresented,and now serve as our enemy within. They are defenceless against us, but we tell each other that they threaten us. The media frighten us with ancient fairy tales: they steal our children. Politicians join in, sanctioning prejudices with veiled threats of legal action and punitive restrictions. The racists have moved on from the “white pakis” - the Poles - to the Roma. Who lives here, belongs here.

The Slovak Spectator: In the UK you use the terms Roma, Gypsies and Travellers. What is the difference between them?

Arthur Ivatts: The difference is just in the name. The English Gypsies are Roma, they came from India in the 10th century in the same way as the Slovak Roma and they migrated further west to the Netherlands, Scotland and then travelled as nomadic groups in England, Ireland and Scotland since the 16th century. So they are Roma but they were called Egyptians because they said they had come from Egypt. But the word ‘Gypsy’ was seen as a bit derogatory in the UK, as here. So in the 1950s and 60s the Gypsies said they didn’t want to be called Gypsies, they said they were ‘Travellers’. But then in the 1970s the Irish travellers came to the UK in more significant numbers and many Gypsies didn’t want to be called the same, with some wanting to be called Roma, to follow the rest of Europe. Then we had Central-Eastern European (CEE) Roma coming to the UK, so the English Gypsies wanted to be distinguished from them and so now perhaps a majority say they would prefer to be known as Gypsies again. So we use the terms Roma, Gypsies and Travellers to attempt to satisfy everyone in terms of the justified sensitivities surrounding ethnic self-ascription... The Roma have been abused for over 500 years. They are the classic example of the whole continent’s racial abuse of a minority. And now, everybody stands back and says: ‘Just look at them, they are happy in their ghetto communities, they don’t want to work, they are not interested in education, they are just interested in the benefits’.

The non-Roma world is not accepting their responsibility for what they’ve done to this minority over five centuries. And when we come to pick up the pieces of this abuse, what do we do? We blame the victims. We don’t blame ourselves. This is the tragedy of Europe today. What we need is an apology to the Roma. We need an historic apology from the governments to say ‘We are sorry about what has happened to you in this society’. Because what European society has done to the Roma has included enslavement, banishment, discrimination, persecution and attempted genocide time and time again. Has any of that ever been apologised for or even publicly acknowledged? ... One well known British politician said that if they [Roma] start behaving properly we would treat them properly – such a comment shows a complete lack of understanding of the history, it blames the victims of racial abuse and suggests that human rights are a conditional commodity linked to the stereotypes of particular groups of people.

Capitalism is the Disease - Socialism is the Cure

"The emancipation of the workers must be achieved by the working class itself"

Things have turned out quite differently from what people had hoped. Instead of a future era of the positive achievements of social reforms, we are in a period of economic crisis, of rising prices and falling wages, the stagnation in all social legislation, of war and increased armaments spending, of nationalist and racial division and of the persistence of absolutist dictatorships. People had been hoping to be able to stem the tide by skilful tactics of our union movement supported by our protests in the streets but, alas, there, too, we have been disappointed. It has proved impossible to defend existing social reforms, much less, gain new ones. The faith and hope people held in their representatives in Parliament has proved mis-placed. But it is with discontent with the whole world of capitalism that our strength grows! It is not an era of social reforms that we now hope for, but the great epoch of social revolution!

There have always been comrades who warned against reformism, and who endeavoured to bring to the political debate the revolutionary way of thinking. But they were rarely listened to, and then only by the few. The Socialist Party has repeatedly stated that reformist illusions can only lead to disappointments and when it is done in the name of socialism then it is socialists who are made responsible. If the mass of the people are given exaggerated hopes and  when these promises of better things do not materialise, the people will no longer make capitalism responsible for their misery, but they will hold socialists culpable. No longer will they blame the governing classes, but their own representatives.

The Socialist Party’s propaganda and theory is based on the idea that in a socialist society production will be for need and not for profit. Devoting time, energy and resources to drawing up detailed plans for the reformation of  capitalist society will ultimately be disillusioning and demoralising at best or strengthen capitalism at worst.

Socialism is no cut-and-dried collection of dogmas, which are to be taken without investigation. If each successive generation considers itself bound to argue out over again all the principles of , so much the better. The process will, we believe, give them only a firmer grip of their entire soundness.

One topic where there exists a great confusion of thought is the relation between reform and revolution. If we fail to educate and to prepare the working class for a clear understanding of, and for the attainment of the revolutionary objective, any temporary concessions they may have gained can be turned into a stumbling block of the struggle. Socialists have no interest in supporting palliatives which only serve to make capitalism tolerable. There is nothing intrinsically socialist or even working class about reformism. Often, the granting of concessions acts as a lubricant, making the system run more smoothly. Reform can divert the threat of revolution.  It creates a political climate that is conducive to capitalism’s stability. It pays the capitalist state to appear to be generous since this conceals the true nature of its being. Reformism is a prop for capitalism that the revolution intends to kick it away.

One class—the capitalist class—owns and controls the economic resources of the world.  The workers must take over and operate all the means of production and distribution, for the well-being of all.  Harmonious relations of mankind in all their material affairs will evolve out of the change in the control and ownership in the industrial resources of the world. That accomplished all members of society sharing in the enjoyment the good things and comforts of life, will be the arbiters of their own destinies in a free society. Freedom and equality will be no longer empty and cheap phrases, but will have a meaning; when all men and women are really free and equal they will honour and advance one another. Long enough a future state of bliss has been held out to suffering mankind, in which they would be rewarded for all the wants and sufferings and pains of this world, and now most people have lost confidence in such empty promises. They demand an amelioration: not words, not promises, but facts. They do not want to expect, with resignation, what may come after death; they demand a change of their unfortunate situation while living on earth.

The disenchantment with the political parties and in particular the Labour Party has so far manifested itself in abstentionism. Many have become disillusioned and dropped out of political activity and the electorate have voted with their feet – by refusing to leave the house on polling day. At each election, a smaller percentage go to vote. However, for the socialist this opting out of conventional political process offers a potential for a genuine socialist party, one that does not hold out the promise of quick cure-alls for the social ills but which traces social sickness and misery to their sources.

 If you think the aims of the Socialist Party of Great Britain are worthy, that the Socialist Party endeavours to promote the happiness and welfare of mankind, join us! Try to propagate their principles among your acquaintances, explaining them its truths, exposing the falsehoods. Tell them that the socialists form the only party of the working people.

"Workers of the World, Unite!"

Fair and Balanced?

Cameron has ordered an investigation into union tactics in the wake of the threatened closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery, that saw Unite members picketing the homes of INEOS directors.

The review will be led by QC Bruce Carr, who acted for  British Airways against the trade unions in court when it blocked plans for a Christmas strike by Unite members in 2009.

TUC head of employment rights Sarah Veale said the investigation was clearly “politically driven”.

Food for thought

Thanks to frozen hospital budgets, heart surgeons and eye doctors are among a growing number of specialized physicians who can't find work in Canada despite long waits for surgery, according to a report issued by The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. Sixteen per cent of those interviewed for the report said, although newly qualified, could not find work in their field. Thirty-one per cent said they were pursuing extra training to become more employable. Nearly a quarter of the new graduates said they were working part-time jobs. This shows that no matter what training one receives, either there is a market for your skills or there isn't, and if not, tough. But that's capitalism. John Ayers.

One Big Union

Unions were the first means of defence developed by the working class in its struggle against capitalist exploitation. They were the result of concerted efforts by workers to organise and fight collectively for better working conditions, wage increases and a shorter working day. The establishment and growth of unions was no gift from the capitalist class, but the result of workers’ struggles against their exploiters.

Working conditions were intolerable before unions were organised. The working day in factories had no limit other than the physical exhaustion of the workers, and would often exceed 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Children were frequently employed, deprived of any education, they did the same job as adults, but for barely one-half or one-quarter of the pay. Women fared no better, overworked and underpaid in the sweatshops of the time. Employers could pay workers when they pleased and cut wages whenever they wanted to.

For many years workers fought back in a sporadic, random manner, in an unorganised way. With the development of unions, the working class took a major step forward. The isolated conflicts between individual workers and capitalists now took on the character of conflicts between two classes. Now, not only were the capitalists organised with their industrial associations and the governments at their service, but the workers also had their own collective organisations – the trade unions. Strikes broke out and many were successful. Thus, the establishment of unions, a major step forward in uniting workers into a class, was the result of struggle against the capitalists, particularly political action against their state and its anti-worker laws. Instead of leaving workers isolated to face their bosses alone, labour unions do everything possible to strengthen and broaden the struggles. The main problem was that trade unionism accepts the capitalist system and tries only to get a bigger piece of the pie for themselves.

As an organisation of the working class, the unions cannot limit itself to the economic struggle for better working conditions and wages. As long as the capitalist system exists, the bosses will always try to take back what they have been forced to concede. They will continually try to step up the exploitation of the working class in order to boost their profits. Until the workers get rid of the capitalist system itself, the cause of all the injustices and suffering they face,  the source of their misery they will constantly have to take up their struggles over and over again.

A role of the socialist party is to educate and teach the members of trade unions their limitations and to show that every conflict between workers and management is part of the general struggle in society between the capitalist and its state on the one hand, and the working class on the other. We try to dispel the f illusions about the role of governments, the police or the law.We denounce all the bosses’ or the bureaucrats’ attempts to institutionalise class collaboration through joint employer/employee committees. Our guiding principle is that the interests of the bosses and the workers are irreconcilable. We reject any support, official or otherwise, on the part of the unions for any capitalist party even those that try to give themselves a friend-of-the-worker image

Karl Marx summed it up in Wages, Price and Profit:
“Trade unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.”

 Workers must transform the labour movement into a class-conscious political movement. Unions with this perspective defend the workers best. They are strong because they understand the nature and the objectives of the capitalist class, and they use every struggle to strengthen the labour movement as a whole.

We hold that unions should practice democracy and is fully controlled by its members. The union should ensure those members actively participate in union life, structures, general meetings or tasks. Decisions are made after thorough debates in which all opinions are expressed. They are not made by a  bureaucracy who tell us to leave everything to them. Union officials apply the decisions of their members and place themselves at their members’ service. They have no special privileges and if they fail to carry out the union’s decisions or fail to apply its wishes, means should exist for their recall  and remove them from their functions, if necessary. To reach important decisions members must have all the information they is required in order to take a position. Workers must participate in formulating their demands, and should have democratic control over all decisions to strike or to return to work, and on all other issues that affect them.Unions are essential for the working class and without them, workers would still be subject to the every whim and fancy of the employers and their foremen. What is as important as the growth of numbers is the development of the trade unions in the direction of class solidarity as opposed to sectional exclusiveness and antagonism.

However, the support of the Socialist Party for the trade unions is not necessarily all one-way. In  order to move the struggle for socialism forward, they must support a party that is fighting to do away with capitalism, a socialist party. As Marx wrote in a resolution of the International Workingmen’s Association on unions:
“Aside from their immediate work of reacting to the pestering manoeuvres of capital, they must become the organizing centres of the working class fighting towards that great goal, its total emancipation. They must help any political and social movement in favour of this aim.”

The unions’ indispensable support for a socialist party will not come about automatically. It must be won through education and persuasion, and by the union members own experience. The support is not imposed but is won democratically.  Our primary function is to organise a political party, independent, class-conscious, proletarian and socialist. The function of industrial organisation lies with the trade unions. These two functions are not absolutely distinct and separate, they are to some extent interdependent. Yet they are not identical. The trade unions can help us, we can help them. It is as much unreasonable to suggest that in politics the Socialist Party should be the subordinate partner as it would be to suggest that the Socialist Party should claim to dictate the policy of the trade union in conducting the strike, or should expect the union to abandon the immediate objects and demands of the strike simply in order to make socialist propaganda.