The Banksters at RBS

The crimes of Royal Bank of Scotland as described on this website.

UK: PPI mis-selling - Estimated liability: £2.65 billion
RBS has set aside £2.65 billion in provisions to cover the cost of compensating customers to whom it mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI). This often redundant product was highly lucrative for the banks but was useless to many of the people who bought it. The bank now has 1,800 staff working full-time on PPI redress. It threw an additional £250 million into the compensation pot on Friday.

UK: Rights issue class action - Liability: up to £13 billion
The bank is fighting the UK’s largest ever class action case in the High Court. The suit comes from 13,000 RBS investors who allege that the bank duped them into putting £12.3 billion into a rights issue in April 2008. On 30 July, the RBoS Shareholders Action Group was ordered to amalgamate its £4.3 billion claim with those of two other investor groups. A QC’s opinion last year found that asset-management firms that bought into the rights issues that fail to participate in the action could risk being sued by investors. The bank said: “RBS considers its has substantial and credible legal and factual defences to these claims.”

UK: Card and identity protection insurance - Estimated liability: £200 million (based on RBS’s market share)
The bank misled customers into buying insurance for their credit cards and identity theft insurance from London-based Card Protection Plan. On 22 August, the FCA declared that CPP and RBS, alongside 12 other banks and credit card issuers, had agreed to a £1.3 billion compensation scheme.

UK and Ireland: IT meltdown - Estimated liability: up to £300 million
On 19 June 2012, RBS suffered one of the worst IT meltdowns in banking history, with millions of customers locked out of their accounts for days and customer transactions going awry. The bank has promised to reimburse customers for any losses they suffered and paid out £175 million in 2012. The incident is also the subject of regulatory inquiries in both the UK and Ireland, and RBS may also face claims for damages through the courts.

UK: “Systemic abuse” in restructuring and recovery - Estimated liability: up to £5 billion
Allegations of “systemic institutionalised fraud” in RBS’s recovery and restructuring division (West Register and Global Restructuring Group) are being investigated by a number of civil and criminal UK authorities. Lawrence Tomlinson, chairman of Leeds-based LNT Group and entrepreneur-in-residence at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, alleges: “This is a massive scandal. It’s about the bank creating situations that put people into a corner where it can hit them with outrageous fees and transformed into zombie companies.” He is providing 300-400 case studies to business secretary Vince Cable.

UK: Interest rate swaps mis-selling - Liability: up to £1.5 billion (if FCA fines RBS)
In February, RBS booked a £750 million provision to cover compensation for small businesses to which it mis-sold interest-rated hedging products, a figure that experts believe may be too low. After initially denying it had done anything wrong, the bank now says it will provide “fair and reasonable redress” to eligible customers under a redress scheme agreed with the FCA. Speaking on the BBC’s Panorama last month, FCA chief executive Martin Wheatley warned the regulator may also fine banks involved in the scandal.

EU: Credit default swaps anti-competitive behaviour - Estimated liability: unknown
EU cartel-busters are investigating RBS’s role in the credit default swap (CDS) market and handed the bank a statement of objections in July. The EC has raised concerns that a number of banks, plus data provider Markit and industry group the International Swaps and Derivatives Association may have jointly blocked exchanges from entering the CDS market. RBS said: “At this stage, the RBS group cannot estimate reliably what effect the outcome of the investigation may have on the group, which may be material.”

Singapore: Benchmark rigging - Estimated liability: £500 million-£600 million
RBS was one of 20 banks penalised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore in June for rigging Sibor (the Singapore Interbank Offered Rate) and other benchmarks between 2007 and 2011. RBS has set aside additional statutory reserves with MAS of Singapore $1 billion-$1.2bn (£500 million-£600m) and has been forced to improve its systems and controls in Singapore.

US: SEC “Wells” notice for ­defective residential mortgage-backed securities - Estimated liability: unknown
The US Securities and Exchange Commission slapped a “Wells” notice on RBS on 28 March, giving notice of its intention to sue. The suit relates to allegedly faulty mortgage-backed securities dating from 2007. The SEC started its probe in September 2010, when it asked RBS for information concerning residential mortgage-backed securities underwritten by US subsidiaries of RBS in the period September 2006 to July 2007.

US: Defective mortgage bond issuance - Estimated liability: $4 billion-$6 billion
RBS, through Greenwich Capital, sold $32 billion of allegedly defective mortgage-backed securities to American state-owned mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is suing RBS over these the bonds. The FHFA alleges that RBS routinely breached mortgage-lending rules and bullied surveyors into inflating property valuations. Overall, RBS is being sued for $91bn of mortgage-backed securities and has been named as defendant in 45 lawsuits related to mortgage-backed securities.

US: Weak anti-money-laundering controls - Estimated liability: up to $1.5 billion
On 27 July 2011, RBS was hit with a cease-and-desist order by the US Federal Reserve over violations of money-laundering laws. This required RBS to improve risk management and compliance to ensure does not get used as “washing machine” for the laundering of funds for countries subject to US economic blockade, such as Iran. RBS is “continuing to co-operate” with inquiries led by the Department of Justice and has “conducted disciplinary proceedings against a number of employees”.

US: Mortgages – loan repurchases and indemnities - Estimated liabilities: $750 million
When bundling mortgages into mortgage-backed securities, the bank’s M&IB arm (formerly GBM) and Citizens asked issuers of the underlying mortgages to provide certain warranties. In instances where issuers refused, M&IB tended to issue the “representations and warranties” itself. In such cases, the bank is liable to repurchase the bonds or else “indemnify certain parties against losses”. Between early 2009 and June 2013, RBS received $741 million in repurchase demands, which it is striving to resist. The bank said: “The volume of repurchase demands is increasing and is expected to continue to increase.”

US: Credit default swaps anti-competitive behaviour - Estimated liability: unknown
In May and August 2013, RBS and other banks were sued in anti-trust class action suits filed in courts in Illinois and New York state. The complaints allege that RBS broke competition law in the market for credit default swaps, driving up bid-offer spreads. The bank admits the cases could lead to “investigatory or other action being taken by governmental and regulatory authorities” and could have a “material adverse effect” on RBS group.

US: Other allegedly faulty securitisations - Estimated liability: unknown
In January 2011, the SEC launched a formal inquiry into inadequate documentation relating to RBS’s US mortgage securitisations. This followed subpoenas in 2007 of several players in the US securitisation industry, focusing on information underwriters obtained from independent firms that performed due diligence on underlying loans. RBS gave relevant documentation to the New York attorney general in 2008. RBS said: “The investigation is ongoing and the RBS Group continues to provide the requested information.”

Global: Libor - Estimated liability: RBS already fined £390 million; the ultimate cost could be as high as £80 billion
On 6 February, the US Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the UK’s Financial Services Authority fined RBS $612m (£390m) fine for rigging Libor, the benchmark interbank interest rate. Other banks and brokers penalised for similar offences include Barclays, UBS and Rabobank. RBS faces further penalties from the EU and Canadian Competition Bureau, plus civil claims from US investors, the most recent of which came from mortgage giant Fannie Mae last Thursday. Analyst Sandy Chen has said if there was just 0.05% mispricing in interbank rates over four years – less than the 0.4% some class action lawsuits allege – RBS faces possible damages of £80bn.

Global: ISDAfix - Estimated liability: unknown
Multiple agencies and regulators around the world are investigating RBS for possible rigging of IDSAfix, a benchmark used in the interest rate swaps market. America’s CFTC is examining about one million emails and phone call recordings related to the alleged manipulation, involving traders from RBS and more than ten other global banks and brokerages.

Global: FX market rigging - Estimated liability: unknown
On Thursday it emerged that two of RBS’s currency traders have been suspended as part of an inquiry by global regulators into suspected manipulation of foreign exchange markets. The regulators, which include the UK Financial Conduct Authority, America’s FBI and Switzerland’s FINMA suspect that global banks including RBS colluded to manipulate exchange rates in the global, $5.3 trillion a day, foreign exchange markets. RBS has provided the FCA with e-chats that a former senior RBS dealer – Richard “Dick” Usher who left the bank in 2010 – had with traders at other banks. The traders’ group was variously known as “The Bandits” and “The Cartel”.

Health and the Profit Motive.

Medical research by major pharmaceutical firms is apparently a noble effort to combat diseases but we live inside capitalism so that nobility is tempered by the profit motive.   AstraZeneca, Britain's second-largest drugs company has decided to shut down its research into tropical diseases, tuberculosis and malaria because Pascal Soriot, its chief executive wants to cut expenditure and halt a decline in profits.  'Bayer landed in hot water last week when Marijn Dekkers, the German company's chief executive described one of the company's cancer drugs as a medicine "developed for Western patients who can afford it" and said it was not for Indians".' (Times, 31 January) These cuts in medical research are happening in a society where 1.3 million deaths occur because of tuberculosis and 1,300 children die every day from malaria according to World Health Organisation figures. RD

Want Change? Engage To Change Minds

Socialism is the system of society in  which production is for use; that is, the production of all the means of existence, including all the necessities and comforts of life  carried out by the community for its own use collectively and individually. Production to-day is purely in the interest and for the profit of the class which owns the instruments of production — by which we mean the land, the mines, the factories and machinery, transport, machinery. Socialism would substitute common ownership of these things and this would also involve the abolition of classes altogether.

The word class is used in many ways. For instance, we the  the upper, lower and the middle classes. But this does not alter the fact that society is separated into two main divisions or classes, one part, for all practical purposes, possesses all the material means of production, and another section which has no effective ownership in, or control over, these things. The question as to which of these two divisions a man belongs to may easily be determined by whether he or she possesses or does not possess effective control over the labour of others through the possession or the control of the means of production.

The terms CAPITAL, CAPITALIST, and CAPITALISM, as generally used, imply considerable concentrations of the means of production in the hands of one person or a comparatively small number of persons, and the payment of wages for the labour employed in the use of these means of production, in such wise that the total product remains the property of the possessors of the capital used. Thus capital and capitalism imply the existence of a whole series of social conditions in which the users of the tools, the means of production, have no ownership or control over the tools which they use. The terms of the bargain between capitalists and non-capitalists are, therefore, the following: We are the proprietors of the whole produce of our property, our tools, and we agree to pay a small proportion out of this product to you, the actual producers.

 Profit is not made on the market, but in the workshop, in the mine and the factory. Profit is derived from the surplus value which is wrung from the unpaid labour of the workers. Surplus-value is the difference between the cost of labour-power to the capitalist and the amount of labour-power he is able to extract from his work-force. Labour-power is the capacity for labour inherent in the workman, and it is this capacity or quality which the capitalist buys in the labour market as a commodity. We are assuming a modern capitalist society in which there are no slaves, and the workmen are free. Consequently the capitalist does not buy the workman, neither does he buy labour; that is to say, labour actually expended or in operation. What he buys, when he engages a workman for a given time, is the power to labour contained in the body of the labourer.

The labourer and the capitalist meet on the market, the one as seller the other as buyer, in the same way as do the buyers and sellers of other commodities. The exchange-value of labour-power is precisely the same as that of any other commodity, determined by the amount of socially necessary human labour expended in its production; in other words, and in the language usually employed by economists, the return to labour — WAGES — is determined by the cost of subsistence of the labourer. For it is by this subsistence that the labour- power is continually reproduced. The capitalist buys labour-power at its cost of production in labour, but the amount of labour which the workman expends, that is to say, the capacity for labour, or the labour-power, which the capitalist buys, and which the workman incorporates in the commodities he produces, is a very much greater quantity than is expended in the production of that labour-power, and it is this difference, a difference which the capitalist gets for nothing, which constitutes surplus-value.

The capitalist obtains this surplus-value owing to his monopoly of the means of production, which enables him to extend the working day, beyond the hours necessary to produce the subsistence of the labourer; by the employment of machinery, by which the labour of the workman is made more effective; and by the organisation of labour, which has the effect of intensifying the expenditure of labour. The labourer cannot, as a rule, command more than the actual exchange-value of his commodity, that is to say, his cost of subsistence, in return for his labour-although his wages, like the prices of all commodities, sometimes rise above this and sometimes fall below — because, although apparently free, he is really not free. He must sell his labour-power in order to live; he has no other commodity to dispose of, and, having no ownership in or control over the means of production, he cannot employ himself. Consequently, he has to find a purchaser for his commodity and must accept the terms that purchaser will offer — subject only to two conditions, his own cost of subsistence and the fluctuations of the market.  The variations or modifications in its operation no more destroy its validity as a general economic law, than the fact that no bodies ever proceed in a direct line, owing to disturbances due to friction, disproves the first law of motion, or the law of gravitation. Machinery itself is the product of labour, and is used for the purpose of exploiting labour; but of itself it creates no value. The sum total of the value of a commodity represents the sum total of the average labour employed in its production, including that involved in producing the raw material and the amount of the wear and tear of the machinery used up in the commodity, but the surplus-value comes from unpaid labour only.

Machinery itself is the product of labour, and is used for the purpose of exploiting labour; but of itself it creates no value. The sum total of the value of a commodity represents the sum total of the average labour employed in its production, including that involved in producing the raw material and the amount of the wear and tear of the machinery used up in the commodity, but the surplus-value comes from unpaid labour only.

The profit of the immediate capitalist employer only forms a portion of the total surplus-value. Out of that total the landlord draws his rent, the banker his interest, government taxation to pay the salaries of public officers. In short the rewards or payments of all those who are not themselves engaged in the immediate work of production are all derived from the surplus-value wrung from the unpaid labour of the workers. Socialists do not accept the theory of the division of profit, as stated by the orthodox political economy, into wages of superintendence, rewards for risk-taking and abstainence. Although a portion of profit is spoken of as Wages of Superintendence, it is clear that in so far as such wages are strictly a return for the useful work of management, they are not profit at all, and it is only by a misuse of terms that profit can be so described. The term wages of superintendence, however, is generally only a fancy phrase applied by the capitalist to a portion of his profits, and bears no relation whatever to wages in any shape, or to any useful service which the capitalist may perform. As to indemnification for risk, the capitalist might so describe a portion of his profit, but as a matter of fact this is purely speculative, as there is no relation between his profit and his risk; while the less said about the abstinence for which he claims to be rewarded the better. The capitalist does not perform a useful function in running a risk for the profit he receives. In so far as he exercises the function of management and receives remuneration for this, his remuneration is not profit at all, but wages of superintendence, and the functions of management would be undertaken by the organised society of the future through its appointed representatives. As to any necessary risk, all individuals would be relieved from this under socialism, as it would be borne by the whole of society.

Socialism does not mean mere government or municipal ownership or management. The State of to-day, nationally or locally, is only the agent of the possessing class. State-owned businesses are run for profit just as other businesses are; and the government, as the agent of the possessing class, has, in the interests of its employers, to treat the employees just as other employees are treated. The organised democratic society contemplated by socialists is a very different thing. When society is organised for the control of its own business, and has acquired the possession of its own means of production, it will for the use of all and not for the profit of a few.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain seeks political power over the present class State for its conscious and definite aim the common ownership and control of the whole of the world’s industry. The entire means of production thus being common property, there would no longer be a propertied class to make a profit out of interest on loans or in any other way, and the property qualification which now divides society into two classes being thus swept away, classes themselves would disappear. Socialism is much more than an economic theory and embraces all the relations of human life. The establishment of socialism means a complete change in society in all its aspects. The economic conditions directly determine the political conditions; less directly, but none the less certainly, the ethical conditions; still less directly, the artistic.

To suppose that any mere distributive readjustment is what is meant by socialism is to entirely misunderstand what socialism really involves. Socialism means the complete reorganisation of production as well as distribution. With production scientifically and socially organised, the productivity of labour would be quintupled, and the amount of wealth would be increased in proportion. This increase in productivity will result, firstly,  by the saving of the tremendous waste of labour which goes on to-day. All the labour employed in sales, advertising and exchange is entirely uuproductive, so far as useful wealth is concerned, and would be quite unnecessary if wealth were produced for use. Then there is the waste of labour involved in the use of obsolete methods, and in the employment of men and women to do work which could be more expeditiously performed by machines, simply because more profit is made by employing the men and women, owing to their labour being cheaper than machinery. And further, there is the inevitable waste of wealth under present circumstances due entirely to the system of production for profit, which makes it often more profitable to destroy wealth or to limit its quantity, rather than, to preserve or increase it. All this would be changed, and the vast mass of labour now wasted would be transferred to useful production, were society organised on a socialist basis.

With society properly organised there would be, with the unrestricted enjoyment of wealth, very much less waste — in both labour and material — in consumption. That is to say, the consumption or enjoyment of wealth would be more organised, more social, and less individualistic than it is to-day and would be infinitely less wasteful than now. Transport would be more economical when socialised than to-day, where the individual has to have his or her own car. Here it must be distinctly understood that we are not dogmatising as to what will be, but simply suggesting what may be done, in at least one way, to economise consumption by a proper organisation.

Socialist Standard February 2014

Whole issue as print ready pdf: 

Socialist Standard February 2014.pdf

• Editorial: Let’s Get Political
• Pathfinders: Dirty Secrets
• Letter: Capitalism and Apartheid
• Halo Halo!
• It’s Not Your Country
• Cooking the Books: Against ‘Redistributionism’
• Material World: Hovels or Homes?
• Greasy Pole: Ouch! What A Lovely War
• A Lack of Imagination
• The Class Struggle in Cambodia
• The Throwaway System
• The Cost of Living Crisis
• Political Vocabularies
• Cooking the Books: Green Recipe for Raging Inflation
• Mixed Media: 'The Threepenny Opera' & 'Hull Ferens Art Gallery'
• Book Reviews: 'The World Until Yesterday' & 'The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame'
• Book Reviews: 'Poor Man's Heaven' & 'State Capitalism and World Revolution'
• Proper Gander: Who Benefits From 'Benefits Street'?
• 50 Years Ago: The Coming Election
• Action Replay: Playing On
• Voice From the Back
• Cartoon: Free Lunch

Fact and Fiction

Politicians like to paint a picture of steadily improving conditions for the working class with the development of capitalism, but recent statistics disprove that notion. 'Real wages have been dropping consistently since 2010 - the longest period of falls since at least 1964, official figures show. Real wages calculate earnings when the rising cost of living, or inflation, is taken into account. The Office for National Statistics said real wages had fallen by 2.2% annually since the first three months of 2010.' (BBC News, 31 January)  These figures show that the politicians have little to boast about. RD

The SPGB are for Soviets

The capitalist political State is not and cannot be a true democracy. It is elected because the wealthiest section of society can suppress all facts through its power over the media. By its money the capitalists can buy up TV and press and these trump up false election issues. The electorate is not asked to vote upon facts but only upon such topics as the press, representing the capitalitalists, puts before the workers.

To establish socialism workers who want it need to organise themselves democratically. As this will involve committees or councils composed of workers these could be called "workers' councils" (soviets) even though those who have traditionally used this term have given it a narrower meaning. We in the Socialist Party have always held that workers should organise both politically (to win control of state power) and industrially (to keep production going) in the course of the socialist revolution.  The difference with the advocates of "workers' councils" in the narrow sense is that they oppose workers organising to contest elections and win seats in parliament and local councils. We reject this dogmatic, anti-parliament position and this will be the subject of the debate. The issue will not be whether or not workers should organise outside parliament (that is agreed) but whether they should organise also to contest elections and send delegates to parliament. The Socialist Party refused to be put in the position of living up to its caricature in some libertarian left circles of defending using parliament rather than "workers councils" whereas our long-standing position has been using both.

It is not because the working class are opposed to socialism that they have declined to elect our candidates, but because they have been persuaded that they can get socialism, or as much of it as is practicable at present, by voting Labour. The Socialist Party candidate might have no chance, in which case a vote given to him would be thrown away, and might, moreover, serve to “let the Tory in.” The latter contingency was too dreadful to contemplate. Far better to make sure of the half-loaf offered by the Labour Party—even though that half-loaf should turn out not to be bread at all—rather than risk getting nothing at all by letting in the hated Tory. That is the argument hammered at day after day, dinned into the ears of the workers persistently in every constituency. Even the numerically stronger Left fare little better than we do. And there was no reason why they should. We, at any rate, while carrying on our socialist propaganda, had not failed to call attention to the sins of omission and commission of all Government, and to emphasise the truth that for the workers there is nothing to choose between any of the capitalist political factions, and that the only hope for the workers, politically, lies in independent political action—independent of and hostile to all capitalist factions.

The Left, however, in spite of the fact that their very existence as a party lose no opportunity of apologising for Labour. "But they couldn't do any better," we are told. Exactly, again. We never suggested that they could. It is not for their performance we blame them - or the lack of it. It is for their promises, and for their hypocritical pretences by which they have deluded the people. But, above all, we blame the people, the credulous radical activists  who persist in pinning their faith to those who have deluded and betrayed them over and over again, and who, as they should know by this time, cannot possibly accomplish that which these Leftists wish to see achieved.  The result, of course, is that their followers would not see that there was anything to choose between them and the Labour Party. That is themost important lesson to be learn - that we must absolutely destroy this pathetic faith in the Labour Party and in its promises before any further progress can be made. It is not the principles or opinions of the socialists which cause their defeat, but rather  the specious  and hypocritical promises of the gradualists and reformists have their effect in winning socialist support and gaining socialist votes.

The emancipation of the workers must be the work of the working class themselves, and as an instrument to that end we need an independent working-class party, inspired with Socialist ideals. The chief obstacle to the creation of that instrument is the Labour Party.  There is no reason whatever why a worker should vote Labour. All their promises are fly-blown and worth­less. If the capitalists cannot solve the problems of capitalism, it is certain that the Labour Party leaders cannot solve the problems of capitalism. Every attempt they make only hastens disillusionment.  Even if fulfilled they would mean nothing for us. The Socialist Party  must attract new blood into our movement, interest the young people, let in fresh air to blow away the fog of doubt and despair. We must face the fight with confidence and answer the challenge of the capitalist class without hesitation: ‘We will fight you, expose you and defeat you. We will give  people of the world, a new hope and inspiration’ With a fighting class policy there is not only hope, but certainty, of victory. It is clear that the working class is the only social force to which humanity can turn to create a pathway through the chaos of capitalism. To this inspiring task, we summon the workers of city and country – all who are oppressed by capitalism. The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism.

But the working class cannot bring its curative capacity to bear upon the situation without it is prepared to fight the enemies who stand in the way. Capitalism cannot be sustained without a large volume of support from the masses of the population. We, socialists, refuse to join the reformists in leading the workers into the camp of capitalism. Use the ballot against capitalism. Vote, then, for socialism. Vote for the Socialist Party, the only party that keeps the revolutionary banner unfurled. The attitude of the Socialist Party is clear and definite. It claims that the wealth of society is created by the workers. It claims that the working class, through their industrial and administrative councils, must own and control all the processes of wealth production. It seeks, through industrial unionism and workers councils, to build up the decision-making structures which will take over industry and agriculture and operate these in the interests of the community.

We carry the struggle on to the political field in order to challenge the power which the present ruling class wields through its domination of the State which it wins at the ballot box. By its victory at the ballot box, and its consequent political domination, the capitalists are able to subdue the labour movement. The departments of State are in the hands of unsympathetic bureaucrats who are appointed by our masters. The bureaucrats have no organic connection with industry and are unable to understand working-class problems. Being appointed by the master class, who control the State, the bureaucrats can only maintain their jobs by serving those who control them. Here, again, is another industrial problem, the destruction of bureaucracy, which can be solved if workers defeat their masters at the ballot box. The Socialist Party contends that the problems of society will never be solved until  workers, representing every phase of industrial and agricultural activity, band themselves together into a class union and elect their own local and national industrial administrative councils. These councils will be organically and functionally adapted to organise and control industry on behalf of every worker in the community. Around such a social structure would spring up committees which would serve the social and cultural wants of every individual in society.

But we cannot build up workers councils, our ‘soviets’,  and leave political control in the hands of the ruling class. We have seen what power the conquest of the State gives to Capital in its struggle with Labour. It is through its political strength that the capitalists can deprive us of every shred of civil liberty the loss of which makes the peaceful agitation for the revolution impossible. The maintenance of civil liberty is part of the political struggle of revolutionary Labour. And in the measure that the industrial movement becomes more powerful so in the same measure Capital will resort to the use of the armed forces and other violent methods of suppression. The control of these forces flow directly from Capital’s control of the State which it secures at the ballot box. Therefore, in order to achieve a peaceful revolution. Labour must capture the powers of the State at the ballot box and prevent the capitalist class from using the nation’s military forces against the emerging socialist society. This destructive function is the revolutionary role of political action. But this destructive political function is necessary in order that the industrial constructive element in the revolution may not be thwarted.

It urges the workers to use their ballots to capture political power—not to play at politicians or pose as statesmen, but to use their votes to uproot the political State and to hand to the workers the constructive task of building up the administrative councils of socialism. To think that Parliament can be used as the means of permanently improving the conditions of Labour, by passing a series of acts and decrees, is to believe in parliamentarism. The Socialist Party is not a parliamentary party. It believes in entering Parliament only as a means of sweeping away all antiquated institutions which stand in the way of the industrial union owning and controlling the means of production.

AJJ

A Brutal Society

We are constantly confronted with awful statistics about capitalism, but it is doubtful if anything beats the following example of the system's brutality. 'The world's 85 wealthiest people have as much money as the 3.5 billion poorest people on the planet - half the Earth's population. That's according to Oxfam's latest report on the risks of the widening gap between the super-rich and the poor. The report, titled "Working for the Few," was released Monday,  and was compiled by Oxfam - an international organization looking  for solutions against poverty and injustice.' (RT News, 21 January). Oxfam of  course is completely powerless when it comes to changing the nature of capitalism. Only a revolution in the basis of society can bring about a change in this insane ownership gap. RD

Old or New - it is still Marxism

Prometheus says: “I shall never exchange my fetters for slavish servility. ’Tis better to be chained to the rock than bound to the service of Zeus.”(Quoted by Marx)

Workers are confronted by a hodge-podge of ideas, a mish-mash of movements every one of basically saying “we” will bring salvation to the people and lead them to the promised land. In contrast the Communist Manifesto’s message is that “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority.”

The classic formulation of the self-emancipation principle is in 1864 Rules of the First International – “CONSIDERING, That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves....”

It proclaims that we no longer want deliverers, that we no longer wished to serve as instruments of others , and that we have knowledge to understand our interests as much as any other.

Marx went further explaining in an address to the National Labour Union in the US :
“On you, then, devolves the glorious task to prove to the world that now at last the working classes are bestriding the scene of history no longer as servile retainers, but as independent actors, conscious of their own responsibility.”

When Marx denounces the shooting of Belgium strikers he declares:
“[the Belgian capitalist was so liberty-loving] that he has always indignantly repulsed any factory law encroaching upon that liberty. He shudders at the very idea that a common workman should be wicked enough to claim any higher destiny than that of enriching his master and natural superior. He wants his workman not only to remain a miserable drudge, overworked and underpaid, but, like every other slaveholder, he wants him to be a cringing, servile broken-hearted, morally prostrate, religiously humble drudge. Hence his frantic fury at strikes. With him, a strike is a blasphemy, a slave’s revolt, the signal of a social cataclysm.”

Marx is contemptuous of the attitude of the ruling class “we will grant but you must ask.” The General Council meeting after it had adopted its well-known address to Abraham Lincoln, which was to be presented to the US embassy, The minutes record:
“A long discussion then took place as to the mode of presenting the address and the propriety of having a MP with the deputation; this was strongly opposed by many members who said working men should rely on themselves and not seek for extraneous aid.”
The motion that was passed limited the delegation to Council members. Marx related to Engels:
“.. part of the Englishmen on the Committee wanted to have the deputation introduced by a member of Parliament since it was customary. This hankering was defeated by the majority of the English and the unanimity of the Continentals, and it was declared, on the contrary, that such old English customs ought to be abolished.”

The great thing about the Paris Commune for Marx about the Commune was that it was the working class who took over:
“It is a strange fact. In spite of all the tall talk and all the immense literature, for the last sixty years, about Emancipation of Labour, no sooner do the working men anywhere take the subject into their own hands with a will, than uprises at once all the apologetic phraseology of the mouthpieces of present society...”

He goes on to explain:
“That the revolution is made in the name and confessedly for the popular masses, that is, the producing masses, is a feature this Revolution has in common with all its predecessors. The new feature is that the people, after the first rising, have not disarmed themselves and surrendered their power into the hands of the Republican mountebanks of the ruling classes, that, by the constitution of the Commune, they have taken the actual management of their Revolution into their own hands and found at the time, in the case of success, the means to hold it in the hands of the People itself, displacing the State machinery, the governmental machinery of the ruling classes by a governmental machinery of their own. This is their ineffable crime! Workmen infringing upon the governmental privilege of the upper 10,000 and proclaiming their will to break the economical basis of that class despotism which for its own sake wielded the organized Stateforce of society! This is it that has thrown the respectable classes in Europe as in the United States into the paroxysms of convulsions ..the government of the working class can only save France and do the national business, by working for its own emancipation, the conditions of that emancipation being at the same time the conditions of the regeneration of France.”

Neither Marx or Engels commented at length about how a socialism  would operate. It is not possible to foresee under what particular concrete social conditions the revolutionary process might unfold. Socialist society is an economic system based upon conscious planning of production by associated producers. Nowhere does Marx say by the state. There is no room for a “socialist state” in socialism, even though there may be the need for a central direction of the socialised economy, which, however, is itself a part of the organisation of associated producers and not an independent entity set against them. Marx had no notion of a ‘workers’ state’ replacing the capitalist state. In communism, communal decision-making becomes a part of collective productive life. How repugnant to Marx would any idea have been that ownership of the means of production by a bureaucratic state machine would constitute ‘socialism’.

This is all made possible by the abolition of private property of the means of production. As soon as that private property is completely abolished, goods produced cease to be commodities. Value and exchange value disappear. Production becomes production for use, for the satisfaction of needs, determined by conscious choice of the mass of the associated producers themselves.

To be human is to be both social and at the same time a particular individual, a person. Indeed, Marx’s conception of socialism was founded on the possibility of ‘the free development of individualities’. Marx concentrated all his work on the achievement of a truly human society ,and. therefore of the notion of the truly human individual. Marx did not believe that there was a fixed, eternal ‘human nature’.  He knew that there was no human essence given in advance, a ‘human condition’ chosen for each human by God, or by genetic inheritance. Instead, he thought that we ourselves have produced human nature and by joint (communal) activity human individuals have made and remade themselves and their mutual relations. No human individual is an isolated entity.

The social form of human life in which we live sets people against each other. In a society  based upon self-interest, how can anybody take ‘the standpoint of socialised humanity’? The social whole confronts each of us as our enemy. The whole process, both the relations between people and the relation of people to nature, is hidden, distorted and mystified. The relationship between each individual human and the society in which they live is a great problem, pondered by philosophers, psychologists and political scientists. Somehow, amidst all the corruption and fragmentation of the modem world, we have remained – not much, not always, generally unknown to ourselves and with many mistakes and distortions – human. At the back of our minds, we still know it.

 In its early days Marx conceived a period of relative scarcity of a number of consumer goods and services, making it necessary to measure exactly distribution based on the actual labour inputs of each individual - labour time vouchers. But as production develops a situation that provides plenty  for all  any form of precise measurement of consumption will disappear.The principle that the full needs covering all different needs of different individuals will be satisfied will prevail . No incentive will be needed any more to induce people to work- 'from each according to ability to each according to need'. Work will have transformed itself into meaningful activity, making possible all-round development of each individual’s human personality. The division of labour between manual and intellectual labour, the separation of town and countryside, will fade away. Humankind will be organised into a free federation of producers’ and consumers’ communes.

Production is never individual production despite the grandiose claims of the capitalist 'entrepreneur’ . It is only the collective effort of human beings that enables them to get a livelihood from the world around them. So the central core activity – work – has to be organised socially. Every particular stage in the development of human labour demands certain sorts of social relationships to sustain it. The potential of new technology and automation  makes socialism much easier, by creating the possibility of  a 20-hour, 15-hour, or 10-hour working week for all. Human happiness does not depend on strenuous permanent activity, although perhaps a certain minimum amount of physical and mental activity seems to contribute to a healthy well-being including the growth of the mind. Paul Lafargue’s Right to be Lazy can be realised. The benefits of the wonders of robotics presupposes social organisation based upon co-operation and solidarity for the common good, i.e. socialism. If we don’t achieve that then the possibility is truly enslavement by machines,  potentially a lot worse.

 Socialists teach their fellow workers that unemployment, growing insecurity, lowered living standards and all the other afflictions of labour are not passing phenomena. Not even a future boom will eliminate these evils. The bigger the boom, the deeper, more widespread and devastating will be the consequent crisis. Only a clique of capitalist magnates stands in the way of abundance. To expand production and achieve full employment the workers have to wrest control of the factories and other major means of production from the hands of the employers and establish their own rule over industry and society. Production for profit must be supplanted by production according to a coordinated inter-linked plan determined by the needs of the entire people and directed by the associated producers themselves. This is the socialist remedy for capitalist chaos and misery.

Marx never envisage a ‘revolutionary’ process designed by some experts who thought up a new set of relations and to be brought into being by a clever bit of social engineering.  Instead of forcing people to live another way, the aim is to allow them to live as they truly are. Socialism is merely removing the obstacles to a way of life in which ‘humanness’, which already exists, would be allowed to develop. Every bit of Marx’s work is based upon his conception of communist society as ‘an association of free human beings, working with communal means of production, and self-consciously expending their many individual labour powers as a single social labour power’. Individuals will freely, collectively and consciously construct their social relationships. Their productive activity, instead of conflicting with social relations which isolate them from each other, will be clearly seen to be for each other. Needs will become human needs, without the distortion which the market and exploitation necessarily bring about.

Marx in his Note on James Mill in 1844 encapsulates his argument
1. People consciously assert their individuality when they produce for each other as human individuals.
2. In this act, and in the social nature of the objects they produce, they make manifest their human character.
3. As individuals, they establish and reaffirm their social nature and their freely created social relations through the satisfaction of other people’s human need.
4. In each directly communal act of production, they realise the character of everybody involved, as social individuals.

Elsewhere he writes:
“The theft of alien labour time, which is the basis of present wealth, appears to be a miserable foundation, compared to this newly developed one, the foundation prepared by large-scale industry itself ... Production based upon exchange value collapses, and the immediate production process itself is stripped of the form of indigence and antagonism. Free development of individualities ... in general the reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, to which corresponds the artistic, scientific, etc. development of individuals, made possible by the time set free and the means produced for all of them.” [Grundrisse]

“Freedom in this sphere can consist only in this, that socialised man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control, instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; and accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions worthy and appropriate for their human nature.” [Volume 3 of Capital]

How dare some so-called revolutionary activists dismiss Marxism as dated and irrelevant.  Socialism is not a dogma but a task. It anticipates a world whose social character is open, and transparent. Relationships like this have become possible because of the growth of modern industry. But socialism implies alterations in people, in their consciousness and self-consciousness.  Revolution is not a matter of switching governments or even a change of state form. Nor is only getting rid of one ruling class and replacing it with another. Nor is it redefining capitalism by altering the legal form of property. Socialism is not a change of political regime, which leaves intact the obstacles to humanness. Revolution is all about  people changing – people, themselves, consciously and deliberately altering their ways of living and their ways of thinking.

 Those who talk about the Party making the Revolution miss the point. Marx was convinced that ‘the proletariat constituting itself as a party’. The idea that socialists would seize power and exercise a ‘dictatorship’ over society belonged not to Marx but Blanqui and later Lenin. In 1874, Engels criticized the Blanquist idea of revolution in these terms:
"From Blanqui's conception that every revolution is a surprise attack by a small revolutionary minority, there follows of itself the necessity for a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This would be, for sure, a dictatorship not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of a small number, who have made the surprise attack and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals"
 The phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ meant it was the working class en masse which would be the ‘dictator’, not some self-appointed vanguard. When discussing the Paris Commune Marx favoured the Communard notion of decentralised government and he never referred to the Commune as a state, but as a form of government which had tried to take over some of the functions of the state.
Marx never used the term ‘workers’ state’ and in reply to Bakunin’s jibe ‘There are about 40 million Germans. Does this mean that all 40 million will be members of the government?” Marx answers ‘Certainly! For the system starts with the self-government of the communities. ... When class rule has disappeared, there will be no state in the present political sense.’

Non-socialists can call themselves socialists for only so long, before their actions are found out and people discover what things really are. The “revolutionary party” is based on the idea that the working class needs a new group of leaders who vanquish the bourgeoisie for the workers and construct a new government.The working class is not yet considered fit to reorganize and regulate production. As the working class is not deemed capable of revolution, is  the revolutionary vanguard, the party, which makes the revolution for it.

These ‘well-meaning’  people , the Leninists and Trotskyists cannot realise that the failure of their parties is due to the fundamental conflict between the self-emancipation of the working class through its own power and the pacifying of the revolution through a new sympathetic ruling clique. They think they are the revolutionary vanguard because they see the masses indifferent and inactive. But the people are inactive only because they cannot yet comprehend the course of the struggle and the unity of class interests. Once conditions force them into action they will tackle the task of self-organization.

Friedrich Engels, explained:
"When the February Revolution broke out (in France in 18481, we all of us, as far as our conceptions of the conditions and the course of revolutionary movements were concerned, were under the spell of previous historical experience in particular that of the French Revolution of 1789. What all revolutions up to then (the bourgeois revolutions) had in common was that they were minority revolutions. Even where the majority took part, it did so-whether wittingly or not, only in the service of a minority; but because of this, or simply because of the passive, unresisting attitude of the majority, this minority acquired the appearance of being the representative of the whole people."

 Engels in 1853 guessing that on the next outbreak of revolution "our Party will one fine morning be forced to assume power" to carry out the bourgeois revolution. Then, "driven by the proletarian populace, bound by our own printed declarations... we shall be constrined to undertake communist experiments ... the untimeliness of which we know better than anyone else. In doing so we lose our heads-only physically speaking, let us hope."

Marx (and Engels).already by this time seem to have rejected this vanguardist model of revolution. They argued for open democracy, instead of conspiratorial secrecy and hierarchy, within the communist organizations they worked with; for democracy structured by mass meetings and recallability of delegates, as the basis for "proletarian dictatorship"; and, above all, for the conception that communism could not be imposed. by the will of political thinkers and activists but could only be created by a vast mass movement in response to actual social conditions.

Thus the General Rules which Marx drew up in 1864 for the International Working Men's Association, began with Flora Tristan's dictum, "That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working class themselves." The International was intended to be the opposite of a sect, in both theory and practice. It proclaimed as its business, in Marx's words, "to combine and generalize the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinaire system whatever."And, regarding organization, Marx argued against centralism, on the grounds that a centralist structure, -though appropriate to sectarian movements, "goes against the nature of trade unions," struggle organizations of workers. Typical of his attitude is his remark in a letter of 1868 that especially in Germany, "where the worker's life is regulated from childhood on by bureaucracy and he himself believes in the authoritarian bodies appointed over him, he must be taught above all else to walk by himself." In the same spirit, Marx refused the presidency of the International in 1866, and soon afterwards convinced its General Council to replace the post with that of a chairman to be elected at every weekly meeting.

 We should note the project of an "Enquete Ouvriere, " a questionnaire which Marx published in the Parisian Revue Socialiste in 1880, and had reprinted and distributed to workers' groups, socialist and democratic circles, "and to anyone else who asked for it" in France. The text has the form of 101 questions about working conditions, wages, hours, effects of the trade cycle, and also about workers' defense organizations, strikes and other forms of struggle, and their results. Though this might be described as the first sociological survey, its preface urges workers to reply, not to meet the data needs of sociologists or economists, but because only workers can describe "with full knowledge the evils which they endure" just as "they, and not any providential saviors, can energetically administer the remedies for the social ills from which they suffer." Strategy and tactics, to use the terms of more recent leftwing theory, can only be created by workers who know their concrete conditions, not by "leaders."
Intellectuals and academics can, however, play a role in the collection and transmission of information; thus, the results of the Enquete were to be analysed in a series of articles for the Revue, and; eventually,. a book.  He prefaced the French serial edition of the first volume of Capital with an expression of pleasure, because "in this form the book will be more accessible to the working class-a consideration which to me outweighs everything else."  The function of theory was to help the movement as a whole clarify its problems and possibilities; it did not, in Marx's view, place the theorist in a dominating (or "hegemonic," as the currently fashionable euphemism has it) position vis-a-vis the movement, but was rather what he had to contribute to a collective effort.

Motoring In Style

At a time when many workers may be thinking of trading in their old banger of a car for a less clapped out model it is worth reflecting on this news item. 'A classic Ferrari has become the most expensive car ever sold in Britain after it was bought for more than £24 million.  The Ferrari Testa Rossa, a 1957 model and the second prototype ever built, was sold by Derbyshire dealer Tom Hartley Jounior who has described it as "the   greatest car in the world," to an anonymous buyer.' (Daily Telegraph, 30 January) We are pretty sure that the anonymous buyer won't be a member of the working class. RD

The Bosses Game

In all capitalist societies, a tiny class of people owns the means of production and profits by exploiting the workers’ labour. United, the overwhelming tendency of the working class would be to fight for a decent life for all, which is incompatible with capitalism. Powerful united struggles of the working class would inevitably demonstrate the need to overthrow capitalism altogether. If a party does not want to abolish capitalist exploitation, it can only serve capitalism. Since the working class is the only class with the power to overturn capitalism, the capitalists use every possible divide-and-conquer tactic to prevent this development. Racism and nationalism has been major tools of the ruling class. Capitalism is the source of national oppression and only socialist revolution can put an end to this oppression and to all forms of oppression.  The Scottish  ‘nation’ is by no means homogeneous. It is made up of classes. The present referendum rivalry between the sections of the ruling class does nothing but divide working people and turn them away from their objective, the socialist revolution. As masters of production and of the economy, the bosses control the state and the mass media. All the big newspapers, radio and television defend the outlook of those who invest in them, and they try to turn the people away from the true problems. For there is more to be done than merely reducing the gas or electric bill of Scottish homes.

Left nationalists pretend to be revolutionaries. There are no shortcuts to the socialist revolution, and those who enter the nationalist paths divert the coming of a socialist movement by chasing illusions. They want to rally the working class behind the nationalist cause. But nationalism disarms the workers. Shall we fight only to have a Scots-born bosses instead of English one? Shall we unite with these small Scottish homeland  exploiters in order to defend “their” nation against the bad, bad English? That is pure folly.  Nationalism is a vain attempt to rally the working class behind the cause of our home-grown capitalists seeking a better place in the sun. Nationalism does not oppose capitalism. The social revolution is an immense task and Left nationalists are intent upon making it more difficult. Independence (now) and socialism (oh, we’ll see, perhaps sometime later...). The socialist revolution is clearly not a task on the Left nationalists’ agenda. No one is going to hand workers socialism on a silver platter...least of all nationalists.

All of us to get rid of capitalism we need to unite in a single organisation. What’s the result of the referendum? Give the bosses the chance they never miss;  turn us against each other, all the better to rake in the PROFITS. We need unity and nationalism leads us into isolation.

 Nationalism is used to divide the workers among themselves so they can ignore their real enemy. The working men and women of the world have but on common enemy — the capitalist class of the world. It is better to be a traitor to your country than a traitor to your class! The history of Scotland is full of heinous acts whose only purpose was to increase the power of a handful of capitalists. In contrast to the Scots Nats and Left Nationalists, the Socialist Party says that workers all across Scotland can be united against their common enemy; that a real party of the working class can be built to  build a new system for workers – socialism.

Socialism is not a complicated doctrine.

The capitalists are using the present economic crisis to increase their power of exploitation and oppression. At this crucial moment we must struggle for the abolition of capitalism. With the present crisis, a growing number of workers are realizing that the capitalist system has nothing to offer them. While their living and working conditions get worse, a handful of rich men are raking in billions in profits. Workers are looking for a solution, and the Socialist Party offers an alternative: socialism, a system where exploitation  is abolished.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain differs from other political parties in  that it wants to completely change society’s economical organisation for the social emancipation of the working class. The main reason for the imperfections of to-day’s society, is the capitalistic way of production.  The Socialist Party seeks  the political organisation of the working class so that it may take possession of the public power and  transform to common property all the means of production — the means of transportation, the forests, the mines, the mills, the machines, the factories, the earth. The interests of the working class are the same in every country with capitalist way of production. The working class stands alone in the struggle for its emancipation.

We live in a world dominated by capitalism. The only viable way forward is to achieve a classless and stateless society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other.

We  make it quite clear as to our exact aim and object. We are socialists, and by socialism we mean, the common ownership of all the agencies of wealth production, and this involves the complete supercession of the capitalist system.  Socialism proclaims that no change beneficial to the workers of the shop floor, the fields or the offices can be carried out as long as the political and administrative leadership  are monopolised by the capitalist class, and as long as the producers, organized in a class party, have not taken control of public powers. Socialism maintains that there is only one solution: it’s that all the centralized labor instruments, such as the railroads, factories, textile works, mines, large farming properties, be given over to the associated workers, who will operate them not for the profit of a few capitalists. Capitalism has only known how to cause humanity war and misery; socialism will establish peace and happiness for mankind.

Business as Usual

Every year the president of the USA gives a State of the Union speech. It is usually the same old guff about how marvellous everything is inside capitalism, but this year there was a slight difference. "Those at the top have never done better. But average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled. The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by - let alone get ahead.  And too many still aren't working at all." (Independent, 29 January) It is indicative of how awful capitalism has become that even the president of the USA has to acknowledge it. Needless to say however he will carry on running capitalism the only way it can be run - in the interests of the owning class based on the exploitation of the working class. RD

Crime and Punishment

Prime time television is full of police dramas where highly trained policemen track down and arrest cunning criminals. It is doubtful whether Londoner Peter May's activities will be the basis of a new TV series though. 'May, 35, along with Jason Chan and William James, all residents of a squat in north London, were arrested on 25 October, just before midnight, after a member of the public called the police to report three men climbing over a wall at the back of Iceland in Kentish Town . Police arrested the men as they left the area with a holdall and trolley containing food.' (Guardian, 29 January) The total value of the items taken allegedly amounted to £33 and they were of low value, consisting of tomatoes, mushrooms, cheese and Mr Kipling cakes. Initially arrested for burglary, the three men were charged under an obscure section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, after being discovered in "an enclosed area, namely Iceland, for an unlawful purpose, namely stealing food". Hardly crime of the century, is it? The food was awaiting collection for a landfill. RD

The State is No Saviour

The state as Engels described it, is “the ideal personification of the total national capital.” (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific) and he recognised “The more productive forces it (the state) takes ever into its possession, the more it becomes a real aggregate capitalist, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-workers, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished, rather it is pushed to the limit. (Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific)

 The nature of capitalism is distorted by those who draw their model of capitalism from its early competitive stage and describe its essence as the competition among individual capitals within a nation-state. Marx himself did not confine his analysis to a description of the stage of competitive capitalism, but grasped the basic laws of development leading to greater concentration and centralization of capital. Even in speaking of stock companies, he refers to this form of ownership as being “social capital” which represents “the abolition of capital as private property within the framework of capitalist production itself.” (Capital, Vol. 3) In the Soviet Union today the state had become the chief framework within which capitalist production is organized even though capital in the form of individual private property has been abolished. The ruling class in the Soviet Union can be described as state capitalists, since they command  the highly centralized Soviet economy and oppresses and exploits the working class directly through its stranglehold on the state apparatus. This class does not individually own the means of production, but this fact makes it no less a capitalist class. The central question to pose in determining whether the Soviet Union is capitalist or socialist is thus not whether the principal means of production have been nationalised, but which class holds real political and economic power. This power is held in state bureaucracy by the nomenklatura and apparatchiks , which controls and disposes of state property and gears the whole economy towards the maximization of surplus-value extraction, towards “accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake.” (Capital, Vol. l)

To understand more clearly the difference between socialism and state capitalism we need to start by understanding the difference between use value and value in commodity production. Use value refers to the useful aspects of products which satisfy human wants and needs, while value is the abstract worth given to products for the purposes of exchange and based on the socially necessary labor time that went into creating them. Surplus value is the difference between the value the worker creates with his labour and the value he or she receives in payment, this difference being pocketed by the capitalist.

Marx pointed out that in the case of slavery the slaves were oppressed and exploited in order to produce use values for the slaveowners. This is distinct and different from the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class, whose goal, as Marx puts it, is “the production of surplus value as the absolute law.” Under socialism, although the value of products, based on socially necessary labor time, must be taken into account, still commodity production is made subordinate to the goal of producing use values for the working people, such as food, clothing, housing, health care, transportation.

The basic functioning of the Soviet economy revealed that the extraction of surplus value is indeed the guiding principle. The Soviet bureaucrats has been able to maximize capital accumulation  through the national economic plan. The real power of the state bosses is wielded through its control over the national economic plan, in which it is able to fix the rate of output and the rate of capital accumulation for the Soviet economy as a whole, and determine the utilization of the labor force and the total wages that will go to the working class.

 Despite its high level of organization, it would be misleading to characterize the state ruling class  as one monolithic class, since it is composed of a number of different, competing, and conflicting wings, just like any other capitalist county. Capital is always “private” in the sense that a capitalist class controls it and makes decisions about it in its own narrow class interests. But capital is not, in essence, an individual private affair. Moreover, the existence of capital as state capital by no means gets rid of the anarchy of production. There is competition among the different wings or special interests of the Soviet elite.

 Marx notes, that capitalism produces not only surplus value, but also the class relations between exploiters and exploited. It is not in the class interests of the Soviet working class to work hard to produce surplus value for the state bourgeoisie, and working-class resistance is taking a number of different forms. These include demands for higher wages, a constant search for better jobs, or just simply doing as little work as possible on the job. The lack of labor discipline has become a common theme in Soviet economic literature. Losses of working time are substantial. One of the results has been a continual drive by the Soviet bourgeoisie to intensify labour in order to raise productivity. Institutions like the trade unions, which are supposed to defend the workers interests, remained bound hand and foot to the ruling class.

Some  argued that the Soviet Union cannot be capitalist because the Soviet elite does not really enjoy great material privileges. The whole line of argument on material privileges, of course, is a red herring since it misses the essence of capitalism, which involves the accumulation of surplus value, not its consumption in the form of luxurious use values by the ruling class. As Marx states about the capitalist, “as far as he is personified in capital, it is not values in use and the enjoyment of them but exchange value and its augmentation, that spur him into action.” (Capital, Vol. l) But evidence was sufficient to demonstrate that there was a qualitative gap between the wealth of the Soviet ruling class and the income of the working people which cannot be justified on any rational basis according to the principle of bourgeois right. Moreover, if these privileges were justified as a material incentive to create greater loyalty and labour, why was the access to these privileges kept from public view?

Those Stalinists and certain Trotskyists who believed that the working class held state power in the Soviet Union were led into vulgar apologetics for glaring injustice, exploitation, and oppression in Soviet society, that led them to approve Soviet imperialist adventures abroad, whether slaughtering peasants in Afghanistan or napalming them in Eritrea. Such a stand betrays the interests of not only the Soviet working class which has accomplished so much in the past, but also the various peoples of the world who are oppressed and exploited by their Soviet “saviors.”

An Unheathy Society

The Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend is the centre of a major police investigation. Three nurses have been arrested on suspicion of falsifying records and earlier this month a 58-year-old man died after being forced to wait more than four hours in an ambulance. 'Now relatives of other patients who have died at the hospital and a nurse who worked there for eight years have come forward to voice their concerns about the standards of care. Lillian Williams, 82, an amputee, died at the hospital in August 2012. Her son, Gareth told ITV news: "Lillian was left Nil by Mouth on one   occasion for two days, without assessment, because it was a weekend and the   assessment teams didn't work on the weekends. It was nothing short of   torture."' (Daily Telegraph, 27 January) Needless to say all these victims of the NHS are members of the working class, if they were rich they could afford the best of health treatment. RD

Socialism - Will it happen?

The likelihood of achieving socialism in the next decade or two is remote; and many of us (albeit very reluctantly) accept that the fundamental changes we are working for will not come about in our lifetimes. The missing factor seems to be the absence of socialist consciousness which can create the revolutionary desire for change.

 Socialists hate capitalism with our heads and with our hearts, that is,  on rational, theoretical, but also on emotional grounds, because we see in it an out-dated social system, an anomaly, holding back those wonderful developments of technology and material resources that our knowledge could turn to providing the well-being of the people. We see in it a social system that carries within itself slumps and wars, poverty amidst plenty, oppression and repression. Socialists want to end it as soon as possible. We aim at replacing the present capitalist system by socialism, understood as a system where there will be social ownership of the means of production and distribution. We envisage socialism as a society where material wealth will be in the hands of those who produce it, where the exploitation of man by man will be ended, where production will be used not for private profit, where a new relationship of fraternity will develop between people and where individual men and women will find totally new possibilities to develop their capacities. A revolution means a change in political power and social relations; it does not necessarily mean a violent bloody insurrection. Our aim therefore is a peaceful transition to socialism : though we have always made it clear that an aim is not a guarantee and that the form of the transition to socialism does not depend on the working people alone. We do not stand for violence, but if violence should be used by the old ruling class against the people, then the people themselves will, with all legality behind them, have to find appropriate methods to deal with it.

As much as any other social group, Left intellectuals are subject to myth and mystification concerning their political beliefs; and nothing is more striking than the romantic illusions which have enveloped so much of the left-wing. Some political activists seem to expect that there will be a massive spontaneous uprising of workers in protest against the cumulative burdens being imposed upon them to accommodate capitalism’s way out of its crisis. Unfortunately, this is only wishful thinking. It is not that spontaneous protests will not occur, or that militancy will not spread. That may well be possible. Certainly,  when workers are in protest and resistance affords better opportunities for the  educational work of Marxists than in times of social ‘peace’. Taking comfort in prophecies of workers’ rebellion is a trap just as much as taking comfort in the evidence that capitalism is in its final crisis.  In both cases, capitalist solutions will prevail unless and until the working class is prepared to cope with the situation effectively. Before it can do so, the working class must understand its interest as a class and be class-conscious united. It is fundamental that we do everything possible to promote the growth of class consciousness, unity and a sense within the working class of its own power. No one  can offer a blue-print of the future but it should go without saying there must be discussion and exploration. The enemy is capitalism. To defeat capitalism we need all our resources, and the issue of the labour moment is how best to bring them together in unity for the common struggle.

 It is no easy task under the conditions of today to build a socialist movement without illusions, that is able to confront the gritty facts of social and political life without falling into despair and cynicism. Only a proof of  a practical viable alternative will convince large numbers of people of the possibilities of supplanting capitalism.  Socialists have always recognised their obligation to give support to strikes and other industrial  struggles. Such an obligation is of a two-fold character: to defend the immediate economic interests of  our class and to promote class and socialist consciousness. The second half of this proposition is something that a serious socialist is always careful that its efforts to aid a given strike do not in fact become an obstacle to it and  socialists proceed with good judgment and common sense. The workers show very good acumen in rejecting the many messiahs who come along with all the answers. They have assimilated the lesson that the trade unions is a valuable weapon in their fight against the employers, in that these organisations deliver some of the goods. This is why they are reluctant to abandon their organisations just because some group of individuals tells them to do so – no matter how learned these intellectuals might be.

No point in the Socialist philosophy arouses such controversy as that of the “class-struggle” and “class-consciousness.”

Marx said many years ago that strikes cannot be interpreted in terms of how little or how much is won economically, but that there is also a political character to them. They are resistances to life in this society. Some battles are won, some are lost, but all can be learned from. In a capitalist society, more are lost than are won. Occasionally, workers win great victories; more often, they suffer great defeats. Still more often, there are modest victories and modest defeats.

In German Ideology Marx wrote that a revolution is necessary, not only because bourgeois society cannot be over-thrown in any other way, but because without it, human beings cannot be transformed to create the kind of society that a future society can be. You do not create revolutionaries and then make a revolution. You make a revolution and that, in his phrase, gets rid of all the crap of centuries. And short of the revolution, you cannot get rid of that crap. If, in order for a revolution to take place, one first had to get rid of the racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry and division that are endemic in capitalist society, then the possibility of revolution does not exist.

Many understand working-class activity on the idea that consciousness leads to, or causes, action. It is just as valid to say that action leads to consciousness, But much more likely is that activity and consciousness interact in ways that are rarely predictable.

When workers in one department of a plant walk out to protest some grievance, their objectives are usually quite limited. But if that walkout triggers the shutdown of the entire plant, working people are then likely to raise their sights. They have learned, through their activity, that their grievance (and, presumably, other grievances) is shared by fellow workers throughout the plant. They have also learned that not only are their grievances shared but their power is also shared and is made more substantial by being shared. Suppose that a strike at one plant triggers strikes, either at other plants of the same corporation or at other workplaces in the same city. Suddenly, what began as a simple departmental walkout has become a general strike and has attained a whole new political dimension, requiring decisions by workers or strike committees on such questions as what production should be allowed and what should be stopped, how to ensure public order, how to deal with government attempts to break the strike, and so on. Under those circumstances it is only natural that workers, made more and more aware of their own power, also find that deeply held grievances and long hidden desires rise to the surface and become expressed in ways that would have been unthinkable before the actual struggle had begun.

The conclusion, of course, is that as long as the workplace is a place of continual struggle and conflict, then massive social explosions are always possible. Not inevitable, not limited to this or that country, but possible anywhere in the industrial world.

Tightening the purse strings

53 percent of Britons said they will have to curb their spending in 2014 in a struggle to pay rising household bills in the UK.

About 58 percent of those surveyed also expressed worries over the effect of higher bills on their finances.

59 percent said they would reduce the amount spent on food, 37 percent said they would reduce the amount spent on gas and electricity, and 66 percent the costs of socialisng with family and friends.

Citizens Advice chief executive Gillian Guy said the research shows that “The soaring cost of living will force millions of people to cut back on basic necessities,”

Superior Intelligence?

One of the crazy notions that is currently held  by defenders of capitalism is that the owning class are wealthy because of their superior intelligence. So how do they explain a hyper-wealthy billionaire venture capitalist who has  compared the treatment of super-rich Americans to the Holocaust? Thomas Perkins, who is thought to be worth around $8bn, made the startling comparison in a letter to The Wall Street Journal in which he wrote of 'parallels' between the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany and what he describes as the "progressive war on the American one per cent". 'The letter, which was published by the WSJ earlier this week, begins: "Writing from the epicentre of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its "one per cent," namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one per cent, namely the "rich."' (Independent, 26 January) "Superior intelligence"? More like total dumb ass!

Too Poor? Well Die Then

Bayer's CEO has caused a furore in the press by an undiplomatic remark. 'The CEO of pharmaceutical giant Bayer has sparked fury after announcing one of the firm's drugs was for 'western patients who can afford it'. Marijn Dekkers made the inflammatory comments after the Indian company Natco Pharma Ltd. were granted a government licence to produce a copy of Bayer's cancer drug Nexavar which they will sell for 97 per cent less than the original product.' (Daily Mail, 24 January) What should be really "sparking a fury" is not Mr Dekkers comment but the whole system that allows a company to withhold treatment of life saving treatment because the patient is too poor to afford it.  RD