Marx and the Soviet State

Marx and Engels never believed that their millennium could be brought about on earth by the will of the few and imposed on man generally. The society they envisaged must result from a ‘natural evolution’ and their theory only showed men how to behave, how to recognise favourable conditions – that is, if the material basis on which such a society is possible exists – and eventually how to act so as to hasten its advent in such circumstances. This they called  the materialist conception of history. The ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this Marx never asserted.

The Leninists, Maoists and Trotskyists call themselves Marxists and of course proclaim their theory to be true communism. In reality, however, it has nothing to do with Marx. In their form of society, the producers have no control or administrative power whatever over production, so that the picture thereby painted represents a strange version indeed of Marx's concept of the association of free and equal producers. For Marx it is not the state which is conceived as being the leader and administrator of production and distribution, but far rather it is the producers and consumers themselves to whom these functions would fall. The reformists and ‘revolutionaries’  turned his theory completely upside down. The struggle for social reforms and the transformation of the various branches of industry into state or municipal enterprises meant for them a steady approach towards socialism. What becomes apparent is that this nationalisation can only lead to the construction of state capitalism, in which the state emerges as a single vast employer and exploiter. Despite their veneer of Marxist terminology, Bolshevik  reality can be easily identified with everything abhorred, criticised and fought against by Marx and Engels all their lives.

 A British worker, employed in a state-owned industry is still  a ‘wage-earner’ in the Marxian sense of the word, and still ‘exploited’. His opposite number in the old USSR (where ‘the system of wage labour and exploitation has been abolished’, as Stalin pretended) earned less, worked longer, had trade unions which existed only to squeeze more and more work out of him, and had the prospect of being sent to a gulag if he protested against his lot; yet he, according to Soviet ‘Marxism’, represented the most ‘advanced, emancipated and free’ worker in the world (as the pretence continued). To justify this, one must first accept the Soviet distinction between an amount of unpaid labour which is ‘surplus value’ when it is the British state which is the beneficiary, and the same amount of unpaid labour which is not ‘surplus value’ when the Russian state is on the receiving end – a subtlety that would perhaps not have been very well received by Marx.

Marx and Engels aspired to a free association of completely free men, where no separation between ‘private and common interest’ existed: a society where ‘everyone could give himself a complete education in whatever domain he fancied’. For ‘man’s activity becomes an adverse force which subjugates him, instead of his being its master’ when there is ‘a division of labour’; everyone must then have a profession, that is a ‘determined, exclusive sphere of activity’ he has not chosen and in which ‘he is forced to remain if he does not want to lose his means of existence’. In their socialist society, on the contrary, a man would be given ‘the possibility to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner’, as he chose (‘The German Ideology’) It is clear that there was not the slightest relation between Marx’s vision of the future society and the Russian system and nor was the slightest sign in the Russian regime of any future development towards the communism of which Marx and Engels desired.

Was it true that the ‘people as a whole’ own the means of production in Russia? The answer, according to the Leninists was and still predominantly ‘yes’, but according to Marx’s conception can only be ‘no’.
For in Russia there is an intermediary between the direct producer and the conditions of production, and this was the state, that is, the working-class = the Communist Party = the commissars, apparatchiks, nomenclature plus the rest of the party leadership. It is true, there was no private ownership of the means of production, and it is the state which is the owner. But state property is no more socialism for the workers are still not the masters of their labour conditions and remain separated from the production process. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution...  'neither the conversion into joint-stock companies nor into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital... The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme.'(Anti-Dühring, Engels) The fact is that in the USSR the state was the owner of the conditions of production – ‘the general capitalist’ – and the direct producers are wage-earners, that therefore the relations between them according to Marx are still the relations between capital and labour, between employer and proletarians.

There is no difficulty in discovering that all the characteristics of the capitalistic system of exploitation are to be found in the Russian system of relationship between the state, owner of the means of production, and the direct producer, the worker. It is true that they are ‘rather pushed to an extreme’ in this ‘most advanced form of state capitalism’. The state pays the labour it employs with wages, and ‘wages... by their very nature always imply the performance of a certain quantity of unpaid labour on the part of the labourer’ (Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 25/1), that is ‘surplus value’.

It is also true that the 1917 Revolution abolished the right to private property and reduced the difference between highly-paid and ill-paid workers  but it did not bring equality. Stalin’s constitution was created to protect the bureaucracy’s newly-acquired wealth, it reintroduced the right to private property and the right to inheritance which was not paid for out of the ‘surplus value’ of the working class, but are the product of the personal labour of the elite - if we were to believe the propaganda.

When Lenin and his party of ‘professional revolutionaries’ took power, they were faced with innumerable  problems they they had inherited. It was a question of life and death for the Bolshevik government to succeed where its predecessors had failed, that is, to install a capitalist society, and it must be admitted that they succeeded. When Lenin declared that ‘if we introduce state capitalism in approximately six months’ time... within a year Socialism will have gained a hold and have become invincible in our country’ (Left-Wing Childishness and Petty-Bourgeois Mentality), he was once more talking nonsense. Indeed, it took much longer than six months to introduce ‘state capitalism’, and socialism must await another revolution. The Communist Party followed the classic process of primitive accumulation which Marx studied, and described in Capital a century ago and they called them 5-year Plans.

Marx and Engels are often faulted for the ‘errors’ of their predictions but credit where credit is due in the foresight they showed in the Russian situation. Marx wrote to Mikhailovsky:
‘Now what application to Russia can my critic make of this historical sketch [on primitive accumulation]? Only this: If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the Western European countries, and during the last years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction – she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. This is all...’ (1877)

 Engels argued against Struve’s assertion that ‘the evil consequences of modern capitalism in Russia will be easily overcome as they are in the United States’, and  reminded Danielson, ‘that the United States are modern, bourgeois, from the very origin...’, whereas in Russia a ‘pre-civilisation gentile society, crumbling to its ruins’ was the basis ‘upon which the capitalistic revolution – for it is a real social revolution – acts and operates’. Thus, he told Danielson, ‘the change, in Russia, must be far more violent, far more incisive and accompanied by immensely greater sufferings than it can be in America’ (17 October 1893). For the industrial revolution in Russia ‘cannot take place’, he asserted, ‘without terrible dislocation of society, without the disappearance of whole classes and their transformation into other classes; and what enormous suffering and waste of human lives and productive forces that necessarily implies, we have seen on a smaller scale in Western Europe’ ( our emphasis). Russia’s history bears witness to the accuracy of their forecasts.

Marx borrowed the formula the dictatorship of the proletariat from Blanqui. But the meaning he gave it was completely different. It was in the Paris Commune that they saw the form of government closest to their conception. Marx and Engels never possess any contempt for democracy. They did not wish to destroy it, but to enlarge and perfect it.

 Engels in his introduction to the 1891 edition of Marx’s Civil War in France: it was a ‘new and truly democratic’ form of government. It showed how the ‘transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants into masters of society – an inevitable transformation in all previous states’, could be avoided. And the means, it is interesting to note, were (i) ‘election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time, by the same electors’ of all administrative, judicial and educational officials; (ii) ‘an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism’ by reducing the wages of the high officials to the level of those of the workers.

A Couldn't Care Less Society

Everyone agrees that being a carer is probably the most humane action that anyone can perform, but as we live in capitalism it can turn out to be the most costly. 'Almost half of carers in Northern Ireland are indebted and struggle to pay household bills, new research has claimed. The financial straits endured by many of those who have been forced to give up or cut back on work to look after an older, disabled or seriously ill loved one have been revealed in the year-long study by charity Carers Northern Ireland.' (Belfast Telegraph, 4 February) The charity's research found that amongst other horrors that more than four in 10 carers (42%) were unable to afford utility bills. Almost half (46%) were in debt as a result of caring. One in seven adults in Northern Ireland said their work was negatively affected by caring. 11% of adults in Northern Ireland, 151,811 people, had given up work to care at some point. The fate of carers in Northern Ireland is typical of carers world-wide. RD

The National Ill-Health Service

From time to time the media and politicians like to brag about how Britain's NHS is superior to other countries but they ignore the fact that leading doctors have raised fears that high numbers of patients are dying  while waiting for heart surgery in Wales.  'The Royal College of Surgeons wrote to healthcare inspectors last year warning   of "grave concerns" that too many people were dying in the south of the   country because of long waits for heart surgery.  The letter, seen by The Daily Telegraph, calls for swift action to tackle "unacceptably high mortality" levels and highlights more than 150 cases in which patients died waiting for life-saving treatment.' (Daily Telegraph, 20 February) Needless to say all those 150 deaths were of workers. If you could afford it you would get the best of health treatment without recourse to the NHS. RD

Break the Chains

The history of society (since classes first developed in ancient times) is the history of class struggle. The continuing development of society from a lower level to a qualitatively higher one has been accomplished throughout history by the overthrow of one class by another which represents a more advanced form of organization of production and society as a whole. Thousands of years ago, when the development of the productive forces first made possible the accumulation of a surplus above what people needed to live, and the accumulation of privately owned means of production, the slave-owning class arose and established the slave system. As the productive forces developed, the feudal aristocratic landlord class arose within the slave system, finally overthrew the slave system and established the feudal system. With the further development of the productive forces, the capitalist class arose within the feudal system, finally overthrew the feudal system and established the capitalist system. And now it is the turn of the working class (the proletariat) to overthrow the capitalist system and build a completely new kind of society.

The mission of socialism is so to organise the production so that wealth can be so abundantly produced as to free mankind from want and the fear of want, from the brute’s necessity of a life of arduous toil in the production of the brute’s mere necessaries of life. The working class possesses tremendous potential power to change the world, a fact that is shown every day in the process and product of its labour and in its many struggles against capitalism. It is the task of the working class to remake society to serve the interests of the great majority of the people.

The great store of society’s wealth is created by the millions of workers who with their labour mine, grow, and transport raw materials, construct machinery, and use the machines to transform raw materials into finished products. The machines, raw materials and other means of production created by the workers are an important part of the productive forces of society, but the most important part is the working class itself without whose labor the means of production would rust and rot. But in the hands of the capitalists the means of production become tools for the continued enslavement and impoverishment of the working class.

Capital chases after the highest rate of profit – this is a law beyond anyone’s will, even the capitalists’, and it will continue in force so long as society is ruled by capital. Owning and appropriating a part of the total capital of society privately, each capitalist must try to enlarge his share at the expense of the other capitalists. Capitalists battle each other for profit, and those who lose out go under. While each capitalist tries to plan production, the private ownership, the blind drive for profit and the cut-throat competition continually upset their best-laid plans, and anarchy reigns in the economy as a whole. Capitalists constantly pull their capital out of one area of investment and into another, along with bringing in new machines to speed up production. Some capitalists temporarily surge ahead and expand while others fall behind or are forced out of business altogether. With each of these developments, thousands of workers are thrown into the streets and forced once again to search for a new master to exploit them. All this is why, from its beginning, capitalism has gone from crisis to crisis. The law of capitalism is the commandment: “expand or die.”

From the standpoint of historical development, capitalism was a great advance over the feudal system of landlord-serf relations that preceded it, but capitalism still represents the rule of an exploiting minority over the laboring majority. The “democracy” of capitalism (bourgeois democracy) is really democracy only for the capitalist rulers, just as ancient Greek “democracy” was democracy only for the small minority of slave-owners. Capitalist rule is still a form of dictatorship, and capitalism still a form of slavery for the working class. In its early  rise against the feudal system, the capitalist class raised the banner of “freedom.” It meant “free trade” and “free competition,” which were then spurs to the development of the economy. But more than that it meant the freedom to exploit the workers. Capitalism created the “free worker” by separating the working people from ownership of land through the Enclosures and forcing them to work in ever larger factories. For the workers, capitalist “freedom” means in essence the freedom to choose between toiling for some capitalist or starving.

The rise of capitalism, though brought about through great oppression of the people, was historically progressive, because it made possible the development of large-scale socialised production, and more because capitalism brought into being and concentrated as a mighty army capitalism’s own gravedigger, the modern worker. The working class is the true creator of large-scale socialised production and the true motor in developing the productive forces in modern society. It is the historic mission of the proletariat to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a higher form of society, to liberate the productive forces from the shackles of capitalism, finally eliminate all forms of exploitation, ending all domination of one section of society over another.

 It is time to break free of the chains enslaving us and which are now fetters upon production itself.

The Rich get Richer

The notion much beloved of politicians that despite the recent recession "we are all in this together" seems a bit thin on the publication of the following figures. 'The richest 100 people in Britain saw their fortunes grow by 11 per cent last year, making their combined wealth equivalent to the poorest 30 per cent of the UK, according to a new report. Research by pressure group the Equality Trust claims that the combined wealth of the top 100 rose by £25 billion to £257 billion last year. Meanwhile the poorest 30 per cent of UK households have a combined wealth of £255 billion.' (Daily Express, 19 February) Of course this imbalance of wealth is not peculiar to Britain as Oxfam recently published a report which claimed the 85 richest people on the planet have as much wealth as half of the world's population. RD

A Madhouse Society

Capitalism is an insane society but it is doubtful if there is a more  obvious example of its insanity than the so-called housing problem.  Desperate families are reduced to living in temporary bed and breakfast accommodation as they attempt to get a council flat or scrape up enough for a deposit on a house. Meanwhile this farce is enacted.  'A third of the mansions on the most expensive stretch of London's "Billionaires Row" are standing empty, including several huge houses that have fallen into ruin after standing almost completely vacant for a quarter of a century. A Guardian investigation has revealed  there are an estimated £350m worth of vacant properties on the most prestigious stretch of The Bishops Avenue in north London, which last year was ranked as the second most expensive street in Britain.'  (Guardian, 31 January)  Inside a socialist society houses will be built for people to live in not to be bought and sold to make a profit.   RD

Quote of the Day

It is not often that the Socialist Courier blog will quote a member of the old Communist Party polit-buro but when he talks as a trade-unionist then his views are worth repeating

In 1968, the late Mick McGahey, president of the National Union of Mineworkers in Scotland, attacked nationalism, an increasingly prominent force in Scottish politics, as a bourgeois deviation from the class struggle:-
 “[The Scots are] entitled to decide the form and power of their own institutions,” he said at a specially convened trade union conference on devolution. “But Scottish workers have more in common with London dockers, Durham miners and Sheffield engineers than they have ever had with Scottish barons and landlord traitors.”

Fact of the Day

More than 50,000 families are living below the poverty line in Edinburgh, Scotland's most affluent city. Edinburgh is exposed as "a city divided" in a report that shows that despite average incomes being 9% above the rest of Scotland, one in five households is living below the poverty threshold.

The poverty line is measured at £125 per week if people are single, £258 if they are a single parent family and £349 for a couple with two children.

Where there is oppression, there is resistance.

Humanity’s resources are wasted in senseless adventures while people’s basic needs remain unsatisfied, land is spoiled, misery increases, and poverty spreads. The gap between rich countries and poor ones, far from diminishing, is increasing. There is an increasingly evident imbalance between humanity’s capacity for progress and the wretched reality that hundreds of millions of people must live under daily. In many countries, hunger, poverty, illiteracy, and all kinds of degradations make the lives of hundreds of millions of men, women, and children scarcely tolerable. Every year millions of  people starve to death.

Why do we put up with it?  Who is responsible? How can things be changed? Some teach that it is because of the laws of nature while others preach that it is because of divine laws. These are the explanations of those who profit from this misery and whose power depends on maintaining the present conditions.  Reality shows  despite diversity in political regimes, in language, and in culture, the vast majority of the people of the globe share a common condition: that of living in a society where the owners of the means of production impose their will over those who possess nothing or little. In other words, the vast majority of people live in a society divided into social classes where the propertied classes, the capitalists and landowners, dominate the classes who have little or no property, the working class and the small farmers. The economic base of this social regime is the capitalist system. In the past few hundred years capitalism has become the dominant form of production and the key to the economic and political power of the capitalist is the ownership or control of the means of production and exchange (land, factories, transport , etc.) and the exploitation of the labour-power of the working class. The whole reason for existence of the capitalist is the accumulation of capital, i.e. the continual growth of its economic power; a capitalist who does not grow is, as a general rule, a capitalist condemned to disappear. On the other hand, the capitalist has nothing if he cannot find in society people who have no other means of subsistence but the sale of their labour-power in exchange for a wage equivalent to the strict minimum for survival. The secret of capitalist exploitation lies precisely in the fact that what the capitalist buys from the worker is not his work but rather his labour-power. If the capitalist had to pay for the work furnished, he would not be able to make the profit he does.

Suppose that a worker produces 10 pairs of shoes a week which sell for $25.00, thus making a total value of $250.00 per week on the market. This worker receives a weekly wage of $100.00. Where does the value of the shoes come from? The raw materials – the leather, thread, and glue – along with the other means of production such as electricity, the machines, etc. alone account for $75.00 to which is added the value added by the worker’s labour, i.e. $250.00 less $75.00 or $175.00. This sum represents the amount that the worker added by his work to the value of the materials that he was given at the beginning. If the capitalist paid the worker according to the value of his labour, he would have to give him $175.00. However, this is not what happens because the wages paid to the worker do not correspond to the value of the work he furnishes; rather, they correspond, on the average, to what it costs the worker to reproduce this labour-power or, in other words, to recuperate his energies and ensure his subsistence given the cost of living and the living conditions at a given time. There lies the essence of capitalist exploitation: the worker gives a certain value of work to the capitalist but his wages do not correspond to this value but to only a fraction of it. The value of the non-paid work is called the surplus-value; the capitalist appropriates this non-paid fraction which constitutes the source of his profit, the source of capital.

 Here lies the key to the exploitation of the worker by the employer, the key to the enrichment of the ruling class on the backs of workers. The development of capitalism leads it continually to socialize work further. This means that the production of a consumer item, a pair of shoes  for example, is no longer the work of an individual leather-worker and his apprentice, but of hundreds of individuals. Thus work takes on an increasingly collective form requiring a great many workers. This division of labour takes on gigantic proportions under capitalism. In these conditions, the contradiction between this cooperation of a great number of workers in production and the fact that the means of production (the factories, machines, etc.) and the product of labour are the private property of a very small number of persons becomes sharper. The gap between the large number of producers and the very small number of idle owners provokes increasing conflicts and unrest. But to attain their ends, the capitalists have to weaken the means of resistance of the working class and of the people in general. And to achieve this goal, there are no methods they won’t resort to. On the whole, the employing class combines two types of tactics to check the workers’ movement: on the one hand, minor concessions, crumbs, and superficial reforms, the carrot, and, on the other hand, political and economic repression, police brutality, intimidation, etc., the stick. In periods of relative prosperity for capitalism (which are increasingly rare and increasingly short) when the bosses has the economic possibilities of making concessions, the carrot is used more willingly. In periods of crisis, however, it quickly reneges on what it had given and frantically tries to smash any resistance of the working class.

There was a time when capitalism was progressive. By breaking the ideological and political holds with which feudalism held back the material progress of human society, capitalism considerably developed the productive forces, i.e. the means to satisfy the material needs of people. In combining science and technology for the production of goods.it increased production quantitatively and qualitatively. But capitalism, whose fundamental law is the search for individual profit, has reached the point where the development of the productive forces is incompatible with the search for profit. Now corporations with their patent laws and intellectual ownership claims  prevent the utilisation of  technical and scientific innovations which although they would benefit the majority of people, would not be good for profits. The system of capitalism is holding back the future. The longer it lasts, the more capitalism degrades life, increases misery, and invites huge ecological disasters. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. This is the way in which the class consciousness of  workers developed, i.e. the consciousness that to improve the condition of workers, the struggle must be waged against the capitalist class; the consciousness that the interests of all workers are the same and that they form a class distinct from the other classes of society; the consciousness that, in order to reach their goals, workers must wage a political struggle whose aim can only be the abolition of capitalism itself. Those who claim to fight for socialism do not understand that reaching this goal required revolution and at most are mere reformist parties. In attacking the foundation of the capitalist system – the private and state ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of wage labour – the working class undertakes at the same time the elimination of classes themselves. In effect, to eliminate the private ownership of the means of production is to destroy the material basis on which all exploiting classes are founded. Consequently, it is also to eliminate classes themselves. This is why we say that the aim of the workers’ struggle is the classless society, i.e. the communist society, a community in which no person exploits the labour of another. In contrast to the capitalist which ousted the feudal sytem in the aim of exploiting the working class more “freely”, the proletariat has no one to exploit because it is the most deprived class in society. After the proletariat, there are no classes to serve as the object of exploitation. To eliminate the exploitation of the proletariat is to eliminate all exploitation!

The goal of the workers is a stateless society, for the State has never been anything but the instrument of dictatorship of one class over another. Since time immemorial, the State has been the means with which an exploiting class maintains its domination over the other classes. The State is the monopoly of violence, the army, the police, the legal apparatus, the laws, the judges, the prisons, the control of the educational system... In the capitalist system, the State is the means whereby the capitalists ensure their domination over the proletariat. All States so far have been built as mechanisms for controlling and regulating class antogonisms with the aim of maintaining the power of one of them. The very existence of the State is an expression of the fact that society is divided into classes and that it is necessary to fix the relations between the classes. This is why the State monopolized violence by depriving the exploited and oppressed classes of the weapons necessary for their liberation. This is why the State seals in law the rules of the ownership system. Thus, to say that the struggle of the working class leads to a classless society is to say that it leads to a stateless society. The first act is the socialist revolution. Strengthening the fighting capacity of the working class means struggling against economic, political, and social factors of division which weaken it. We are unable to predict the future so we cannot say for certain if the class struggle for socialism will be violent or peaceful but in a situation where the there still exists confidence in the institutions of bourgeois democracy, socialists must not hesitate to struggle within these institutions, including Parliament. Thus the Socialist Party may participate in elections and then use Parliament as a tribune to spread the communist point of view as widely as possible with the aim of winning people away from the influence of reformism and pure and simple electoral parliamentarism.

In socialism,vital factories won’t close because investors don’t think they’re making enough money from them. Production will no longer depend upon the wishes of a handful of capitalists whose only goal is maximum profits, but on the collective will of all of the communities. The abolition of the exploitation of man by man means first and foremost the total ban of the exploitation of the work of another person, i.e. the appropriation for personal ends of the product of another’s work. Thus it will be impossible for individuals to enrich themselves from the work of others. Socialism means and must mean the elimination of the exploitation of one person by another in any form. The active and direct participation of the the people in all affairs of society is an indispensable condition for a successful socialist society. Whether it be in a factory, a hospital, an office, in a village, town, or region, be it a question of material production or of culture, individuals must exercise their power everywhere. It is they who must determine what is to be done. They must also directly control their elected delegates at various levels. In practice, this means that they can, at any time, remove an elected official from his of her functions if he or she has failed to act in the interests of his or her electors - direct democracy.

Socialists who wish to maintain the state are simply not socialists. Those who compose the state depend on the producers to feed, house and clothe them.  The relation of ruler and ruled is also a relation of exploiter and exploited. The state is exploitation. Those who oppose class exploitation must, necessarily, oppose the state. Those who want to preserve the existing state machinery in the struggle for socialism are not simply arguing for a different road to socialism; they are arguing against socialism itself. The aim of all those who want working class self-emancipation has to be the destruction of the capitalist state. Its existence is incompatible with the development of socialism.

Many people, who call themselves socialist, still hold the idea that socialism is about increasing the power of the state and expanding its sphere. For them, socialism is the nationalisation of property. The more militant their ‘socialism’, they assume, the more they must favour state ownership. Marx and Engels did not identify socialism with nationalisation of property. In 1845,  he and Engels declared ‘... if the proletarians wish to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the state.’ And in 1884, Engels looked forward to the day when the state would end its life ‘in the Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe’. Marx and Engels insisted that the state is in no sense an agency of the ‘general’ interest. It exists for the protection of  private vested interest. None of this is to deny that the state can and do perform ‘useful functions’ for society. They do, in their fashion, preserve ‘law and order’ and provide valuable services from roads to hospitals. Stateless societies did not lack social regulation and life within them could be orderly. In many areas of our social life, we live by our own rules.  We keep each other ‘in line’ by various forms of peer pressure. A lot of the time, we hardly even notice these rules: yet they are the real basis of social order.

 A self-acting society of associated producers will  be classless inasmuch as its members will have no differential relation to the means of production and distribution. Property will no longer belong to the state, which is the instrument of a class, but to the community, which is now classless; and the state itself, if the term be permissible for an apparatus of the nature that it will be, will be concerned not with the government of men but the administration of things.

Socialism is a classless, stateless, self-governing community based on an abundance of material goods, in which ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’. The aim of revolution is to overthrow the capitalist class to bring about the socialist transformation of society throughout the world, in the creation of a classless and stateless communist society in which the guiding principle will be ’From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’. As the working class abolishes capitalist relations of production and replaces them by non-oppressive, non-exploitive ones then the alienation characteristic of capitalism will disappear. As the great mass of people gain control of their productive activity and the products of their labour so their antagonistic estrangement from each other and their aversion to work will be overcome. Productive activity will become once again a creative, fulfilling and truly human activity. The division between work and non-work will gradually disappear and people will freely choose what to produce rather than being constrained by immediate necessities. It is not only the material basis of society which will be transformed. As the new communist person displaces the old bourgeois man the human species will embark upon a completely new stage of its historical development free from the oppression and exploitation of class society. Relations between the sexes and family relations will undergo change. Education will be thoroughly transformed and closely integrated with production and community life.  The arts will no longer be a narrow specialised activity engaged in by a few, but a shared activity.

The only demands that can really lead to working class emancipation is the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, the abolition of the exploitation of Man by Man, and the construction of a socialist society. These are the fundamental tasks of the socialist revolution and the Socialist Party.

Poverty in the USA

The owning class in the USA like to portray America as the embodiment of all that is modern and dynamic about 21st century capitalism, but remain silent about the plight of their working class. 'A new report finds nearly half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The Corporation for Enterprise Development released a new study that found 44% of Americans are "liquid asset poor", meaning they have less than three months' worth of savings. The CFED measured that amount at $5,887 for a family of four. That is three times monthly income at the poverty level. The report also found that these families live in a persistent state of financial insecurity, unable to look beyond immediate needs and save for the future.' (Yahoo Finance, 31 January) According to the study, the groups affected by income insecurity defy some stereotypes. The majority of the families considered "liquid asset poor" are white and employed and nearly half have some college education. RD

Poverty in the UK

British politicians from time to time boast about how the UK makes a world-wide contribution to relieve poverty and hunger, but tend to keep quiet about poverty nearer home. In a survey of 522 GPs, the magazine Pulse found that 16 per cent had been asked to refer a patient to food bank in the past 12 months. 'One in six family doctors has been asked to refer a patient to a food bank in the past year, a new survey has found, with GPs reporting that benefits delays are leaving people without money for food for weeks on end. There are even rare reported cases of people visiting their GP with "sicknesses caused by not eating", the leading food bank charity said.' (Independent, 18 February) Not much to boast about there. RD

Glasgow Branch History

Letter to the Editors from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

I was born in 1900 and am four years older than the party. I became a socialist after hearing Alec Shaw destroy Peter Kerrigan [of the Communist Party] at an outdoor debate in Clydebank in 1928. Since then I have voted by writing Socialism across my ballot paper, although in recent years through old age I have not bothered. But recently I was able to vote for a socialist for the first time in my life. Although I had to be taken in a wheelchair and the effort may well have killed me, I feel as if I have finally hammered a nail into the coffin of Capitalism. I feel as if the ice age is over and the next century will be ours.

By voting and reading a comment in the Standard by Steve Coleman "we are a movement not a monument" I feel rejuvenated. Some time ago I was given a book called The Monument which claims to be a history of the SPGB. The author says this is not an official history as he did not have access to the party's records. The book is therefore anecdotal and relies heavily on the writer's memory (or imagination). An example of the dubious nature of this information is the tale of Glasgow branch voting to expel John Higgins for bringing a gas mask to a branch meeting during the war.

This statement caricatures the men and women who were stalwarts in the struggle for socialism in those days. There is no other comment in the book about Glasgow comrades which leads me to think that Mr Barltrop has never been there.

Jimmy Brodie was a joiner, like myself, and he used to give history and economics classes during the lunch hour on whichever boat we were working on. The steel bulkhead was the blackboard (the location was changed daily to avoid the gestapo) and the socialist message remained on the walls for weeks. These classes were attended by hundreds of workers and the debates engendered carried on into worktime much to the consternation of foremen and managers. Not to speak of the Commie second fronters.

It took a lot of guts to advocate the socialist case in the emotional climate of the 1940s. Tommy Mulheron was prominent in the dock strike. Alec Shaw in Howdens. Joe Richmond an apprentice where I worked organised a strike in 1943 which brought the firm to its knees. In spite of Union opposition the apprentices won.

My branch of the union had lots of socialists, Willie Travers, Joe Richmond, Jimmy Craig, Eddie Hughes, John Fitton, Jimmy McGowan, Willie Henderson, so that it became known as the Socialist Sixth. These men were indefatigable exponents of the Socialist case, some of them were speakers for the party, but all of them were influential in the Union. The Socialist Party has never had leaders, it has no need of them. But it has had its heroes and been all the stronger and richer for them. This book, The Monument, diminishes these men whose worth is greater than all the Maxtons, Bevans, Pollitts and Gallachers, whose names are still revered by many workers today.

The present Socialist Party stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before and should give credit to the breadth and depth of those shoulders. Surely, approaching its centenary, the party can write an official history, not only of the party but the whole world wide Socialist movement.

Do not leave it to the Barltrops of this world. Do not let our heroes die without trace if left to word of mouth they will become as myth and legend, more fantasy than fact, and spawn books like The Monument which does the Movement a disservice.

I am now 94 years old and must be one of the last of my generation. I grieve that my old comrades have died unsung although they were heroes all.

Yours for the Revolution,

Paddy Small, Glasgow

Reply:

Thanks for your comments. And thanks also to all the other Socialists - supporters and sympathisers as well as Socialist Party members - who contributed the money (£22,286, to be precise) that enabled us to put up a Socialist candidate in Glasgow and three other seats in last year's Euro-elections and to get a socialist leaflet distributed to one million households.

Editors.

We Want It All

Pre-capitalist states owned and used people as a valued property. Capitalism, on the other hand, hires workers, pays according to time spent or work done. This is far more profitable for competitive businesses. With global capitalism the competition to increase wealth is only for the top while lower ranks compete to produce more while receiving less remuneration.

In the industrial field to day there is an irrepressible conflict between the propertyless producers and the propertied non-producers. This conflict is represented in the political field by the organised party of capitalism, the Tory Party and the Labour Party representing different sections of the same exploiting class. All political parties are but the expression of class interests, hence the working-class party cannot ally itself with or support any section of the capitalist party, for any alliance or bargain between them can only serve the interests of the ruling class by perpetuating the present system.

There are well-intentioned persons who contend that the workers have something to gain by playing off one section of the capitalist party against the other, and that in this way a political footing can be obtained by the working-class. Of two evils choose the lesser, we are told; but these good people do not realise that between the Liberal and Tory on the one hand and Labour on the other the choice is between the pox nd the plague.  The capitalist class has for centuries been in possession of the political machinery and knows all the parliamentary tricks of the trade. They have men of wealth and of leisure at their disposal in the contest of political trickery.  The workers cannot cope with the strategy of the trained fraudsters of capitalism. The only true  position for a genuine working-class party is that of open hostility to all who support capitalism in any shape or form.

Realising that, as in the order of social evolution the working-class is the last class to be emancipated, the emancipation of the working-class will involve the abolition of all class distinctions and class privileges, and free humanity from oppression of every kind. THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN enters the political arena, and, in full faith that the members of our class will work out their historic mission, hurls defiance at all the forces of reaction.

Among the contributions the capitalist system has made to the progress of the human race was the necessity of educating the members of the working class. However no right, or privilege, or opportunity is given a subordinate class unless it is  for the benefit and interest of the ruling class. The introduction and development of increasingly sophisticated machinery and technology necessitated a different type of worker from the previous unlettered, untutored serf of the field. The new industrial processes which the capitalist system gave the world necessitated the education and mental training of the workers in order that they might be fit and efficient wealth producers. Capitalism therefore created the economic or material reasons far the need of the great mass of the workers to be educated.

While economic benefits have accrued to the master class through the education of the workers and his  large profits only possible through a trained and skilled laboring class, this very thing which fills the pockets of the employing class financially, has become a powerful factor in bringing about the political and industrial supremacy of the working class. For knowledge is power. The capitalist masters have educated the workers to their advantage to-day, but it will be  their undoing tomorrow. The thing that made for the triumph of capitalism ultimately makes for its own downfall.

Education of the workers for the benefit of the capitalist class means gain and profit only for the few.  Education of the workers for the benefit of the working class means gain for the working class and ultimately for the whole human race. The trained minds that create profits for the masters of to-day will create wealth for the producers to enjoy to-morrow. The future victories of the working class lie not so much in their numbers (the workers have always been in the vast majority), but in the knowledge they possess and the ability to intelligently organize and act together on the political and economic fields.  Let us face the fact that the education of the masses is a large and strenuous task, but there can be no socialism until the masses desire socialism and take organised action for socialism.

 Propaganda is an attempt to bring others to one’s own point of view; education is an attempt to equip others with the means of making up their own minds. Both are legitimate forms of activity; the point is that they are different.  Both have their place, but their places are different.

Workers know that if they are forced to go on strike they will have to depend largely on their own resourcefulness. The boss, on the other hand, is assured of the support of the boss class itself, but also of their lackeys in the apparatus of government. Bosses are class-conscious and practice the class struggle and if workers stopped struggling back, they’d just be squeezed more because bosses make their profit by taking it out of the labor and sweat of their workers. They can’t have their cake and let the workers eat it too.

In the days of slavery, there were kind slave-owners and cruel ones. In feudalism there were kind lords and nasty barons. Capitalism also have their kind and tough employers. The working class wants NO slave-masters and NO bosses.

All strikes hamper production. If they didn’t hamper production they would be futile and useless. Workers win strikes because production is stopped., which means that the bosses’ profits, are put in jeopardy. The boss finally decides that it is better to give a small increase in pay than to have all profits stop.

Them are times when the workers must establish their own legality. There are times when workers can not accept the bosses’ “law.” Workers’ organizations can not always remain passively “law-abiding.” If workers had always been “law-abiding” there would be no trades unions in the world today. Wages would be far lower than now and hours would be much longer. Workers have made the gains they, have through the decades because they opposed the ruling class and fought every step of the way. Since nothing fundamental has changed in the relationship of the workers to the bosses, there is no reason for the workers to change from the procedure that has brought them, their victories. The defense or workers under persecution by the state authorities of capitalism for their activity in the labor movement is a class question, and therefore a question of principle. The trade union movement cannot stand still – it can only go forward or backward. Blows directed against them are in reality directed against their class. In such an issue there are only two sides, and there is only one question to answer: On which side do you stand?

It is correct for the workers to fight like hell to hold on to their gains but they cannot stop there. Profits are growing higher and higher. The bosses surely take care of themselves and their class. Every board of directors has been raising the salaries, bonuses and dividends of their CEOs. During austerity the bosses the slogan “equality of sacrifice” has nothing to do with them. For them, it means equality of misery and want for the workers.

Workers For A Classless World

We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humankind. We all know that in society there has been a division of society, and that today it consists mainly of two economic classes. The capitalist class upon the one hand and upon the other the working class; and these two classes, whether you admit it or not, are pitted against each other, not only in this country, but throughout the world, in an irrepressible struggle. The profits which sustain the wealth of the ruling class are all produced by the exploitation of labour; without the working class, there are no profits for the rich to accumulate. These two classes can never be permanently harmonised or reconciled. It is this that is called the class struggle, that is shaking the foundations of the whole world.

 It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in living standards with more poor people now in the world than ever before. To be a class-ridden society is to create conflict and great problems. To live in a classless society would be in all our interests.  So surely we agree that a classless society would be a basis for a true community of shared interests. Our understanding of class can help us to take charge of our destiny and enable us to create a better world. The way to end our class society and to reconcile our interests is through common ownership. By this we mean that all people should stand in equal relationship with each other about the means of producing wealth, about natural resources and our entire world. On this classless basis, without the market system, in all the important activities of life, citizens of a genuine community of interests will be able to co-operate to serve the needs of all people.

The creators of all wealth, workers, obtain in wages only the minimum necessary to live and raise children so that capitalism has a steady supply of labour-power. All means of production, whether factories, machines or mines, are owned by the capitalist class. Workers possess only their own labour-power which they must sell in order to live. Profit is derived from unpaid labour time. Workers’ labour power is purchased on the market by the owners of capital. The commodities produced by workers’ socialised labour are privately appropriated by monopoly capitalists. They will continue to be produced so long as they can be sold for profit on the market. The class interest of the proletariat is to eliminate capitalism entirely and to build a socialist society. The basis for transformation – into communism.’ the classless society free from exploitation and from racial, sexual and all other forms of inequality. The only viable way forward is revolutionary struggle to achieve socialism, a classless and stateless society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural environment. To create a socialist world it is necessary to overthrow the rule of capitalism and this can be done only through revolution.

While the various groups calling themselves Marxists have widely different views on many vital problems, there still remain fundamentals upon which they all agree. Marxist philosophy holds that the material world – matter – is primary. Ideas – consciousness – are the reflection of this objective reality. Marxists maintain that our society is divided into classes based on groups of people standing in the same relationship to the means of production. Marxists hold that the interests of these classes are antagonistic and irreconcilable and that a constant struggle goes on between them over the division of the wealth that. society produces. Marxists hold that the ability of the present ruling class, the capitalists, to maintain their power is due to their using their economic strength to control the government and use it as “an instrument of oppression” against the rest of society. The owning class was the ruling class because it controlled the government. The government protects the Capitalist class by protecting the source of its economic strength private property. It is the will of the capitalist class that the rights of private property be protected. It uses its control of government to write down its will and call it law. It uses its control of government to enforce its will, the law. The law is the voice of the ruling class. Marxists say that the ability of the present ruling class, the capitalists, to maintain their power is due to their using their economic strength to control the government and use it as “an instrument of oppression” against the rest of society. Marxism is a guide to action, based on practice it recognises all things in nature and society as constantly coming into being and passing away. Marxism is as much of a broad science of society as we can expect today. It will become a more exact, a more “true” science, as we progress toward socialism and a society without class divisions.  It is inevitable that sooner or later these social conditions will impel people to organise to end the conflict between the socialised labour process and private ownership of the decisive means of production, the factories and farms by the establishment of socialism. With socialism, production takes place for people’s use. Socialism will see the full potential of all human beings being realised and the needs of all being met.

 Class democracy and “democracy” under a classless society are two different things, just as capitalist “democracy” and social democracy are the different expressions of different systems. Democracy literally means “rule of the people” but we live in a class society in which one class maintains its favorable economic position because it controls the rule by the people. The majority of people currently support the present system and therefore the capitalist class controls the government only as long as the majority of the voters permit them to.  Workers secured the right to vote after great agitation which threatened to educate the masses to an understanding of the class nature of the state that the ruling class thought it better to make concessions than to seek to maintain its power by force of arms and risk losing all. The right to vote to the worker was conceded during a period of an ascendant capitalism to assist in the overthrow of the remnants of the previous feudal society but which now can  frightened the ruling class. ‘Bourgeois’ democracy is the only exploitative system in which the expressions of political power (right to vote, to form political parties , right to assembly and protest) are not the monopoly of the ruling class. Theoretically, the working class have the legal right to use their majority of ballots in any way they choose. More importantly, the workers  could easily become conscious of their power. Therefore, it is even more essential for the capitalist class than it was for the ancient slave-owners or medieval nobility to convince the masses of people that the state rules in behalf of all citizens. The slave-owners and lords of the manor persuaded the slaves and serfs that class rule was right; but the modern capitalist tells the workers there are no classes! The old ruling classes justified their status; the new ruling class denies its own existence! The more potential political power the oppressed classes possess, the more urgent it is for the ruling class to insure that that potential power is not transformed into actual power.

  If  workers can prevent the capitalist from exercising its control of government, it has dealt them a terrible blow.  If our fellow workers find it necessary to unite upon the industrial field, to unite and strike together, how can they consistently fight each other at the ballot box? Politics is simply the expression in political terms of the economic interests of certain groups or classes. The masters and exploiters realise this fact and they are in politics for its power. They must rule corruptly for they are in the minority. They have not the votes of their own to put themselves in power, but they have the money with which to corrupt the electorate. They have the money with which to corrupt the courts. They have the power to do this because they have the money, and they have the money because they own the means of production and distribution. Any change in people’s lives is not due to the benevolence of the market, but rather to changes beyond the direct control of the bosses.

The tenet of modern capitalism is  reflected in its insistence that the government does not serve any economic system, but that it works in behalf of its citizens in general. If they are obliged to describe the system it is no longer “capitalism” but rather, a “mixed economy” or even called “people’s capitalism.” This theory of the “mixed economy” reinforces the myth of the impartial state. As more and more corporate executives become government officials (and vice versa through the revolving door of bureaucracy) , their scholarly defenders emphasise ever more insistently the non-capitalist character of the state re-defining it. They omit all reference to the question of the role and character of the State. Class relations are not referred to. New theories are seized upon, expounded by politicians and academics, then surreptitiously ditched. They claim class struggle has disappeared from our society but instead it is a moral issue of greed and envy. There is extensive manipulation of statistical data to exaggerate the number and social status of the so-called “white collar” and “middle class” but capitalism remains essentially what it has been from its birth: a system of exploitation of the many for the enrichment and aggrandizement of the few.

Life today compared with what it was 100 or 200 years ago may be better and no-one can deny it has improved. However, the truth of the matter is that most people do not compare their situation with that of their grandparents or great-grandparents and consequently feel relief and satisfaction. Ordinary people compare themselves and their lives to the rich, to what they know society can deliver for privileged few, and they question why it is not available for all. Even the expectation that things should get better can contribute towards the formation of class consciousness when that expectation is set back by the austerity of recession. Capitalism is a system which develops and changes. Yesterday’s  ‘miracle economy’ is no more. There is no room inside the system to concede improvements in living standards for the majority without it eating into the profits of the minority and leads inexorably to political crisis. Class war is not the exception but are an inevitable consequence of  the system.

 Socialism is a condition of world society in which the possible production of wealth exceeds need, where the organisation of production is planned consciously and not by the blind operation of the market. Socialism is also an idea, the product of a certain reading of history that leads us to suppose that all these things are possible. We do not create a classless society by waiting for it. The establishment of a socialist, planned economy, based on the needs of the people, will mean the end to the chaos of capitalist production with its lack of planning, repeated crises, unemployment, inflation and criminal waste.  The guiding principle will be “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” Socialism will not a “utopia” but there will no longer be the struggle between opposing classes. In a classless society there is nobody to suppress or keep in check. Men and women are in no need of the big stick of the State. They manage their affairs without the state coercion. Mankind is free, forever. Socialism which leaves the working class as a subject class is not socialism. The sooner this is grasped the better.

The time has come for the Socialist Party to look at itself. A time of no wishful thinking or high sounding phrases. A  socialist party is not by any means a merely “educational” enterprise or “debating club”. The party must become, in the full sense, in word and act, the conscious, fighting, party of the working class. This task, however, cannot be accomplished overnight nor by any organisational sleight-of-hand. It must be achieved step by step. We must have an active party yet we cannot have an active party merely by “being active.” “Activism” becomes dissipated and cancels out unless we understand the activity, its goal and purpose and direction. Such understanding is reached by the freest possible discussion of all views and tendencies. Discussion enables us to understand, draw conclusions from, and direct our activities; actions test, apply and extend the influence of the ideas formulated in discussion.  Political action does not mean simply carrying on a parliamentary campaign every four years, and going into hibernation between with sporadic “educational” work occasionally interrupting. The Socialist Party has a revolutionary position, a party line. There is no ambiguity or indecision about where it stands. It must aim to weaken the influence of every pro-capitalist or anti-socialist party and to establish its own influence.

Who Owns the North Pole (Part 69)

"A great chess game is being played with countries staking claims to the Arctic to make sure they are not left out. Climate change is taking place at twice the global average speed in the Arctic. Some countries, like China, are looking 50 years ahead," said Malte Humpert, director of the Washington-based thinktank the Arctic Institute.

 The Arctic has now become a true strategic hot spot at the centre of global interest. The high north embodies high stakes. A paradigm shift in international politics is taking place," said Sturla Henriksen, head of the Norwegian Shipowners' Association.

The city of Nadym, in the extreme north of Siberia, is one of the Earth's least hospitable places, shrouded in darkness for half of the year, with temperatures plunging below -30C and the nearby Kara Sea semi-permanently frozen. Over the next 30 years climate change is likely to open up a polar shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, cutting travel time to Asia by 40% and allowing Russia's vast oil and gas resources to be exported to China, Japan and south Asia much faster. Nadym stands to benefit from a warmer climate more than any other Arctic city – the Russian government plans to connect it by road and rail to other oil and gas centres; Gazprom, the world's largest gas company, is building a port nearby with French oil major Total; and if the new northern sea route is open for even six months of the year. Expectations are high that the route will complement the Suez canal as a key waterway for trade to and from Asia. Sailing trans-arctic from Yokohama to Hamburg would shave 40% off the distance compared to the Suez Canal. Confidence that the Arctic will become economically important is seen in the rush of countries and companies to claim a stake. Eleven countries, including Poland and Singapore, have appointed Arctic ambassadors to promote their national interests.

"The entire centre of gravity of the world economy is shifting to Nadym," said the mayor, Stanislav Shegurov.

 "The Arctic is our home and our future. We will make full use of the northern sea route. We are building infrastructure, we are making history. We have ambitious plans," said Anton Vasiliev, Russian ambassador for the Arctic.

"The Arctic is changing rapidly. It will be our most important foreign policy area.”  said the Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg.

Only 71 large ships, working mostly with Russian icebreakers, navigated the route in 2013, but Russia expects a 30-fold increase in shipping by 2020 and ice-free water over most of its length by 2050. The summer ice has declined by nearly 50% in 40 years and by 2050, say Laurence Smith and Scott Stephenson of the University of California, ordinary vessels should be able to travel easily along the northern sea route and ice-strengthened ships should be able to pass over the pole itself. Gazprom last week launched in South Korea the first of four giant "ice-class" natural gas carriers for the sea route. The Russian government plans to spend more than $3bn reopening a military base on the Novosibirsk Islands and is building new icebreakers and navigational centres. Oil giant Rosneft and ExxonMobile will start drilling for oil in the Kara Sea this year. Norway and the other Nordic countries have all made Arctic development a priority. Finland, which has no access to the northern sea route, has proposed a railway linking its mines to the Russian coast. "Finland needs a new Nokia. The Arctic could be it," said its Arctic affairs ambassador, Hannu Halinen.

American, Canadian, Japanese, South Korean and British companies all intend to use the sea route to mine across the region, but no country hopes to gain more than China, according to Wang Chuanxing, polar researcher at Tongji University, Shanghai. "China's economy is 50% dependent on trade. The development of the northern sea route would have a major impact on its economy. One-third of China's trade is with the EU and the US. The opening of the northern sea route is vital for China," he said. The polar research institute of China said that Arctic shipping would play a major role in the country's future trade, and suggested that, by the year 2020, 5%-15% of China's trade value – about $500bn – could pass through the Arctic.
Japan also hopes to benefit. "Ten per cent of the world's unexploited crude oil and 20% of its natural gas is said to be in the Arctic. Recent changes because of climate change are attracting people in Japan. We want to actively participate. We are researching the Arctic sea route," said Toshio Kunikata, the Japanese ambassador in charge of Arctic affairs.

Taken from here

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Food for thought 2

As bad as the 'garment countries' appear to be, there is always someone worse off, luckily for the capitalist class. In a study released by the UK based Legatum Institute and its Prosperity (?) Index, Bangladesh ranks 103rd out of 142 countries whereas India, that darling of the world's expanding economies, comes in at 106th. and falling. Apparently, if you live in Bangladesh you will live 3.4 years longer, you will be less likely to be undernourished, or die in infancy, and have better access to sanitation. Just don't take a job in the garment industry! John Ayers

Food for thought

Several Canadian firms have been targeted as culprits in the garment Industry shame league, such as Reitmans who consigned more than $13 million worth of goods from Cambodia in 2012, and The Hudson's Bay Company, who commented, " The safety of the workers is our top concern…" Sure, you just happened to farm your work out to low paying, low safety law areas by accident! Profit was never a big concern, right? John Ayers

Capitalism Must Be Abolished!

Few can deny that the world today is in upheaval. That is reflected in the widespread  turmoil and conflict not only in the developed industrial nations but also in developing nations throughout the globe. The Socialist Party has repeatedly demonstrated, is the capitalist system that does not and cannot work in the interests of the majority.

Socialists are agreed upon their object, that object being social and economic freedom and equality for all, and the realisation of the highest individual development and liberty for all, through the social ownership and control of all the material means of production. Many say they are socialists  but only those who believe in the object as here defined can be properly so described. Those who do not so accept it are not socialists, despite what they may say to the contrary. The goal of socialism as the classless society has its starting point in the propertyless condition of the working class. The Socialist’s goal represents the consummation of the struggle of the working class—its emancipation from the system which gives rise to that struggle.

Socialism is the name given to that form of society in which there is no such thing as a propertyless class, but in which the whole community has become a working community owning the means of production—the land, factories, mills, mines, transport and all the means whereby wealth is created and distributed to the community. Socialism is also the name given to a body of scientific and philosophic thought which explains why the socialist form of society is now a necessity, the forces upon which its achievement depends, the conditions under which and the methods whereby it can be achieved. It will be obvious at once that the basic principles of Socialist society are diametrically opposite to those of Capitalist society in which we live. Socialism stands for social or community property. Capitalism stands for private and state-owned property. Socialism is a society without classes. Capitalism is divided into classes—the class owning property and the propertyless working class.

We can easily understand, therefore, why the, employers , financiers and the land-owners are opposed to socialism. Their very existence as the receivers of rent, interest and profit is at stake. They do not merely reject the theory of socialism, but bitterly fight every movement which is in any way associated with the struggle for socialism. The beneficiaries and defenders of this economic dictatorship never tire of declaring it the “best of all possible systems.” Yet, today, after decades of new deals, fair deals, wars on poverty, civil rights legislation, government regulations, deregulations and a host of other reform efforts, capitalism presents an obscene social picture. Millions who need and want jobs are unemployed, including many of whose jobs have been out-sourced. Others are underemployed, working only part-time or temporary jobs though they need and want full-time work. Millions aren’t earning enough to maintain a decent standard of living for themselves and their families despite the fact that they are working. The malignant evil of racism and discrimination is pervasive. The health care system, despite heated debate for years, still fails to meet the needs of millions. Widespread pollution of our environment worsens. Crime and corruption are widespread at every level of capitalist society. Thanks to capitalism’s exploitation of workers poverty continues to grow. All of those problems still plague the working class—but have grown to even more monumental proportions.

These long-standing problems and the failure of seemingly unending reform efforts to solve or even alleviate them to any meaningful degree have imposed decades of misery and suffering on millions of workers and their families. Against this insane capitalist system the Socialist Party raises its voice in emphatic protest and unqualified condemnation. It declares that if our society is to be rid of the host of economic, political and social ills that for so long have plagued it, the outmoded capitalist system of private ownership of the socially operated means of life and production for the profit of a few must be replaced by a new social order. That new social order must be organized on the same basis of social ownership and democratic management of all the instruments of social production, all means of distribution and all of the social services. It must be one in which production is carried on to satisfy human needs and wants. In short, it must be genuine socialism.

 It is to the individual and social interest of the propertyless class to fight against the private property system and for socialism. They do it every day, though as yet only a minority do it consciously for socialism. When Trade Unionists fight the employers on wages questions and the conditions of labour they are really fighting against consequences of the private property system. The existence of the private ownership of the means of production means also the private ownership of the things produced and their sale as commodities in competition one with another. Labour also is a commodity and those who sell their labour power, the members of the working class, manual and brain-worker alike, also compete like other commodities.

Why then is it that all  trade unionists are not always socialists? People do not start their lives with fully developed theories about systems of society. Nor were trade unions formed to fight for socialism. The workers formed them to defend and improve their immediate conditions of employment, their wages, their hours of labour and so on. This is clearly revealed by the way in which the trade unions have grown.  The Socialist Party is not anti-trade union. On the contrary, we are ardent supporters of trade unionism. Socialists want their fellow trade unionists to recognise the cause of the struggle their unions are compelled to wage. Recognising the cause as rooted in the private ownership of the means of production and the propertyless conditions of the working class, socialists want all the struggles of the unions to be co-ordinated, so that behind every national or industry conflict there will be available the appropriate power of the working class. Socialists want sectionalism to be superseded by a united working class army. Trade unions should become transformed into industrial unions, i.e. one union for each industry. It means that the unions should recognise that all the efforts of the working class must be directed to the goal of the conquest of political power and their fight in the industrial field must be linked and  backed by the might of the working class, to achieve transfer the ownership of the means of production and distribution from private hands to social ownership. Divisions between workers are fatal and must be quickly overcome to develop solidarity of the working class in the struggle against Capitalism.And that solidarity is the basis of class action in politics.  No longer a movement of protesting wage slaves, they will become the means whereby the workers control the conditions and processes of industry.  A new basis of common ownership has given the transformed unions new functions of self-government and administration. Capable of assuming control and continuing to administer and operate the essential industries and social services, unions can exercise the power and provide the decisive leverage to “swing” the revolution. Moreover, they have the structure that provides the necessary foundation and structural framework for socialist society. It is the workers who will fill out the new social framework and make the people’s ownership, control and administration of the new social structure a reality.
Despite the many threats to workers’ lives, liberty and happiness today, despite the growing poverty and misery that workers are subjected to, a world of peace, liberty, security, health and abundance for all stands within our grasp. The potential to create such a society exists, but that potential can be realized only if workers act to gain control of their own lives by organizing, politically and industrially, for socialism.

But general agreement on the object, however, by no means presupposes universal agreement on policy and tactics. They are matters to discuss, to argue out, to confer about. It is for such purposes that our own party holds its annual conferences and  Autumn Delegate Conference, reaching a common agreement as to socialist policy and action in the present and immediate future. The Socialist Party calls upon all who realise and who may be increasingly aware that a basic change in our society is needed, to place themselves squarely on working-class principles. Join us in this effort to put an end to the existing class conflict and all its malevolent results by placing the land and the instruments of social production in the hands of the people as a collective body in a cooperative socialist society. Help us build a world in which everyone will enjoy the free exercise and full benefit of their individual faculties, multiplied by all the technological and other factors of modern civilization. We may not presently be overwhelmed by members but let’s be optimistic - “We’ve got a lot of room to grow.”

Connolly the Anti-Nationalist

Billy Connolly has said he will not vote in the referendum on Scottish independence.

" I have never been a nationalist and I have never been a patriot. I have always remembered that I have a lot more in common with a welder from Liverpool than I do with someone from agriculture in the Highlands..."

Science and Ignorance

The USA is the most developed capitalist country in the world. It also happens to have the most developed scientists in the world, but that doesn't mean its population is the best informed. When asked the question does the earth orbit the sun how did they reply? 'The good news is that 74 per cent of Americans know the answer. The very bad news is that means 26 per cent really don't. ....... Other startling results from the survey included that only 39 per cent of Americans believe "the universe began with a huge explosion". And fewer than half of the people surveyed (48 per cent) agreed that "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier  species of animals". .... The study also demonstrated that a total of 42 per cent of Americans thought astrology was either "very scientific" or "sort of scientific". (Independent, 16 February) The survey, as reported by Agence France-Presse, is carried out every couple of years in order to analyse whether America is making educational progress. The owning class throughout the world need the best possible scientists but if the rest of the population know little of science it is of little concern to the owners. RD

Football and Fatalities

According to most dictionaries "sport" is usually depicted as " an enjoyable pursuit", but we live in capitalism - a society that distorts everything. 'More than 400 Nepalese migrant workers have died on World Cup building sites as the Gulf state Qatar prepares to host the event in 2022, a report will reveal this week. The grim statistic comes from the Pravasi Nepali Co-ordination Committee, a respected human rights organisation which compiles lists of the dead using  official sources in Doha.' (Observer, 16 February) In its relentless drive for bigger and bigger profits the health and safety and life itself means little to the owning class - to which 400 grieving families can now testify. RD

Neither Union or Separatism

NO PASSPORTS
JUST PEOPLES

 "I have no sense of nationalism, only a cosmic consciousness of belonging to the human family" - Rosika Schwimmer

How are we to explain this nationalism arising in an advanced capitalist country at this time?Since the 1707 Union Scotland has visibly progressed, not regressed, as part of the United Kingdom. Certainly, there are a number of features which spur national consciousness in Scotland: the legal and educational systems are separate from those in England and Wales and there is even the remnants of a ‘national’ language - gaelic. But to pretend that the Union is the cause of all the problems is to deliberately fool the people.

Nations that divide the world at present have not existed for all time. They are the by-products of fairly recent historical developments. Usually, they grew up as a particular ruling class sought to establish its dominance over the economic activities of the territory it inhabited. To do so successfully, it had to replace the various local traditions and dialects that characterised pre-capitalist society by new traditions and a uniform language and to fight to subordinate the state power to its own ‘national’ interests.  As well as serving the interests of capitalist progress, nationalism contained the concept of popular sovereignty—of a motherland which claims to represent the people as a whole, its vast majority, and which grants and defend their liberties and gives them a conscious stake in shaping its future.

The idea of an independent Scottish parliament has arisen among sections of the Scottish business class and it has also enticed the support of many workers. Independence is offred as  a panacea which will enable Scots to  rid themselves of the myriad of social problems thrown up by capitalism without having to fight to overthrow capitalism itself. North Sea oil is the new snake-oil cure. All that is needed is an Edinburgh sovereign parliament to demand a larger share of revenue from the global energy companies but this panacea simply ignores the realities of power under capitalism. Nationalism finds little expression among the Scottish businessmen which is firmly committed to its junior partner relationship with UK capitalism. While at the national level the bourgeoisie is divided, various elements within the ruling class, from one faction and the other, have been exhorting workers to abandon its own interests for the sake of the “nation”. Each faction is hoping to push the balance of power between the factions in its own favour, in order to profit to the hilt from the capitalist crisis which is shaking Scotland and the UK.

Nationalist calls for independence serves as an instrument of the capitalist class to mystify its rule, to delude the workers, to deter them from developing a class consciousness and organising along independent class lines. It has been used to pit them against one another.

Scottish nationalism and independence does not strengthen the real force for socialism but weakens and fragments a united, class-conscious working class. The Left nationalists contribute nothing but division and confusion. They ally with the little tartan-clad bosses. Marx and Engels, by saying that “the workers have no country” were stating fact. Since the workers do not own their a share of the country, they are without a country. You cannot take from them what they have not got. It is a truth that capitalist ruling classes are always seeking to camouflage. For the members of the ruling class in Scotland, to fight unemployment and the recession, English colonialism must first be fought so runs Salmond’s appeal  and it is a simplistic one. “Support me, I am the saviour of our country, forget about your exploitation and your misery for the time being...Help us get independence then you’ll get more jobs...later””

A worker’s  place of birth is accidental.  Nationalism groups men according to their land of origin, as decided by the vicissitudes of history. Socialism groups men, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the frontiers traced by history. Workers have no country. The differences which exist between the present countries are all superficial differences. The Socialist Party looks at the national question from the desire to find the best method of struggle for socialism.  We do not accept that the struggle for independence is more important than the struggle for socialism.

In a big company, there is always an owner or many shareholders that live off the work of others: these are the ones who really hold the power! The foremen and supervisors are only their watchdogs; they apply the rules the capitalist owners dictate; they “direct” the workers in such a way as to insure as much profit as possible, and when the industry is facing difficulties, they are charged with the laying-off, or they do the “pushing” to raise production; they also try to create division among the workers as they fight against their union or try to buy off their representatives. If a party does not want to abolish capitalist exploitation, it can only serve capitalism – its role is that of the foreman in the plant.

 If the Left nationalists truly have at heart the interests of the workers, why don’t they denounce the very essence of exploitation, the capitalists system? They call themselves “socialists,” but that doesn’t mean much – they are hollow words. One is not truly a socialist who does not want to abolish the private/state ownership of the means of production, who does not want to expropriate the capitalists. Left nationalists are pretend revolutionaries. They want to rally the working class behind the nationalist cause. But nationalism disarms the workers, an attempt to rally the working class behind the cause of our native ruling class seeking a better place in the sun. Nationalism does not oppose capitalism. There are no shortcuts to the socialist revolution, and those who enter the nationalist paths retard the coming of a popular revolutionary movement by chasing fake enemies.

Furthermore nationalism is used to divide the workers among themselves so they can ignore their real enemy. The workers (Scots and English, Scots and Europeans)  need to unite – their main interests lie in such unity. The separation of Scotland would divide the workers of Britain in two and draw Scottish workers nearer to the Scotland-based bourgeoisie. We must fight nationalism! The Left that supports independence serve the interests of “our” ascendent capitalists. The social revolution is an immense task and workers must have their own organisations.

A workers’ movement that fights for economic gains, yes!  A Socialist Party that fight for the emancipation of the working class, even better!

Five hundred factories came out on strike

The Asian garment industry is in the news again. This time it's Cambodia's turn as five hundred factories came out on strike for higher wages. The government replied predictably with police opening fire with their AK47s killing three workers. The industry, like Bangladesh and Viet Nam, is the country's largest exporter. The workers are asking for $160 per month (less than $1 per hour) and the government has offered $100. No wonder the greedy clothing retailers are licking their lips at the prospects of large profits in Asia! Toronto Star, 4/Jan/2014). John Ayers

If the power lines were buried underground.

As most of us are painfully aware, the ice storm that hit most of eastern North America, December 21/22, created havoc. Thirty hours of freezing rain meant downed power lines with loss of electricity, heat, and spoiled food in refrigerators and freezers. Public transit was at a standstill as was almost everything else. All of this could be avoided if the power lines were buried underground. however the simple fact is, as usual, it is too expensive and that, under capitalism, people's well-being comes second to shoveling profits in the direction of the owning class. John Ayers

Poverty and Health

Statisticians are often coming up with surprising findings, but the following should startle no one. " Wealthy octogenarians are healthier than poorer people in their 60s, according to official figures. A big health gap starts to open in middle-age, but even by their late 30s poorer men have a  level of health problems not seen by rich men until they reach their mid-60s , the Office for National Statistics says." (Times, 15 February) So not only do rich people live longer than poor people they live healthier lives too. Surprise, surprise! RD