Sanctioned Crime

It sounds like a wild TV or cinema plot. It has certainly grabbed international press headlines, but there is a more important issue at stake here. 'A woman who allegedly stole diamonds belonging to the Sultan of Brunei's ex-wife and replaced them with worthless replicas made a full confession to local police, a court heard on Friday. Fatimah Lim, 35, pocketed the gems while Madam Mariam Aziz's bodyguard and  jetted off to Geneva to see a diamond merchant for over $7m (£4.3m), it is claimed.' (Daily Telegraph, 7 February) Never mind the bodyguard's alleged crime. How does one individual inside the capitalist system like Aziz accumulate wealth of $7m? We are talking here of a much greater legally sanctioned crime. It is called exploitation of the working class. RD

What to do and not what to do

The trade unions are the organising centres of the working class, the most important mass organisations of workers. Trade unions first arose in order to eliminate the existing competition among the workers. They arose as organising centers that provided the workers with their initial lessons in class struggle. The solidarity learned in the course of the trade union struggle was a school of socialism. The immediate aims of the first trade unions were to win the basic economic demands of the workers, through collective action. The boss tries to squeeze as much profit out of the worker as he can. The worker tries to wring as close to a living wage out of the boss as he or she can. And if the workers stopped struggling, they’d just be squeezed more, that’s all. That’s why there’s a class struggle.

Immediately it became apparent that the function of the trade unions was not only to fight on the economic front, but to fight for the abolition of wage slavery itself, to fight to end the rule of capitalism. We want to get rid of the class struggle too. We’re going to do it by getting rid of the profit system, which exists only because there is a class of exploiters and a class of the exploited.

Many of the fundamental rights of the working class today were a result of the early trade union struggles, such as the eight hour day. Today this advance is being eroded by the capitalists. But certainly, in response to the austerity cuts of the recession,  the class struggle is sharpening. The storm clouds of great battles ahead are filling the air. The task of Socialist Party is to assist  linking these with the aim of our movement–the establishment of  socialism. This task can only be accomplished through patient and careful work, challenging any viewpoint which denies the necessity of trade unions, or that belittles the nature of the class struggle to be waged, and suggests trade unions engage in the line of class collaboration.

To increase profits and expand investments, capitalists have to pay workers lower wages and benefits and keep down the expenses needed to provide safe and healthy conditions. Therefore, workers have to fight both to maintain any gains they have won and make any new advances.

As socialists, our approach recognises that the class interests of workers and capitalists are in basic conflict. We are also concerned that working people do not narrow their attention just to the economic struggle (wages, benefits, working conditions) in their particular workplace. When working people take an active role in struggling with major social and political issues they increase their strength and help both themselves and all oppressed people worldwide. This means taking stands that offer solutions for discrimination, war, pollution and other problems that nobody can really afford to ignore.

There is no kind of labour unionism by itself which is going to provide a solution to the exploitation of the working class. Unions helps to strengthen the working class’ position against the capitalists, and therefore it can contribute to building a  movement of the working class to overthrow the capitalist system and construct a socialist society. Only in socialism do working people have the means to collectively decide the direction their society will take and how they will participate in it.

 As socialists we believe society’s main problem is the capitalist system itself and always uphold that the only real solution is socialism and political rule by working people, not capitalists. A socialist party fights for the interests of the working class as a whole and doesn’t take a narrow sectional view of just looking out for the interests of a few trades. A socialist party struggles for the long-term, political interests of working people, and not just a few short-term economic gains. Socialists also recognise that international borders should not be allowed to divide workers from other working people around the world because we are all fighting one international capitalist system.

Of course, not everyone who calls him or herself a socialists is one. Some leftists who may have the best of intentions cannot be considered socialists because they have the wrong idea of what a socialist society is and advocate the wrong strategy for making a revolution. Too many left-wing activists engage in adventurist acts as publicity stunts to gain attention primarily for their own organisation. They try to be impressive to other working people by striking a “militant” pose, but often their reckless actions just make them end up looking irresponsible and foolish. Typically, a group like this overestimates the conditions that could create a revolutionary situation because it needs to justify its adventurist actions because it has an over-inflated view of its own importance. They cause unnecessary divisions among the working class, and it ends up strengthening the position of the repressive political forces. What is most serious is that it tends to fan anti-socialism by discrediting genuine socialists in the eyes of the working class.

Essential Information

Most workers rely on the daily press for information about world events, but we are also indebted to Fleet Street for other essential information. For instance did you know that Champagne should be kept in the fridge to prolong its shelf life, according to recent research?  'Scientists in America found bubbly kept at lower temperatures was less likely to develop a browning compound called 5-MMF that turns wine bad. They concluded that fizzy wines like Champagne, Prosecco and Cava should be refrigerated to 4C (39F), rather than a cellar at around 16C (61F).' (Daily Telegraph, 7 February) This important information is almost as essential as where our masters are sunning themselves this winter or what billionaire is romancing what starlet. Where would we be without the newspapers? RD

Trade unions and the socialist party - class symbiosis

The aim of trade unions is to serve workers’ struggles and the role of a socialist party is to push forward the fundamental battle to eliminate capitalist exploitation. Unions are the means of defence developed by the working class in its struggle against their employers. 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 organisation of unions is no gift from the capitalist class, but the result of the workers’ struggles against their exploiters. Unions are essential for the working class and have done much to advance its cause. Without them, workers would still be subject to the every whim and fancy of the employers. Unions have not been able to remain as combinations of workers of one employer, or even groups of employers in associated industries. They have developed from a unity of workers against a particular employer to unity against employers in one whole field of production, to unity of workers in entire areas. They form a massive unified network from local, to national, to international union. The union movement has proven itself to be a powerful instrument of a defensive character. But unions, while indispensable in the struggle of the workers against capital, have limits as well. They require to restrict themselves to economic struggles and struggles for reforms, and to stay outside the political struggle to abolish capitalism, the source of the workers’ misery.

 It is a socialist party that expresses the experience of the workers in many different unions across the country and provide an orientation for the workers’ fight against the capitalist system. and acts as a force that poses the possibility of a fundamental transformation in socio-economic relations from wage labour to a free association of labour and common ownership of its product - socialism. What the unions has won through battles on the picket lines has often been lost, due, not only to the operation of the laws governing the capitalist system itself, inflation for instance, but to counter attacks by the representatives of the employers as a class in control of parliament, and the state in its totality. The employers, through their agents in control of parliament and the entire state apparatus, have erected a whole network of laws and regulations designed to hamstring the labour movement.

Socialism is the proclaimed goal of many trade unionists who turned to the Labour Party, however the Labour Party cannot even be said to be socialistic. By introducing State management under preserving State-guaranteed profits for the capitalists, it strengthens capitalist domination and perpetuates the exploitation of the workers. The socialist goal cannot be reached by creating a new governing class substituting the capitalists. It can only be realised by the workers themselves being masters over production. The socialist party’s function is to spread insight and knowledge, to study, discuss and formulate social ideas, and by their propaganda to enlighten the minds of the masses. Their work forms an indispensable part in the self-liberation of the working class.

Within the capitalist economic system there are ranged on the one side all those who owned the means of production, and on the other those who use but do not possess them. The class struggle is the ceaseless struggle to obtain some advantage over the other.  It may take the form of more wages or shorter hours or the alteration of some workshop practice; but the particular point really does not matter, the opposing forces are always the same – the employing class and the employed class. It is like a huge market where two commodity possessors come to sell their goods.  The capitalist brings his commodity – money to pay wages , and the worker his or her commodity – the ability to work.  The worker sells his labor power in exchange for gold which is the commodity that will bring him the subsistence of life.  But it must be remembered that the commodity of labor power is free, that is to say, that the worker has no personal ties like the feudal slaves.  He can either sell his labour power or withhold it; but his well-being depends on materials, things he must eat and drink.  The capitalist has accumulated these necessities which he sells by means of his gold, consequently the free laborer with his empty stomach is forced to sell his labor power in return for the commodities without which he cannot live.  The wage laborer therefore is in the grip of a system that beats him down to the lowest – that is to say, to a bare subsistence.  The supporters of a system are those who have gained control of it or control of the means of production, those whose interests are bound up in it.  The system is capitalism, and those who control it are capitalists.  To manage it effectively and to their interests they must have a group of people to assist them and to operate the machinery.  The section or class who assist must be subject to their controllers or, in other words, must be slaves.  In return for their slavery they receive only sufficient of the gold commodity to enable them to continue operating the machinery from day to day, and to perpetuate their class.  It would be a catastrophe to the capitalist system if slaves did not breed more slaves. From this picture we see that for any material advantage one class must take from the other class.  This attempt to take, the one from the other, goes on all over the world, day in and day out.  It is like a tug of war.  There is a long rope – if you can imagine your bread and butter in the form of a rope – with the capitalists at one end and the workers at the other.  The more of the rope that is won, the more material comfort is acquired.

This, then, is the class struggle. It follows  from a Marxian analysis that socialist politics is very different in KIND from all other politics. Its aim, the expression of the interests of the revolutionary class, is quite precisely to overthrow existing social relations, to capture the existing state machine to facilitate the task of establishing a new society. Politics of the other conventional sort revolve within the framework of the existing order. Non-revolutionary political parties, contending for votes and office, represent different sections of the ruling class struggling for the major share of profits and privilege, different groups seeking the lucrative control of the governmental bureaucracy, different theories of how best to maintain the existing order and keep for it the support or at least the tolerance of the people, different organised attempts to secure this or that reform or concession for this or that section of the population. But all varieties of non-revolutionary politics PRESUPPOSE the continuance of the existing order in its fundamental structure: that is to say in capitalist society, non-revolutionary politics presupposes capitalist property relations, the exploitation of the masses by the propertied minority, the class domination of the bourgeoisie, the maintenance of the bourgeois state.

Furthermore, the chief function of mainstream politics is to deceive the working class as to the real and central issue which confronts them. So long as the electorate believe that their significant political choices lie WITHIN the capitalist order, capitalism itself, no matter what internal shifts take place, is not threatened. Every device serves: two or more avowed capitalist parties stage “life-and-death struggles” for “the fate of the nation”; when that sham is seen through, a populist party to slough off mass dissatisfaction into safe channels within the limitations of the capitalist state; when all else fails, a dictatorship to maintain capitalist property with guns. A socialist party pose directly the central issue: the class struggle for workers’ power and for socialism. Their success in an election campaign is not to be measured in votes or offices won, but in the extent and the depth to which they have succeeded in bringing the central issue before the consciousness of the masses.  The main issue for the working class, the only issue  is the CLASS issue:

 The two main political parties are two wings of a single bird of prey. The Conservative Party plays the “hard man” towards the working class. The Labour Party plays the “soft man”, who poses as the friend of the working class. Both unite in trying to fool and confuse the working class and to keep it trapped within the draconian  clutches of the capitalist class. Tory leaders make clear that what they  propose is a return to the good old days. The future of capitalism and profits, they would like to believe, lies in free enterprise, in a balanced budget, rugged individualism, competition, no government “interference” in business.  Equally devoted to the preservation of capitalism and the fullest possible capitalist prosperity (i.e., profits), the Labour Party politicians believe that the traditional methods are no longer adequate either to preserve profits or to keep the tolerance of the masses for the capitalist order. They advocate an “enlightened” capitalism, tempering the harsh exploitation with fine phrases about human rights and public works, and collective bargaining. In this way, Labour aim to oil the wheels of capitalism.

Pessimism V Optimism

Capital must accumulate in order to survive. It grows by keeping for itself the surplus value produced by workers after they have reproduced the value of their labour power, their wages. Surplus value is the source of all profit. The unending search for surplus value, for profit, is the motive force of capitalist production. In its restless search for maximum profits, spurred on by ruthless competition, each capitalist company is bound to attempt to increase its productive strength to the full.

Capitalism can produce only for profit. It is forced constantly to seek new ways to achieve the maximum rate of profit. Competition between rival capitals ensures the destruction of all capitals which do not conform to the blind laws of capitalist production. The bosses cut their costs of production mainly by stepping up their already vicious exploitation of the working class. They cut their wage bills by reducing wages and sacking workers. They also make the remaining workers work longer hours and they increase the intensity of labour.

Capitalists also reduce their wage bill by buying more advanced machinery in order to produce the same goods with less labour. The cut-throat competition between employers, particularly at times of crisis, means that eventually factories using outdated machinery will inevitably be closed down unless the owners can make a profit by installing new machinery, and have the capital to do so. In many cases they cannot. And so repeatedly the  capitalists are forced by the laws of capitalist production to destroy the means of production on a massive scale and make thousands of workers unemployed.

At times of crisis management  tell us to tighten our belts and slave harder for them, “in the national interest”. They try to increase exploitation so as to get the huge profit needed to start capital expanding again. Competition among the capitalists to minimise losses is very fierce. In this battle the winners as well as the losers lay workers off and further reduce living standards.

The government is an executive committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. With the great sharpening of the crisis of capitalism on all fronts, governments inevitably plays a greater and greater part in the economy, whatever the desires of any individual particular capitalist on this matter. Capitalism is increasingly openly becoming state-interventionist capitalism.

As section after section of British financial capitalism tottered towards complete bankruptcy, more and more only the state  provided massive source of funds to bail out the banks. Northern Rock, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland were taken under state control whether it is called “nationalisation” or “government assistance” the essence of the matter is the same.

The Labour Party is a capitalist political party. This is determined by the class it serves politically and the  class character of its ideology. The Labour Party is especially valuable to the ruling class  in hiding the class nature of their control. In words the Labor Party claims to be the party of the working class but in deeds it serves the rich and powerful. The Labour Party is “the best bosses’ party”. By posing as a friend of the working class it can get the cooperation of the trade unions for its capitalist policies of attacking the working class, in a way that the Conservative Party cannot. Thus it success fully binds the workers’ economic organisations, the Trade Unions, into the capitalist system.

The Left-wing versus Right-wing feuds within the Labour Party are not accidental but a deliberate and conscious balancing act, essential if the Labour Party is to fool the working class to give into the demands of the employer class. Compared to the Conservative Party, the Labour Party represents that section of employers which favours greater state intervention. Although this is disliked by other employers. Between the two main political parties, the Labour Party is not “the lesser evil”. The Labour Party is the greater danger! Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution. Our enemy is the capitalist class and all those in league with them.

The  main force in the socialist revolution is the working class. Capitalism brings into being and unites the working class into one great mass and teaches them to fight in a disciplined and united way. It is only the working class that is most far-sighted, most unselfish and most thoroughly progressive. Only the working class,  the great majority of the people,   can struggle for socialism. We place our trust in the people. The working class is always organising against oppression. The capitalist class is forever trying to grind the working class down, and where there is oppression, there is always resistance. Now the capitalist class is increasing the attack on the working class. A drive to break the power and influence of trade unions is under way. Wage, benefits and working condition gains are being taken away.

 Labour struggles being conducted are mostly defensive - maintaining concessions won previously. Educational and social services and welfare funding is being reduced. This is a capitalist attack. The working class resists. True, the resistance is still scattered over many issues, but struggles are merging into mighty currents something activists should help to be achieved.

We are in a period of sharpening class struggle. Pessimists see only half the struggle, only the capitalist attack. The capitalist class has no alternative but to attack the working class’s life in every respect. And the workers are in struggle. Students no longer stand passive as they once did during the Thatcher years. Government workers defend their pensions.The private sector protect their jobs. There is deep distrust and rejection of the official channels into which the capitalist class tries to divert politics. The old faith in electoral politics is disappearing. The links are at the base, among concerned people in the grass roots of the various movements, organising horizontally or structuring themselves from the bottom up. Newspapers and television are read and watched cynically. The percentage of people who vote at elections is at a historical low point but social consciousness is deeper. There is a sense of mutual support and solidarity of each others’ struggles. New connections between the labour and environmental movements are being made.

We are not at the brink of a revolutionary period yet by any means. Yet now more than ever, it can be said that the workers question capitalism on a much broader scope than ever before. It is a time for optimism

FOR SOCIALISM

Behind The Hollywood Facade

Thousands of US military veterans face homelessness and chronic conditions like alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder, despite millions of dollars in government spending on the group. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has said it is extending a grant program designed to help reduce homelessness among veterans, making $600 million available over the next two years. There were roughly 58,000 homeless veterans last year, according to the New York Times, citing government officials. 'The high rate of unemployment, post traumatic stress disorder and combat injuries among veterans have sharply raised the rate of suicide among them. New figures show that the number of young American veterans committing suicide soared from 2009 to 2011. ....  The suicide rate among veterans remains well above that for the general US population, with roughly 22 veterans a day taking their own lives.' (ALALAM, 19 January) This harsh reality clashes with the usual Hollywood fiction of military heroism and bravery. RD

Growing Consciousness

Some writers in have been saying that the Marxist theories have become antiquated owing to the facts of economic science, and that therefore it would be necessary to proceed to a complete revision of the theories expounded by Karl Marx. To make a long story short, nothing has really changed within the camp of the capitalist. Exploitation, oppression and reaction still reign supreme. And violent repression is always present, available as often as necessary.The Socialist Party makes no apology for our  principles.  We seek  the common of all wealth production, and this involves the complete elimination of the capitalist system.

There are doubtless many sincere people who shudder at the word socialism yet who, nevertheless wish  to see better conditions and who think things are steadily improving. Ask them how and they will answer you with vague platitudes and some cherry-picked statistics. Ask how soon will be the abolition of  poverty for all and the answer becomes even more hazy. Yet it we socialists who are charged by them for not being explicit enough in our ideas and aspirations and they turn a deaf ear to our education and agitation.

The aim of Socialism has always been to abolish squalid conditions of life, and  replace with by at least sufficiency, if not abundance or even luxury,  for all alike without discrimination. Socialism has never proclaimed itself proponents of spartan austerity or puritanical abstinence. On the contrary, we demand good living for all.

 Those whose sympathies are with the economic demand of socialism, but who still hold reservations ask what attitude socialism takes up as regards other questions of personal and social life, apart from its strictly economic aspects.  We don’t want hard-and-fast lines drawn, but  nor evasions, to many questions continually being asked but our aspiration is a social ideal,  not a personal goal.

We are well acquainted with the critics of socialism declaring human ‘nature’ being what it is all men and women are greedy and lazy. We live in a post-scarcity society. It is now possible for the whole world, not just the lucky minority, to live a comfortable life with more than just adequate food clothing and shelter. We can produce abundance, enough for everybody. The doomsters and catastrophists are wrong.

Of course, if we all lived the American lifestyle where 5 percent of the world’s population uses 25 percent of its resources, we would require four Planet Earths. The average American eat too much meat, drive too many miles, live in houses that are too big and too far apart, shop too much for stuff they don’t really need. America’s poor are wealthier than most of the world. Depictions of  consumerism tend to suggest that blame lies with the ravenous, grasping masses.

Yet it is the top five hundred million people by income, comprising about 8 percent of global population, are responsible for 50 percent of all carbon emissions. It’s a truly global elite, with high emitters present in all countries of the world. In Western Europe, the transportation footprint of the top income earners is 250 percent of that of the poor.

People drive cars instead of taking the bus or train, move to a house with a garden instead of going to the park, buy books and home entertainment systems instead of going to libraries and museums, drink bottled water instead of tap—if they can afford to. It doesn’t make us any  happier. Rather, the status-symbol treadmill of keeping up with the Jones frequently produces and fuels  anxiety, inadequacy and debt under the banner of individual liberty and freedom of choice.

 The sociologist Juliet Schor says we could work four-hour days without any decline in the standard of living; similarly, the New Economics Foundation proposes we could get by on a 21-hour workweek. This is not a new message. In the 19th century Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx’s son-in-law, was arguing for the right to be lazy.

At a certain stage in the life of every individual acquires a “consciousness” of personal identity and  becomes aware of their own  distinctiveness, physically and mentally. This sense of individuality, this power of ordered thought (“consciousness”), is the result of the development of the requisite brain-organ; and, as each individual from conception to maturity successively reproduces the stages through which the species as a whole has passed, by comparison we can ascertain the relative degree of development reached by any individual. When an individual has become “conscious”,  arrived at that stage of growth at which one perceives both the distinction and relation between oneself and the rest of creation— he or she  has acquired a power of reacting upon their environment; a power (limited but real) of “self-determination,” within, of course, the possibilities set by his physical powers and the said environment.

When conditions are ripe the working class will acquire, with the recognition of their place in society, and of their constraint and that which constrains them, and a perception of the vital organic force impelling them to struggle, their consciousness as a class—their power of “self-determination.” To make the working class thus “conscious,” it is necessary to make it understand the relation between it and the rest of (i.e., the other classes in) society.

Class-consciousness on the part of any one worker thus entails the recognition by him of his place as a unit in a class, at present politically ruled and economically enslaved, whose historic mission it is to carry Society forward into a higher stage of development: the recognition that the interests and therefore impulses of the individuals composing either ruling or ruled classes respectively are mutual and those of the two classes antagonistic, and consequently that the development of Society more and more produces a class-struggle for the possession of political power as a necessary pre-condition on the one hand for rule and on the other for emancipation.

The working-class-consciousness will express itself in a political organisation for the purpose of accomplishing this emancipation. That worker is class-conscious who has seen the duty of enlisting under the banner of Revolution—in the political party of the workers —a socialist party.

Recovery? What Recovery?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer may speak encouragingly about an economic recovery but for millions of workers this is a complete sham. 'Up to four million Britons who display signs of having run up 'problem debts' are underestimating the seriousness of their situations, Stepchange has said. The debt charity conducted a survey that found as many as 15 million people in the UK have run into problems that mean they're having to rely on credit cards or overdrafts to get them to payday, or are falling behind on household bill payments. ...... This follows a study by Shelter released last week that found that around a million Britons had used payday loans to cover essential payments like mortgage or rental costs.' (Daily Mail, 20 January) When even a right wing government supporter like the Daily Mail can report this poverty the Chancellor's words do not ring true. RD

A Sense of Perspective

Capitalism is a crazy society with mad values but surely nothing better sums up its madness than this. 'Tickets to the National Football League's first cold-weather Super Bowl are a hot item, with some climate-controlled suites in New Jersey's MetLife Stadium priced at $1 million. Following Sunday's conference championships that set up a Denver-Seattle Super Bowl on February 2, the average resale price of tickets on secondary markets was $3,721, the highest figure in five years of tracking, according to SeatGeek.' (Business Insider, 20 January) We are talking about a society where millions die because they cannot afford $2 a day in order to survive and yet some bloated member of the capitalist class spends a £1 million on himself and his pals for a stupid football game. RD

Class Struggle and the Nation

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

In the Communist Manifesto we read the following:

"Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie."

 This passage only means that the  British workers, for instance,  cannot wage the class struggle against the French capitalists, nor can the French workers wage the class struggle against the British  employers, but that the British  bourgeoisie and the power of the UK State can be attacked and defeated only by the British working class.

The nation naturally arises as a community of interests of the bourgeois classes. But it is the State which is the real solid organisation of the capitalist class for protecting its interests. The State protects property, it takes care of administration, puts the rmed forces in order, collects the taxes and keeps the masses under control. The "nations", or, more precisely: the active organisations which use the nation's name, that is, the pro-capitalist parties, have no other purpose than to fight for the conquest of a fitting share of influence over the State, for participation in State power. For  Big Business, whose economic interests embrace the whole State and even other countries, and which needs direct privileges, customs duties, State purchases and protection overseas, it is its natural community of interests, rather than the nation, which defines the State and its limitations.  State power is an instrument at the service of big capital.

Nations are not just groups of people who have the same cultural interests and who, for that reason, want to live in peace with other nations; they are combat organisations of the bourgeoisie which are used to gain power within the State. Every national bourgeoisie hopes to extend the territory where it exercises its rule at the expense of its adversaries; it is therefore totally erroneous to think that the bourgeoisie could through its own initiative put an end to these exhausting struggles, just as it is utterly out of the question that the capitalist world powers will usher in an epoch of eternal world peace, through a sensible settlement of their differences. Does the bourgeoisie really have an interest in putting an end to national struggles? Not at all, it has the greatest interest in not putting an end to them, especially since the class struggle has reached a high point. Just like religious antagonisms, national antagonisms constitute excellent means to divide the proletariat, to divert its attention from the class struggle with the aid of ideological slogans and to prevent its class unity.

 The struggle for socialism is a struggle for State power against the capitalist parties. State power is the fiefdom of the owning classes.  The workers  cannot free themselves, they cannot defeat capitalism unless it first defeats this powerful organisation. The conquest of political hegemony is not a struggle for State power; it is a struggle against State power. The social revolution which shall issue into socialism consists essentially of defeating State power with the power of the working class  organisation. This is why it must be carried out by the workers of the entire State. This common liberation struggle against a common enemy is the most important experience in the entire history of the life of the proletariat from its first awakening until its victory. The international character of the proletariat develops rapidly.

 The workers of different countries exchange theory and practice, methods of struggle and ideas, and they consider these topics to be matters common to all. The struggles, the victories and the defeats in one country have profound impacts on the class struggle in other countries. The struggles waged by our class comrades in other countries against their bourgeoisie are our affairs not only on the terrain of ideas, but also on the practical plane; they form part of our own fight and we feel them as such. The workers of the whole world perceives itself as a single army, as a great association which is only obliged for practical reasons to split into numerous battalions which must fight the enemy separately, since the bourgeoisie is organized into States and there are as a result numerous fortresses to reduce. This is also the way the press informs us of struggles in foreign countries: Occupy Movement, the Indignados, and the demonstrations on the streets of Rio or Phnom Penh are all of interest to our class organisation. In this manner the international class struggle becomes the common experience of the workers of all countries.

Through the overthrow of the State by the power of the working class majority, the State disappears as a coercive power. It takes on a new function: "The government of persons gives way to the administration of things." as Engels describes it in Anti-Dühring.

For the purpose of production, we need organisation and administration; but the extremely strict centralization such as that practiced by today's State is neither necessary nor can it possibly be employed in pursuit of that goal. Such centralisation will give way to full decentralisation and self-administration inside socialism.  According to the size of each sector of production, the organisations will cover larger or smaller areas; while bread, for example, will be produced on a local scale, steel production and the operation of railroad networks require regional-sized economic entities. There will be production units of the most various sizes, from the workshop and the local municipality to the district and the regions, and even, for certain industries, global . Those naturally-occurring human groups will they not then take the place of the vanished nation-states as organisational units? This may be the case in the beginning, for the simple practical reason, that they are communities of the same language and all of man's relations are mediated through language. Some regions will merge, others will dissolve.  All partially manage their own affairs and all depend upon the whole, as parts of that whole. National differences will totally lose the economic roots which today give them such an extraordinary vigour. The whole notion of autonomy comes from the capitalist era, when the conditions of domination led to their opposite, that is, freedom in respect to a particular form of domination.

The socialist mode of production does not develop oppositions of interest between nations, as is the case with capitalist competition and rivalry. The economic unit is neither the State nor the nation, but the world. This mode of production is much more than a network of national productive units connected to one another by an intelligent policy of communications and by international conventions; it is an organisation of world production in one unit and the common affair of all humanity. This material basis of the collectivity, organised world production, transforms the future of humanity into a single community.

 Linguistic diversity will be no obstacle, since every human community which maintains real communication with another human community will create a common language. Without attempting here to examine the question of a universal language, we shall only point out that today it is easy to learn various languages once one has advanced beyond the level of primary instruction. This is why it is useless to examine the question of to what degree the current linguistic boundaries and differences are of a permanent nature. Already we see English growing to be the lingua franca of the world. There cannot be independent communities of culture because every community, without exception, will find itself, under the influence of the culture of all of humanity, in cultural communication, in an exchange of ideas, with humanity in its entirety.

Powerful economic forces generate national isolation, antagonism and the whole nationalist ideology of the capitalist class. These features are absent among the working class. They are replaced by the class struggle, which gives the lives of the worker their essential character, and creates an international community in which nations as linguistic groups have no practical significance. Socialist tactics are based on the science of social development. The way a working class assumes responsibility for pursuing its own interests is determined by its conception of the future evolution of its conditions. Its tactics must not yield to the influence of every desire and every goal which arise among the oppressed workers, or by every idea that dominates the latter's mentality; if these are in contradiction with the effective development they are unrealisable, so all the energy and all the work devoted to them are in vain and can even be harmful. The priority of our tactics is to favour that which will inevitably realise our socialist goal. Nationalism is nothing but capitalist ideology which does not have material roots in the working class movement and which will therefore disappear as the class struggle develops. It constitutes, like all ruling class ideology, an obstacle for the class struggle whose harmful influence must be eliminated as much as possible.

 Nationalist slogans distract the workers from their own specifically class aspirations. They divide the workers of different nations; they provoke the mutual hostility of the workers and thus destroy the necessary unity of the proletariat. They line up the workers and the ruling clas shoulder to shoulder in one front, thus obscuring the workers' class consciousness and transforming the workers into the executors of plutocrat’s policy. National struggles prevent the assertion of social questions and proletarian interests in politics and condemn this important means of struggle of the proletariat to sterility. All of this is encouraged by ‘socialist’ propaganda when the left nationalists presents nationalist slogans to the workers as valid, regardless of the very goal of their struggle, and when it utilises the language of nationalism in the description of our socialist goals. It is indispensable that class feeling and class struggle should be deeply rooted in the minds of the workers; then they will progressively become aware of the unreality and futility of nationalist slogans for their class.

This is why the nation-State as a goal in itself, such as the re-establishment of an independent national State in Scotland, has no place in socialist propaganda. Socialism is based upon the recognition of the real class interests of the workers. It cannot be led astray by ideologies, even when the latter seem to be rooted in men's minds. Our tactic consists in making the workers more aware of their real class interests, showing them the reality of this society and its life in order to orient their minds more towards the real world of today. Socialists only speak of capitalism, exploitation, class interests, and the need for the workers to collectively wage the class struggle. In this way the mind is steered away from secondary ideas of the past in order to focus on present-day reality; these ideas of the past are thus deprived of their power to lead the workers astray from the class struggle and the defense of their class interests. Our emphasis is upon the class struggle, to awaken class feeling in order to turn attention away from national problems.

Our propaganda could appear to be useless against the power of nationalist ideology and it could seem that nationalism is making the most progress among the workers. But insofar as nationalist movements are in practice capable only of following in the wake of the ruling class and thus of arousing the feeling of the working class against them, they will progressively lose their power.

 We would, however,  have gone completely off the rails if we wanted to win the working class over to socialism by being more nationalist than the capitalist class as some on the Left appear intent upon doing. Such nationalist opportunism would allow the appearance of workers being   won over, but this does not win them over to our cause, to socialist ideas. Capitalist conceptions will continue to dominate their minds as before. And when the decisive moment arrives when they must choose between national and class interests, the internal weakness of this workers movement will become apparent, as is currently taking place in the separatist crisis. How can we rally the masses under our banner if we allow them to flock to the banner of nationalism? Our principle of class struggle can only prevail when the other principles that manipulate and divide men are rendered ineffective; but if our propaganda enhances the reputation of those other principles, we subvert our own cause.

Even though we do not get involved in the slogans and watchwords of nationalism and continue to use the slogans of socialism, this does not mean that we are pursuing a kind of ostrich policy in regard to national questions. These are, after all, real questions which are of concern to men and which they want to solve. We are trying to get the workers to become conscious of the fact that, for them, it is not these questions, but exploitation and the class struggle, which are the most vital and important questions which cast their shadows over everything. But this does not make the other questions disappear and we have to show that we are capable of resolving them.

To all the nationalist slogans and arguments, the response will be: exploitation, surplus value, bourgeoisie, class rule, class struggle.  If they speak of free higher education, we shall call attention to the insufficiency of all teaching dispensed to the children of the workers, who learn no more than what is necessary for their subsequent life of back-breaking toil at the service of capital. If they speak of  local job creation, we will speak of the misery which compels Scots to emigrate. If they speak of the unity of the nation, we will speak of exploitation and class oppression. If they speak of the greatness of the nation, we will speak of the solidarity of the workers of the whole world.

Only when the great reality of today's world—capitalist development, exploitation, the class struggle and its final goal, socialism—has entirely impregnated the minds of the workers, will the  ideals of nationalism fade away. The class struggle and propaganda for socialism comprise the sole effective means of breaking the power of nationalism.

Adapted from Anton Pannekoek’s Class Struggle and Nation,
available in full and unabridged here

A STRANGE DEMOCRACY

Supporters of capitalism in the USA are forever boasting about what a wonderful democratic political system they have but Charles and David Koch  are American billionaire brothers who as lavish political spenders have made the headlines and make a mockery of any claims of the USA to be democratic. 'A recent study estimated that in the 2012 election cycle some 17 different Koch-backed groups spent a combined $400m (£240m) trying to influence the outcome of the presidential race and scores of other elections across the US. (Independent, 31 January) This vast expenditure would dwarf any that could be afforded by the working class. RD

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