Orange Pith

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Orange Myths

It is Sunday 7 July. In Portadown this morning a riot took place and working people, including policemen, were hurt; some were arrested. Another battle  . . . another myth . . . another contribution to the bitterness and hatred that divide the working class in Northern Ireland.

The government and police and wanted to ban this morning's march through the exclusively Catholic Obins Street district. The marchers, Orangemen going to church accompanied by bands playing sectarian tunes and flaunting sectarian symbols, refused to obey the Government, the police and the law despite their vociferous protestations of loyalty to all three. The police - probably working on the assumption that they could cope more easily with the Catholics than they could with the loyalists - gave in and the march took place. The holy men of the Orange Order marched defiantly through Obins Street to communicate with their god.

The Orange Order intend repeating this exercise on the twelfth and thirteenth of July. The police have issued a notice proscribing these marches and - to compound this lunacy - the Catholics have announced their intention of staging parades at the same time and on the same date.

Paisley and several other loyalist politicians and hate-mongering clergymen have let it be known that they will defy any Government order banning the march. In their eyes the issue is sufficiently serious to justify a civil war. Serious enough to endanger the lives, homes and liberties of working people, for, make no mistake, it is workers who would be asked to slaughter one another. Not because they suffer poverty or live in slums; not because they endure the miseries of unemployment or have mean lives. No. Paisley, who has used bigotry and hatred to become one of the best paid politicians in Europe, and his friends don't experience these things. What they are asking Protestant workers to spill their blood for is something really wholesome and important: the right to march through avenues of Catholics reminding them that their forbears were defeated in 1690!

We would ask our Protestant fellow workers to examine some of the historical facts that make up the myths and damned lies for which their leaders want them to kill and be killed. We have, many times, in the past, exposed the myths that make up the "principles" behind the IRA murder campaign and the fallacious reasoning used to inveigle Catholics into support of Irish Nationalism, so it cannot be said that in exposing the lies and deceptions underlying Unionism we have any sympathy whatsoever with nationalism or republicanism. Our purpose is to disabuse workers on both sides of the notions and fictions that keep them divided; to show that neither Unionism nor nationalism have anything to offer the working class and, to bring them to an examination of the cause of their real, common problems.

King James and King Billy

James II succeeded to the throne of England following the death of his brother, Charles II, in 1685. A convert to Catholicism and a sickly pious man - following a life of profligacy and sexual abandonment - he was determined to re-establish the power of Catholicism in his kingdom. Within three years of becoming king, James' policies had provoked fierce opposition in England and fear and distrust among the Protestant population of Ireland. In 1688 seven members of the English parliament petitioned James' son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, to become king of England. James reacted by allying himself with the French king, Louis XIV, who manipulated the situation to his own advantage by making England a semi-dependent of his own kingdom.

According to Orange fiction, James was the agent of Rome and popery. Nothing could be further from the truth. In seeking the help and support of Louis XIV, King James was allying himself with the pope's bitterest enemy. Louis, bent on European domination, had made Lorraine a subject state, had attacked Genoa and attempted to sack Rome. The pope of the period, Innocent XI, was outraged and humiliated. In 1686 some of the European powers, alarmed at the strength and ferocity of the French, entered into the Treaty of Augsberg. This Treaty, established specifically to resist the marauding armies of Louis XIV, was subscribed to by the king of Spain, the Emperor of Germany and by William, Prince of Orange. The nominal head of the Treaty powers was Pope Innocent XI.

So, rather than being an enemy of the pope, as Orange mythology asserts, "King Billy" was the pope's ally when, in November 1688, he invaded England and his armies were partially provisioned and equipped by the powers of the Augsberg Treaty - and he had the official backing of the Roman Catholic church! Contrary to myth, when they fought in the Battle of the Boyne on 30 June and 1 July 1690, King Billy was an ally of the pope and King James an ally of the pope's most bitter enemy, Louis of France. Indeed, when news of King William's victory over King James at the Boyne percolated through to Rome the pope ordered the singing of a special Te Deum in St. Peter's and similar celebrations and rejoicings were held in Catholic churches in Madrid, Brussels and Vienna.

James was a Catholic, of course, and William a Protestant but, as always, the politics and economics underlying their conflict rose above religion.

Religious liberty

What about the notion that King Billy established religious liberty in Ireland and saved the Protestants from persecution? Again, Orange fable stands historical fact on its head.

It was James, as the legitimate incumbent of the English throne, who signed the Acts of the Dublin Parliament, giving freedom of religion to all citizens. King Billy, too, when he agreed the Treaty of Limerick in October 1691, accepted that the various religious denominations should continue to enjoy the freedom of religious worship established in the reign of Charles II and under the Acts of the Dublin Parliament agreed by James. Later he established the Episcopalian Church and effectively outlawed not only Catholicism but Presbyterianism -  the religion of the great majority of Protestants in Ireland.

A Presbyterian clergyman in 1691 was liable on conviction of delivering a sermon or celebrating the Lord's Supper to a term of imprisonment and fine of £100 and they were similarly punished for performing marriage rites. There are many recorded convictions for these "offences" during the period, especially in the counties of Antrim and Down. In 1694 the Williamite government passed a Test Act which effectively precluded Presbyterians from offices under the Crown and a further Act of 1713 set a punishment of imprisonment for Presbyterians convicted of schoolteaching and banned the marriage of Presbyterians and members of the Established church.

The History of Irish Presbyterianism gives the political and economic reasons for the persecution thus:
Presbyterians, having no political power, had to submit to political persecutions. The feudal system which transferred ownership of the soil from the toiler to the landlord was one of many evils introduced by the power of England.
King Billy was the chief agent of that feudal power which persecuted, viciously and equally, both Catholic and Presbyterian in Ireland.

Driven out of Ireland

Such was the "civil and religious liberty" enjoyed by the then, as now, numerically strongest Protestant denomination in Ireland that, in the first half of the eighteenth century, almost a quarter of a million Ulster Presbyterians were driven out of the country. These went mainly to America, where many played a distinguished role in the war of the American colonists to gain political and economic independence from England.

On both sides of today's sectarian divide it is ordinary working people, usually the very poorest, who are the victims of both the republican and loyalist myths. The hate mongers and fable peddlers don't live in the slums and are rarely victims of the violence they so actively promote.

When Presbyterians march to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne on "The Twelfth" and the victory of King Billy over his equally degenerate father-in-law, King James, they are commemorating a victory which was as opposed to the interests of their forbears in 1690 as it is to their own class interests in 1985.

Richard Montague
Belfast Branch WSP

Sensitive Billionarses

A couple of recent newspaper reports illustrate that billionaires are getting upset with the rest of us. 'Billionaire real estate investor Sam Zell agreed with capital pioneer Tom Perkins that wealthy Americans are being unfairly criticized and said that the 1 per cent work harder.' (Chicago Tribune, 6 February) 'Tamara Ecclestone, the daughter of Bernie Ecclestone, the billionaire head of Formula One, has accused Britons of having a "vicious attitude" towards people born into wealth. ...... The celebrity heiress has starred in a reality television show, Billionaire $$ Girl, about her opulent lifestyle, and is known to have spent £30,000 on champagne in a single night and bought a £1 million crystal bathtub.' (Times, 25 February) As far as we can ascertain Tamara has never worked a day in her life, despite Zell's claim about billionaires working harder. RD

Down with the State

Societies without States have continued to exist down to our own times among the many of the indigenous peoples of the world. As soon as there are in a society a possessing class and a dispossessed class, there exists in that society a constant source of conflict which the social organization would not long resist, if there was not a power charged with maintaining the “established order,” charged, in other words, with the protection of the economic situation of the possessing party, and therefore with the duty of ensuring the submission of the dispossessed party. This from its very birth  has been the role of the State. The offspring of struggles or threats of struggles between conflicting interests. The State, for socialists, is not any neutral beneficial social organization whatsoever. It is the public power of coercion created and maintained in human societies by their division into classes, and which, having force at its disposal, makes laws.  The State, having been created by the division of society into classes, is inevitably maintained by that division. The State is not an independent organism, having its own existence without regard to the interlaced economic relations of men, but is necessarily subordinate to the division of society into classes, and, in consequence, to a particular economic situation, no party whatever can reasonably set up, as the immediate goal for its efforts, the abolition of the State, nor the suppression of the political power that constitutes it. This where the so-called anarcho-capitalists, the supposed, right-wing libertarians are mistaken. The State, being a consequence, cannot disappearance before the disappearance of the social conditions of which it is the necessary result. The economic system  begets classes guarantees of perpetuity in the State. We can abolish the State only after having suppressed classes but unlike the traditional anarchist theory not to directly aim at present at its abolition because it cannot be abolished before the disappearance of classes, a disappearance that it must itself help to bring to pass. The only viable tactic for workers is the conquest of political power, the conquest of the State. It is the complete control by them of the public powers, that all their efforts must have in view; it is to this object that all their tactics must be devoted to make possible the suppression of classes.

State-capitalism is often mistakenly called state-socialism. Whenever an industry was nationalised it was declared an abandonment of capitalism and as an example of socialism in practice,  the transformation of capitalism into socialism. What came to pass was not socialism nor a step towards  socialism, but State- capitalism. Socialism is not state ownership, nationalisation or State management of industry, but the opposite: Socialism does away the state, its first act is to abolish the state. Socialism does not transform industry into the state, but state and industry are transformed into socialism, functioning industrially and socially through new administrative organisations  of the  producers, and not through the state. State-capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism. A lure that is offered to the workers is that capitalism is  “democratised”  by state-capitalism, placing power in the hands of “the people” and the promise of regulation of working conditions through the fraudulent pretense of “industrial democracy.” But it strengthens the state and weakens the working class. The goal of the working class is liberation from exploitation. This goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting for the capitalists. It can only be realised by the workers themselves being masters over production. State-capitalism  planned by the rich for their own benefit and survival is quite possible, but it is far from the type of society where the rule rests in the hands of those who produce wealth and services and whose aim is the welfare of the mass of the people.

The Socialist Party must work for socialist  ideas to penetrate more and more the elective bodies, and this implies a constant propaganda among the working class.  For sure circumstances may possibly impose upon the socialist movement later on another mode of action, but that is a matter for the future not the  present. So long as such circumstances have not come to pass, socialism has nothing to gain by departing from its campaign for political power through the ballot box. Those who strive to keep the people out of the field of political action playing the same game of the ruling class. By shouting, “No politics!” they are merely echoing the rallying cry that the wealthy has always given to the working-class - “leave the running of the public affairs to your betters.”

Therefore, The Socialist Party say we must work without ceasing to elect socialists, to permeate and saturate the State more and more with socialist ideas, until, in the hands of the socialist party or the class-conscious, organized proletariat, the State with all its powers, and especially that of law-making, becomes the instrument, which it is destined to be, of the economic transformation to be accomplished. When that transformation is completely accomplished, there will then be, instead of persons to be constrained, only things to be administered, and on that glorious day there will still be a social organisation, but it will no longer be a State.

The Great Divide

From the April 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard an article from an Edinburgh branch member

The "North-South divide" has become part of political rhetoric. The government recently issued figures which showed that of the jobs lost in recent years, 94 per cent were in the north of the country and only 6 per cent in the south, thereby seeming to provide still more evidence of a division between North and South. In fact the "north" now includes almost anywhere outside the south-east of England as the Midlands have also suffered massive job losses. Predictably, the opposition parties have blamed this on the government's mismanagement of the economy. Roy Hattersley, Labour's deputy leader and shadow chancellor, said the government had "scandalously neglected those areas of the economy with which it does not feel any emotional sympathy and deep political interest" (Independent, January 21). He accused them of favouring city and financial interests in the south-east at the expense of manufacturing industry, which is synonymous with the interests of the regions. Edward Heath, the former Tory Prime Minister and leading "wet", said that the North-South divide was moving further south and that the government should pursue a policy of investment for the regions. What was required, he claimed, was a "constructive, co-ordinated development policy for the country as a whole".

The Liberal-SDP Alliance is always keen to talk about divisions in society. At the recent launch of their joint election programme, which was designed to paper over the damaging splits between the two parties, they talked of the need to unite the country through co-operation and partnership. Partnership in government, they argued, is the only way to heal the divisions between North and South. They also urged co-operation between workers and employers. that class division should be forgotten in the interests of a united nation. This is rather like urging someone being mugged to co-operate with the mugger.

Chancellor Nigel Lawson and other Tory ministers denied the existence of any North-South divide. Lawson claimed that the worst of the recession is over, that the economy is growing fast and that over one million new jobs have been created since 1983. But these new jobs have not been spread evenly across the country. On the government's own figures, since 1983 there were 446,000 new jobs in the South-East, but only 135,000 new jobs in Scotland, the North-West, the North-East and Yorkshire and Humberside added together. There has been a five per cent increase in jobs in the financial services to 2.25 million, but manufacturing output is still four cent below its 1979 level. Thatcher has claimed that it is wrong to talk of a North-South divide as parts of the South are doing badly. She has got a point, although it does seem strange that she would want to remind people of the severe deprivation and decay that exists in parts of the South-East, especially areas of inner London.

Manufacturing industry has suffered badly in the current world depression. Many coalmines, steelmills, shipyards and factories have been closed and many others have had severe job losses. Some towns and cities have rates of unemployment in excess of 20 per cent, with some pockets in these areas having much higher levels. This is not a deliberate government policy however - governments can do little to affect the way the economy operates. All wealth under capitalism is produced for sale on the market in the expectation that it will make a profit for the owners. If a product cannot be sold at a profit then production is cut back and workers thrown on the dole. Many industries in the north of the country have been faced with this situation and have acted accordingly. Most of the political criticism seems to want a "fairer" spread of employment prospects across the whole country. Even if this were possible, the implication of this kind of argument is to spread poverty across a wider geographical area. Which ever way capitalism inflicts its suffering on the working class is unacceptable. To argue about its location but ignore its real cause serves only to perpetuate it.

Talk about a North-South divide, or indeed whether workers are employed or unemployed, only covers over the real division in society -  the class division. If you have to work in order to live, if you are a member of the working class, then you are likely to experience a life of shortage, insecurity and relative poverty. Whether you live in London or Liverpool or whether you earn 300 a week or are on the dole will not change this. Clearly existing on a giro means more intense poverty than existing on a wage packet but compared to the life of ease and luxury lived by the capitalist class, these differences are meaningless. As long as workers allow capitalism to continue there will be arguments about who is doing best (or least badly). We will be told that northerners are being hard done by compared to southerners, despite the fact that both endure various levels of poverty. In fact workers themselves will contribute to these artificial divisions - not so long ago there were reports of trouble at a football match when supporters of a London club waved bunches of 10 notes at Liverpool fans and sang songs about them being on the dole.

There always seem to be a plentiful supply of Scottish nationalists who claim that the "English" parliament doesn't care about the Scots, who should get their own parliament and run their own affairs. The Brixton and Tottenham riots happened almost within spitting distance of the House of Commons; clearly, having the "mother of parliaments" on your doorstep is no sure way to peace and prosperity. Not so long ago we were told how lucky we are to live in a developed country like Britain, because if we lived in parts of Africa we'd be starving to death. They were still talking about the North-South divide, but now in global terms. It is cold comfort to people on the dole to be told that they are lucky that they don't live in Ethiopia. The absolute poverty is not the same, but its cause and solution certainly are.

The possibility of finding differences in working class existence are endless. The urgent need is to put an end to the system that creates these artificial divisions. Capitalism is by its nature divisive and competitive, whether it divides people on the grounds of race, sex, nationality or geographical location. Workers have got to transcend these artificial differences and recognise our common interest - that of a degraded, exploited class. Once we recognise our basic class interests then no force on earth can prevent us from acting accordingly, and putting an end to all social division once and for all.

Ian Ratcliffe

Food For Thought

 A horrifying article in the Toronto Star of December 28 focused on the mutilation and sale of albinos' body parts in Tanzania, "In Tanzania's black market, black magic is for sale. Witch doctors offer bits of albinos' bodies; arms, legs, hair, genitals, and blood. They are used for potions that the sellers promise will bestow health, wealth, and happiness." It is shocking that in today's world where so much knowledge is available that such incredible superstition exists – an incentive to work for truth and scientific knowledge for the whole world in a socialist society. John Ayers

Helping The Poor?

At first it sounds reassuring. 'Pope Francis on Monday revolutionized the Vatican's scandal-plagued finances, inviting outside experts into a world often seen as murky and secretive and saying the church must use its wealth to help the poor.' (New York Times, 24 February) A department known as the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), which manages financial holdings and real estate, will formally assume the role of the Vatican's central bank the statement said. The role and structure of the separate Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), will not change for the time being. Both the IOR and APSA have been at the centre of scandals. Italian magistrates are investigating the IOR on allegations of money laundering. Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who worked as a senior accountant at APSA for 22 years and who had close ties to the IOR, is currently on trial accused of plotting to smuggle millions of dollars into Italy from Switzerland to help rich friends avoid taxes. Reassured? RD

For World Socialism

We have managed to create a new world full of technological wonders and a potential for a bountiful abundance for all, but we still run it the old way - the capitalist way.  Governments cannot fix the problems. The remedies will require a massive and new degree of cooperation. That, in turn, requires not just information networks, but basic changes in human behaviour such as our overly-attachment to nations and our approach to politics.

Capitalists are not interested in production to benefit the peoples of the world. They are interested only in profits. If the productive forces in the world were to be used for the purposes of construction, the entire planet could be transformed and the standards of living and level of culture raised to undreamed of heights. This is not possible under capitalism. It is not profitable to feed the starving people. Only the unity of the workers and a socialist world can produce that “One World” which can abolish want and oppression and war. Only a socialist world can give us peace and plenty. Look how the capitalist world totters on the brink of destruction. The capitalist political parties are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold. The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism.  We will do away with the chaos of capitalism. Democratically-elected councils of workers in every industry and district will manage the factories and public services. We, socialists, refuse to join the reformists in leading the workers into the camp of capitalism. The intensity of the class struggle is greater today than at any time since the capitalists overthrew feudalism. Now it is the working class that must overthrow capitalism. The only road is the socialist road. Vote for the Socialist party, the only party that keeps the red flag flying.

The aim of the Socialist Party is not merely to take political power and establish socialism within the United Kingdom, that would be impossible but to join with the workers of all other countries in building world socialism. A world socialist society is the only solution to the many social problems in present day society. Only a socialist society can utilize rationally the natural resources and productive machinery of the Earth in the interests of the peoples of the planet. A network of socialist communities can alone solve the conflict between the efficient development of productive forces and the restrictions of artificial national boundaries.  Only world socialism will remove the causes of international wars that under capitalism now seriously threaten to send mankind into barbarism or complete destruction.  With world socialism the international division of labour would be organised in a more rational, cooperative and planned way than it is now. We see one revolution as links in the chain of revolutions which will emancipate the world from capitalism and establish world socialism. This conception stands in the center of the system of ideas which binds us together.

Socialism is the only way out from the difficulties in which humanity faces. To-day’s world is still a world of economic exploitation, misery, hunger, hatred, war and fear. The old problems are joined by new ones. Our desire is to contribute to the realization of a humane human community. The Socialist Party disdaining to bow to popular fads and fallacies or to sacrifice working class interests for the sake of temporary opportunistic advantage. Against capitalist-nurtured doctrines the Socialist Party has taken its stand.

The Socialist Party does not refuse ameliorations offered by the capitalist class, but contends that the more revolutionary the workers become, the stronger they make their economic and political organizations, the more prepared and anxious will the capitalist class be to throw sops to them in order to keep them contented.

The first condition of success for socialism is that its proponents should explain its aim and its essential characteristics clearly, so that they can be understood by every one. Socialists believe that society is divided into two great classes by the present form of property-holding, and that one of these classes, the wage-earning, the proletariat,  possess nothing. They can only live by their work. He can neither work, nor eat, clothe or shelter himself, without being held to ransom by the owning capitalist class.

The trade unions are based on the proposition that the workers by hand and brain, who sell their services to the capitalist class—i.e., the owners of industry—have interests which are opposed to those of that class. Trade unionists were not long in discovering that the State was not a neutral body representing the interests of the community. It constantly intervened against the workers in strikes. It passed legislation which hindered the growth of trade unionism. The object of nationalisation is not to lay the foundations of a new society. Socialists have always criticised the capitalist system because it gave rise not only to recurring economic crises, but to ever more devastating wars. The system of capitalist production leads inevitably to the alternating cycle of boom and  bust and periodical crisis under capitalism. With socialism, production is planned and rational, and takes place for peoples’ use. The establishment of a socialism will mean the end to the chaos of capitalist production with its lack of planning, repeated crises, unemployment, inflation and criminal waste. Exploitation, oppression, and degradation will not exist in socialist society. Commodity production, that is, production for sale or exchange on the market, will not exist. The system of wage labor will be abolished and the guiding principle of labor will be “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” The means of production will be held communally and private property will be eliminated. With the abolition of classes and class distinctions, all social and political inequality arising from them will disappear. The conflicts of interest between workers and farmers, town and country, manual and intellectual labor will disappear. As classes will not exist, the state will not be necessary as an instrument of class rule and will wither away. To replace the system of capitalism by which the millions of the majority are compelled to sell their only commodity, labor power, for the profit of a small minority.To end exploitation of man by man, to end the present system which compels the many to work to produce wealth for a few.

The problem before society to-day is not a financial problem. It is a property problem. The banks belong to the superstructure of capitalism. Private property is the foundation. The financial crises, consumption crises, credit crises and the like are nothing more than the reflections of the fundamental economic crisis arising from the fact that the private ownership of the means of production has become an anachronism in a society where social methods of production have superseded individual methods of production. No amount of credit supply to manufacturers, no amount of currency manipulation which leaves the question of property ownership untouched, can do other than aggravate the crisis of capitalism.

 The ownership question is a political as well as an economic question in society divided into owning and non-owning classes. This is the basis of the struggle of classes which many 'anti-capitalists’  appears to have forgotten. In their tirades against the financiers, the bankers won’t flinch because of this onslaught, but people may be diverted from that which matters more than all else to-day, namely, the struggle to secure the social ownership of the means of production—the prerequisite of economic and social prosperity. Social ownership must supersede the private ownership of the means of production, and can only come about through the political victory of the class without property over the class with property.

Our movement is leader-less and leader-full. Everything for everyone, nothing for ourselves.

238 Canadian troops have committed suicide

Another grim statistic goes to prove that killing humans is not a natural Activity. Since 1995, 238 Canadian troops have committed suicide, averaging ten per year until 2007 and seventeen per year thereafter. We spend $20 billion on so-called defence. Never was so much wasted on something so stupid! John Ayers

Rape Insurance!

In March a new law will take effect in Michigan that has been called Rape Insurance! It will force women covered by public or private health plans to pay extra for fear they may suffer an unintended pregnancy, including one that threatens their lives and well-being. This is the latest move by the Michigan's House and Senate to restrict abortion for poor women, whereas rich women do not need insurance plans. This bill is hardly the most democratic one considering only one third of voters support it. Senate minority leader, Gretchen Whitmer, " Requiring Michigan women to plan ahead for an unplanned pregnancy is not only illogical (there's that word again!), it is one of the most mysogynistic proposals I've seen in the legislature." Two aspects of this are crystal clear, life for the poor gets harder everyday and life under capitalism gets crazier.John Ayers

Capitalism or Socialism

WORLD FOR THE WORKERS

The world in which we live is in a desperate situation. Poverty and unemployment, disease and war, are endemic in the modern world. Industrialisation have wreaked havoc on the environment. People starve, not because there is no food, but because food is distributed only when it can make a profit. Corruption is rife in politics and commerce. Work, for most people, means drudgery. A sense of community in our world is increasingly missing in our daily lives. The answer lies in ending the separation of economics and politics. It involves people taking control of their workplaces, their neighbourhoods, their communities – directly and without mediators. Without bureaucrats, capitalists and managers standing in the way, it should be possible to build a sense of community, of unity, of cooperation. Either we do this or we will destroy ourselves.

The class struggle is simple to understand. A handful of industrial and financier capitalists who are in control of the factories, the banks, the natural resources and the government, are steadily whittling away at the living standards and democratic rights of all the working class. The Socialist Party proceeds upon the understanding that society is at present divided into two classes, whose economic interests are antagonistic. The Socialist Party calls on the workers of to unite for their common cause.  We must pit the unity of the workers against the unity of the exploiters.  We must match the solidarity of the working class whose ideal is freedom, with the solidarity of the employers whose aim is exploitation. The task for the capitalists and exploiters is unfortunately comparatively easy as they control both the capitalist state, the media and the education of the workers; and it is knowledge which sheds light on social and international questions. History and facts are falsified to present a skewed picture of reality.

The great majority of workers struggling to resist the employers are still under the influence of reformists who can only think of how to solve problems within the framework allowed by capitalism. As sops to the  workers, the capitalists have introduced some nationalisation  here and there but industries nationalised are no cure for wage-slavery, because they are still carried on for profit; and nothing but the socialisation of the means of life under a free co-operative commonwealth will abolish the present system, and give the wealth of the world to the workers of the world. The last thing reformists strive for is the  reconstruction of society and the abolition of wage slavery. That is what the Socialist Party stand for. The workers of the world have tried every other way and found it leads up a blind alley. The question for the workers is how to combine industrially and politically to got hold of the means of production and distribute their products throughout the whole community, according to the needs. It’s not such a difficult question to solve. Why do the workers continually turn away from it?

The Socialist Party is not a political party in the sense that other parties are - it has no reform to advocate.  This party cannot, and will not, free the workers; the workers must free themselves. The workers who would be free must organise and must educate themselves to obtain the knowledge which will enable them engage in the revolutionary work necessary to change the era of wage-slavery into the era of the Co-operative Commonwealth.

The gains of the past must be defended now. But the best way to do this is by understanding that unless the capitalist system itself is overthrown, those past gains and any temporary victories will be reversed by the needs and drives of the bosses who own and control it. Capitalism has brought technology and the organization of production to a point where the potential to adequately feed, clothe and house the entire world population is reachable. But the creation of abundance would end exploitation and destroy profits, so the capitalists themselves stand as a barrier to a society fit for human beings. Socialist revolution is the only solution! Socialism is the system of society in which production would be controlled and directed by the community in the interest of all of the society. It is the alternative to the existing system. The workers’ socialist revolution is the only “practical” politics, not a “wild" unrealisable notion but the sole constructive path.  Nothing is more certain than that any alleviation of the workers’ lot involves the capture of the State. The battle between the workers’ needs and capitalism grows ever fiercer. It can only end in revolution.

The only path before workers is Revolution. All the reformist remedies not only fail to touch the root  — the burdens of capitalist disorganisation and parasitism, and the gulf between growing productive power and mass impoverishment. They can only intensify the disease. The capitalists look for the solution in fiercer competition, in restricting production, in cheapening their own costs of production, in cutting wages against their competitors, in increasing their own competitive power, in fighting to enlarge their own share of the market. But these measures are pursued by the capitalists in every country. Although one set or another set may gain a temporary advantage for a short time, the net effect can only be to deepen the crisis. The net effect of every advance of technique, of every wage-cut, of every cheapening of costs and intensification of production, is to intensify the world crisis. The crisis is not a crisis of natural scarcity or shortage.  Millions of workers are willing and able to work; but existing society has no use for their labour. The crisis is a crisis of capitalism alone. Every advance of production only intensifies the crisis, intensifies the ferocity of capitalist competition for the market.

All the leaders of capitalism, economists, financiers, politicians, are at sixes and sevens. Many would-be reformers of capitalism (including many on the Left) urge that if only the capitalists would pay higher wages to the workers, enabling them to buy more of what they produce, there would be no crisis. This is utopian nonsense, which ignores the inevitable laws of capitalism — the drive for profits, and the drive of competition. The drive of capitalism is always to increase its profits by every possible means, to increase its surplus, not to decrease it. Individual capitalists may talk of the “gospel" of high wages in the hope of securing a larger market for their goods. But the actual drive of capitalism as a whole is the opposite. The force of competition compels every capitalist to cheapen costs of production, to extract more output per worker for less return, to cut wages. It conceals the real process of capitalism at work. Capitalism has no solution. The most the capitalists can see is to wait amid the general misery until the universal stagnation, destruction and stoppage of production has produced such a vacuum that “demand” will again arise, beginning a new trade cycle, and leading to a new and greater crisis. But of any attempt to organise the growing productive power to meet human needs — the question does not even enter into their heads; it cannot arise within the conditions of capitalism.

Capitalism to-day is no longer willing to grant concessions to the workers, on the contrary finds itself compelled to withdraw existing concessions, to make new attacks, to worsen conditions.  To enforce worsened conditions on the workers in order to save capitalism has been the role of the Labour Governments. The Left proclaim their “opposition” to the Labour Party policy and advocate so-called “socialist” alternatives. But on examination their policy will be found to be only the old policy of the Old Labour Party, dressed up in new clothes. Although they speak roundly of “socialism” against “capitalism,” they do not propose the overthrow of capitalism, the working-class conquest of power, the expropriation of the capitalists; their basis is still the same basis of capitalism, of the capitalist State, and therefore the outcome can only be the same. In the end where will all the policies of capitalism lead? They will not solve the crisis. On the contrary, the more they increase the impoverishment of the workers, the more they increase competitive power, the more they intensify the crisis. The same types of policy are pursued by all the capitalists. The only viable proposal for change is the reorganisation of capitalism.

Only socialism can bring the solution. Only socialism can cut through the bonds of capitalist property rights and organise production to meet human needs. Once capitalism is overthrown, then and only then can production be organised in common for all, and every increase in production bring increasing abundance and leisure for all. This is the aim of the working-class revolution. Only the organised working-class can fight and destroy the power of the capitalist class, can drive the capitalists from possession, can organise social production. The capitalists and their propagandist reformists, try to frighten the workers from revolution by holding before them the spectre that revolution means civil war violence and starvation and that the workers depend on capitalism for their existence. The contrary is the truth. Already millions are unemployed or under-employed,  brought down to the barest subsistence basis. Deprivation spreads and the demand for food banks grow.

The issue of class-power, the issue of capitalism or socialism draws close. Forward to the social revolution! There is no time to lose. To-day the workers are mobilising their forces to meet the new capitalist attacks. The spirit of fight is rising in the working-class. Forward to the fight for socialism!

more food for thought

Here is how logic works in capitalism. The Toronto Star wrote that the state of Florida is set to boom as its population will very soon overtake that of New York State with its attendant increase in economic expansion without thought. Florida's prime source of water comes from the Florida Aquifer that is replenished by rainwater soaking into the ground. The more you pave over driveways, parking lots, and other structures, the less water seepage you get. Logical, eh? Can you predict the result? Capital cannot! John Ayers

Food for thought

 On December 26, scientists announced that eighteen million tons of methane gas had been discovered near the Siberian arctic coast that, owing to global warming, was being leaked into the atmosphere. What will be done? Nothing! Why? Because global warming is a direct result of capitalism's mad dash for profits at any cost. Isn't it logical to stop harmful activities?  Yes, but logic and capitalism are not compatible. The only real logic is to organize and stop capitalism. John Ayers

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.