Socialism Is The Issue 1/4

A four- part article based on the writings of Eugene Debs, member of the generally reformist Socialist Party of America and their candidate for the the US Presidency.

PART ONE

A Labor Day is coming when our starry flag shall wave,
Above a land where famine no longer digs a grave,
Where money is not master, nor the workingman a slave

We live in the capitalist system, so-called because it is dominated by the capitalist class. In this system the capitalists are the rulers and the workers the subjects.  Socialists counts among the world’s workers all those who labour with hand or brain in the production of life’s necessities and luxuries. For much of its history human society has consisted of masters and slaves and the tens of millions of wage-workers in the world are the twenty-first century slaves. In the struggle of the working class to free itself from wage slavery it cannot be repeated too often that everything depends upon the working class itself. The simple question is, can the workers equip themselves, by education, organisation, co-operation and self-discipline, to take control of the productive forces and manage industry in the interest of the people and for the benefit of society? The workers must organise their own emancipation to achieve it and to control its unlimited opportunities and possibilities. That is all there is to it.

The fifth clause of our Declaration of Principles explains “That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.”, echoing the call of Marx and the First International.  What
can workers do for themselves? The answer is whatever is required. The working class can organise, combine, unify, cooperate and act in concert. Members of the working class are in the majority and have the vote. Where free elections are possible, peaceful revolutions can be achieved.

Working men and women can educate themselves. They can read, study, discuss and debate.  Ignorance is slavery. Intelligence is freedom. Workers should be ashamed to follow leaders who may betray them. The task of the Socialist Party isto persuade fellow workers to first question and challenge the present system of society and then to organise to change it. Without organisation workers are forever at the mercy of their enemies. Why does the labour movement  not assert its mighty power and conquer capitalism? Because it will not unify, because it chooses division rather than unity, strength and victory.

There were two different systems of economics in the world. The exponents of one system claim they have the right to live off the toil of others, while the others believe that the Earth  belongs to all the people. Capitalism is not “the survival of the fittest,” but “the survival of the most unscrupulous.” Socialism is no utopian dream, not the product of imagination, not a mirage to beckon and then to vanish, but a theory of life. The working class must get rid of the whole brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and control of the means of production.  It is therefore a question not of reform, the mask of fraud, but of revolution. The capitalist system must be overthrown, class-rule abolished and wage-slavery supplanted by the cooperative industry.

Between the mainstream parties socialists have no preference. They are one and the same in their opposition to socialism and the emancipation of the working class from wage-slavery. Every worker who has intelligence enough to understand the interest of his or her class and the nature of the struggle in which it is involved, will once and for all time sever affiliation with them all. They should acknowledge the class-struggle which is being waged between the producing workers and non-producing capitalists and cast their votes for a genuine class-conscious socialist party, which is pledged to abolish the capitalist system its class-rule and the wage-system - a socialist party which does not compromise, but, preserving inviolate its socialist principles and determination to advance the goal of economic freedom. The old parties are held together only by the cohesive power of spoils, and in spite of this they are steadily disintegrating. Again and again they have been tried to reform capitalism but always with the same results, and people are wakening up to their duplicity, deserting them in droves. It is now a question of capitalism or socialism, of despotism or democracy, and they who are not with us are against us. If only the working class could and would use their eyes to see; their ears to hear; their brains to think, how soon this Earth could be transformed. No person of reason can condone the present system but must condemn the cut-throat system that drives people to insanity and makes the psychiatric hospital an indispensable part of every community.

The Socialist Party is the only party that promotes the interests of the working class, the only class essential to society and the class that is destined ultimately to succeed to political power, “not for the purpose of governing men,” in the words of Engels, but “to administer things.” The present form of government based solely upon private property in the means of production is wholly coercive; in socialism it will be purely administrative. The ultimate function of government is to keep the exploited class in subjection by their exploiters. The owning class is necessarily the ruling class. This class struggle will not, cannot cease. The Socialist Party is necessarily a revolutionary party and its basic demand is the collective ownership of the means of production and distribution and the operation of all industry in the interest of all the people.

The prevailing economic system can only be abolished in two ways; namely, by securing control of government or by violent revolution. No rational person prefers violent to peaceful measures, and hence socialists rely upon the power of the class-conscious vote to accomplish their end. Where all men and all women have the ballot, political organisation is a necessity, and hence the organisation of the Socialist Party to represent the interests of the working class. Centuries of struggle and sacrifice were required to wrest the vote from the clutches of rulers and place it in the hands of workers. It is the abuse and not the use of it which is responsible for its evils.

We do not seek to convert trade unions into a political organisation, but hope they become class-conscious industrial unions, its members recognising the socialist ballot as the weapon of their class and using it accordingly. The attitude of the Socialist Party toward the trades-union movement is broadly endorsing but stopping there, and allowing it to manage its own internal affairs, a role of solidarity but also of non-interference.

Economic freedom can result only from common ownership, and upon this principle the Socialist Party differs diametrically from every other party. Between private ownership and common ownership there can be no compromise. One produces for profit, the other for use. One produces millionaire palaces and pauper hovels, the other abolishes class rule and wipes out class distinction. Cast your votes for the Socialist Party and throw your lot in with the World Socialist Movement, with its mission to uproot and overthrow the whole system of capitalist exploitation, and put an end to the poverty and misery it entails. The workers of the world, mainly through organised effort, are becoming conscious of their interests as a class, totally regardless of colour, creed, or gender and in time they will unite and act together upon a common basis of equality. In the class struggle the economic equality of all workers is a foregone conclusion, and he or she who does not recognise and subscribe to it as one of the basic principles of the socialist outlook is not a socialist.

The average person imagines that there must be a leader to look up to and to follow. We has been taught that we are dependent creatures and without someone to lead we would be lost. But we have relied too much on leaders and not enough on ourselves.  As long as you can be led you will be betrayed. That does not mean that all leaders are dishonest or corrupt, some may well be honest and as often as the  case it is a matter of genuine but blind leaders leading blind followers. An honest but incompetent  leader is just as fatal to our interests as the one who deliberately sells us out.

Our business is to put’the exploiters of labour out of business. We don’t need a capitalist; and if you think you do,  it is because you don’t understand your own best interest. You don’t need him. You imagine that he gives you a job; but he does nothing of the kind. You give him a job. You employ him to take from you what you produce. The capitalist could not exist a second without you. Can you imagine a capitalist without his work-force? What has the stock-exchange investor and share-holder who legally own a work-place know of  its operation? Absolutely nothing.

Capitalism is based upon the exploitation of the working class and when the working class ceases to be exploited, there will no longer be any capitalists. They are parasites. They are worse than useless. They simply take what we make, leaving us in poverty.

The exploiting capitalist is the economic master and the political ruler in capitalist society, and as such holds the exploited wage worker in utter contempt. No master ever had any respect for his slave, and no slave ever had, or ever could have, any real love for his master. It is no part of the purpose of the Socialist Party to compromise with the capitalist class. We are organised to fight that class, and we want all our fellow workers to clearly understand it.

In capitalist society we are not people but simply merchandise to be  bought and sold on the labour market.  Language betrays the fact foer aren’t we called “hands” and dealt with by “human resource” departments. In this competitive capitalist system  the workers are fighting each other to sell themselves into slavery.

The Socialist Party has declared war upon the capitalist class, and upon the capitalist system. It has no reason in concealing any part of its mission, and  its  object is to entirely abolish the capitalist system. We are of the working class and we say: Arise and unite, fellow workers of the world!  It is in our power to put an end to this system. Wipe out the wage system, so that you can walk this Earth as free men and women! Make ourselves the masters of technology instead of being slaves to the machine. No matter who or what a worker may be, if he or she works for wages, he or she is in precisely the same economic position that you are. They are of your own class and are your brother and sister, comrades. There is no escape for you from wage-slavery by yourself as an individual, but while you cannot alone break your fetters, if you will unite with all other workers who are in the same position that you are, if you will join the organisation that represents your whole class, you can develop the power that will achieve your freedom and the equal freedom of all.

When the workers are united in one economic organisation and one political organisation; when they strike together and vote together, they can put their class in power in every legislative body and parliament. They can abolish the capitalist system. When you unite and act together, the world is yours. You cannot be satisfied to live and die as beasts of burden; to toil unceasingly to enrich masters who hold you in contempt; to be dependent upon these leeches for your jobs and crawl like sycophants at their feet. You are a human, not an animal. You have your freedom to achieve, and you have an intellect to develop.

The primary need of the working class is education. By education we mean revolutionary education; the kind that enables men and women to acknowledge themselves as wage-slaves ; that the economic interests of these many millions of human beings who do all the useful work and produce all the wealth are absolutely identical; that they must unite ; that they must act together; that they must assert their collective power. When they reach this point they will cease to be slaves. They can do this, and only they can do it. No-body can do it for them.

The capitalist class gouge out profits from your daily drudgery and from what is left, you get your wages. They perform no useful work; yet you harm your bodies with the toil. They are millionaires; yet you are paupers. They have everything; yet you do everything. They live in country estates; yet you in housing estates. They have leisure and money; yet you have neither. They are few and yet you are many! To sum up they are the masters; and you their slaves. There can be no identity of interests between exploiters and exploited and there can be no peace until the working class is triumphant and the wage system is forever ended. It is not to reform the evils of the day but to abolish the social system that produces them that the Socialist Party is organised. It is the party not of reform but of revolution, knowing that the capitalist system has had its day and that a new social order, based upon a new system of production and distribution, must soon supplant the one we now have.

Land Grabs in Braszil

As many as 250,000 people are threatened with eviction as Brazil prepares to host this year's World Cup competition and the 2016 Olympics. The World Cup games will be played in twelve cities creating road construction, airport renovation, and stadium construction. In response, Amnesty International founded a campaign called, "Enough forced eviction", and Brazilian activists began "The National Coalition of People's World Cup Committees." These groups sent a report to the UN Human Rights Panel last year that, until now, has been ignored. This action by the Brazilian government is just one act in a long history of governments taking land from people to further the interests of the capitalist class. It will continue until all land is the common heritage of all humankind. John Ayers.

The Rapacity of Capitalism

The recent extinction of the Mangarahara cichlid fish that was native to Madagascar, may not be an earth shattering event, However it does assume greater significance when one relates it to the deforestation, pollution, overfishing, and habitat loss threatening so many species in the island off Africa's east coast. Furthermore, Madagascar is a mere part of the world that the rapacity of capitalism's drive for profits is destroying. John Ayers

The Workers Against the Bosses

No beast is fiercer than the capitalist protecting his profits which exceeds even the ferocity of a she-bear defending her cubs.

Before people can be robbed, people have to be ruled; before people can be ruled, people must first be fooled or deceived. Fooled, ruled and robbed to ensure the master’s profit and every Every evil passion is let loose. In dumb, blind fear people turn to the very institutions which the masters had built and perfected to be used on slaves who would not meekly accept the slave’s position as determined by the masters and escape the slave’s fate. Prison and death is used when bullying, lies, cajolery, bribes, promises and bluffs fail. There were no limits to the means that are to be made use of to coerce the slaves.

For years the political questions are to revolve about labour and capital. We are living under institutions where the discretion and control of the whole economic situation are in the hands of capital. Capital can do business only when a profit is in sight. Capital exists for profit alone. To get the largest possible profit it is often advisable to slow down production or to discontinue production entirely. This is what is social sabotage and the capitalist class are the most persistent perpetrators and consistent culprits. To sabotage industry is a crime only when it is committed by a worker but when it is committed by a capitalist it is only doing business. This sabotage of industry by the employing class is the principal cause of poverty, unemployment and all of the social ills which flow from them. It is at the bottom of all the labour unrest abroad in the world today.

Negotiating Wage Slavery

So long as the economic system, based on private ownership of the means of production, is the system by which we supply our wants, the workers will have to apply to employers for a chance to work in order to get money to buy the necessities of life. These are the class of men and women who must sell the skill and efficiency that they possess, in order that they may live and support those near and dear to them and this where the bosses are trying to bribe the workers to side with the boss. If the boss hires the workers, one at a time, and the workers have no organization, he hires them cheap. Where the workers have strong and well-ordered organisations, they are in a position where they are able to bargain successfully for a price for that which they take to the labour market, their skill and ability to do work in production.

A workers’ union must be in the position to, at all times, bargain with the capitalists for the sale of their labour power. The capitalists must also be able to ready to contract for the purchase of the labour power without which the ownership of the plant, the raw material, and the possession of the pay roll would be of no benefit to the capital.

The capitalist is no fool or he would not become, or remain a capitalist. The capitalists being business men or buyers and sellers are ready to make bargains of any kind whatsoever. In fact the bigger the deal, the bigger the scale, the more appeal it carries for Big Business than any small transaction possesses. So it is found that many of the managers of the large-scale industries have encouraged their workers to develop their union organisations so that the buying of labour power is carried on in the most efficient way to draw up employment contracts collectively arranged with all the workers for defined times (often lengthy). The capitalist often finds it to better advantage to buy the leaders of the men’s unions than it is to meet the representatives of the men from the shop-floor in a straight effort at negotiation. If the relations of bargain and sale could be institutionalised in such a way that he would always meet the same men in negotiations, if these men were safe and reasonable, how much better would the relations be between capital and labour. The crooked, co-operating labor leader has some ability, some plausibility, and some ambition. Once he finds that he is able to make a living by being a labour leader, he finds that his life-style is changed for the better. No longer the dirt and noise of the factory floor; new faces to meet; new experiences to undergo; travel and hotel life and time not at all occupied. He comes into contact with the givers of gifts. He is under appraisal; his abilities are measured; his vanity and his integrity and his moral fibre are all weighed. In short, if the man has in him the capacity of being a traitor, he is reached, and labour suffers one more betrayal to be added to the thousands of the past. Having habituated oneself to being a human jelly-fish, neither loyalty nor good faith can ever be expected from many union leaders, but rather duplicity of every kind is to be looked for.  All signs point to the fact that treacherous labour leaders are engaged in co-operating in laws enacted to sell labour into peonage to capital.  A thousand schemes are put forth to make the worker believe that it is in his or her interest to be tame and subservient, that he or she can best serve oneself  at the expense of other fellow workers. If the bosses  recognise that the labour leaders who would lend themselves to such a game,are crooks so what? The capitalists’ money is invested to make profits not make moral judgments.

A successful bargain is one in which the things exchanged are exchanged at their value. To make such a trade the parties to the transaction must be on an equality. A starving man would give much gold or precious stones for the food that would save life. Experience shows that the workers are naked and defenceless against the greed of the capitalist if they have not the power to bring to a stop the production of profit, which is the only reason why the capitalist has become an owner of the means of production. The withdrawal of their labour power from the work-place is the only force at the disposal of employees. If workers make a mistake in their guess, or their estimate, of how much the capitalist will give rather than see his plant go out of production, there comes a lockout or a strike.

Still better, if the workers can be fooled into believing that there was no class state, could be made to believe that that the government was the government of all the people, undertaking to preserve peace and order in the labour world, then all would indeed be well for the capitalist. The politician’s  calling is to keep the confidence of the voters to the extent that they remain in office. Stripping the political game bare, the politician must have money to carry out the work of winning elections and he can get this money only from the same source from which he levies the taxes, from those who have the money. The division of labour gives to the politician the job of making the laws necessary and imperative to allow the economic system to operate. That is, his job is to keep capitalism so that it can work, that it can make profits on the capital invested, that it can exploit labour.  Historically, the politician has never flinched or allowed moral concepts to stand in the way of serving capital. To do anything else would be to commit political suicide.

Holding the political theory that the class struggle, daily taking part in the activities of the labour movement, is the most stubborn fact in history. But the experiences of the modern factory submitting workers to its daily grind, make them more and more troublesome. The fresh open air was the condition under which man entered into relations with his fellows to make the living together. A million years of open air cannot be forgotten in a few decades of the foul, polluted atmosphere of a capitalist factory. The urge is for shorter and even shorter hours, inside of this veritable prison. The strict discipline required for efficiency, which is enforced by the machines as well as the boss, tends in the same direction. The industrial system of production, too, requires that a worker should have some education and some ability to rationalise so comes to see social production in the large, to see how all the processes are dove-tailed, interlinked together. Workers begin to acquire consciousness of their existence. They commence to give some attention to the problems of distribution.

 At the starting point, they receive an immediate object lesson in the retail store outlet of the product created by them and that the wage received as money taken home is utterly inadequate to meet all the requirements of the house-hold budget. A little enquiry and the benefit of some statistics and the conclusion is reached that the standard of living among all workers is about the same, that is, they are all having an equally hard time to make both ends meet, that wages are just about what will keep a worker alive and going along, in one part of the world as well as in another.

According to socialist economics “Labour produces all wealth.” That is to say, every commodity that goes on the market is produced by the combined efforts of the workers. The workmen in return for their labor get wages, while the articles they make belong to the man they work for and are sold on the market at their value. The difference between the wages the workers get and the price of the commodity which the owners of the industries get we call: “Surplus value.”

What becomes of the rest of the product that has been manufactured?

 It goes in rent, interest and profit after the cost of the raw material, the up-keep of the machinery and plant and the overhead charges have been paid. Rent and interest are really profits which are paid to landlords and banks, for, if the industrial company had bought the land and had no borrowed money it would have to have to treat its whole investment as capital and all the money it made over paying wages and the sums paid out for raw material and up-keep and overhead would be entered on the books as profit.

Now don’t forget that the boss owns everything under the system by which we make the living together. He owns the plant and the machinery: he owns the raw material; he owns the money paid out in wages and he owns the product, the product of labour. When he pays the wages he secures the actual ownership of the skill and efficiency that resides in the worker, not only the highly specialised skill of the trained workman but the equally or even more highly skilled efficiency which is the transmitted joint heritage of the human race. Let no worker ever forget that if it were not for the virtual ownership of the skill and efficiency which is the only asset of the workers, the ownership of the plant, the raw material and the money capital would be of not the slightest use to the Money-Bags of the world.

The ownership of the ability to make the living which resides in the workers, by the owners of the capital invested in the business where the workers labor, makes slaves of the workers. There is no other name that will describe the relations of the bosses and workers. It is slavery and abject slavery at that. Hence it comes that the bosses are against the workers and the workers are against the bosses. Hence it comes that the worker that sides with the boss is a treacherous and a disloyal human with the culture and the psychology of a yellow dog.

Part of this surplus is paid through the banks to other persons for the loan of their money for investment in industrial enterprises, or the bank lends out money for a certain return to people who wish to start new industries or businesses. This part of the surplus we call: “Interest”.

Another part of the surplus goes to owners of land where the factories and the shops are located wither as a yearly payment or once and for all as a purchase or it is through the banks for “interest” lent to people to build houses for other people to pay to live in. This second part of the surplus we call: “Rent.”

The remaining part of the surplus goes to the owners of the industries “pro persona” and this third part we call: “Profit.”

Part of this profit the industrial capitalist again invests in raw materials, new and improved machinery and wages. This “money invested in industries to make more money” we call: “Capital”

Of the remaining part of his profit the capitalist pays his office staff for helping to keep track of the commodities thereby preventing waste and theft. He also pays the people who take part in the selling of the commodities in order to have distribution on the competitive market efficient and without delay. While the office staff is paid a monthly or semi-monthly salary, those who help in the distribution are generally working on a percentage basis, or in the case of the traveling salesman both.

After the industrial capitalist has paid his office staff and his salesmen has laid off enough capital for the improvement and continued running of his industry, he divides the remaining part between his stockholders, that is, those people who from the start helped to furnish “capital” for the industry, in short, those who laid out money for buying machinery, raw materials and labor power.

On these three, the personifications of “rent,” “interest,” and “profit,” are levied the taxes of the community for schools the upkeep of law and order and the whole political and military machinery of our day. These three always stick together when there is any danger for the surplus to be diminished, namely when the workers who produce the surplus want more wages. If a raise in wages is brought about, it necessarily has to be paid out of the surplus—there is nowhere else to take it from. In such troubled times they lean on the sympathy of the teachers, the middlemen, the office staff, the university students, the officials of all descriptions, in short, the “public,” that is the whole respectable crowd who in an industrial community live on the surplus produced by the workers.

Profits

We find among our fellow workers in the mines, mills and factories two distinct types: those who know how profits are made and can explain how the boss makes this profit by selling commodities at their value, and those who don’t know.

Those who don’t know that profits are made by selling commodities at their value fall easy victims to all kinds of funny-money currency quacks with patent schemes to fix up the differences between capital and labour and are invariably fooled and ruled, and those who do know are socialists and can do a straight piece of thinking on economics themselves.

What characterises a capitalist cast of mind more than anything is the belief in the fallacy that profit is made by selling commodities above their value, and all foolish panaceas for prolonging capitalism by increased production or by reduced prices are based on this misconception.

Karl Marx threw an eye-opener into the science of economics by stating: If you cannot explain profits on the supposition that they are derived from selling commodities at their value, you cannot explain it at all. This statement received scant treatment among the university professors. First they ignored it, then they belittled it, and finally admitted it.

Marx was about as popular in his day as Galileo some three centuries previous had been when he stated that the earth was round. In those days it was a clear case that Galileo was crazy. How could he maintain the sun appear in the east in the morning, circle the sky over the earth, and disappear in the west in the evening ? For us the explanation is easy: Galileo had a telescope, which had just been invented, and by the use of it he was able to learn more about the stars and the sun than were those who observed with their eyes only. Galileo was not recognised in his own time for his great contributions to the science of astronomy. Neither was Marx recognized in his time for his discoveries in the science of political economy. But facts are facts, and when the misconceptions have been dispersed the facts still remain. For anybody to speak about how to save society today and not know working class economics is as pretentious as to argue astronomy on the supposition that the earth is flat.

In “Value Price and Profit” Marx gave the finest little key that a mentally bound wage slave could ever wish for to open the locks on his chains with. In this Marx says: “To explain the general nature of profits, you must start from the theory that, on an average, commodities are sold at their real values, and that profits are derived from selling them at their values, that is, in proportion to the quantity of labor realized in them. If you cannot explain profit upon this supposition, you cannot explain it at all. This seems paradox and contrary to every-day observation. It is also paradox that the earth moves round the sun, and that water consists of two highly inflammable gasses. Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by every-day experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things.”

The working class today is the advancing class and therefore acquiring advanced knowledge and  conclusions but they do not need look to the the academics and universities for their enlightenment. The truth of their slave existence is in their daily lives.

The Rich Act The Same The World Over!

Chinese activist, Xu Zhiyong, has led a call for more information about the wealth of China's capitalists who are not required to publicly disclose their assets. However, investigative journalists have found that between $1 trillion and $4 trillion in untraced assets have left China since 2000. The rich are invited to join any one of a dozen new polo clubs in China where fees are $165,000 and they can even buy a mansion on the club grounds for as little as $90 million! Twenty-two thousand have taken advantage of offshore tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands. Xu Zhiyong and the organization he represents probably mean well but would do better to work for a society where accumulation of such wealth alongside widespread poverty would be unknown and unattainable.

Meanwhile the Star statisticians reported that China's rich are getting wanderlust – no national loyalty there. In a survey of 393 Chinese millionaires, it was found that 64% have emigrated or are planning to do so. Thirty-three per cent of the super rich (more than $16 million) have homes elsewhere. Eighty per cent want their children educated abroad mostly in the US or Britain, 772 received American investor green cards (given to people who invest more than one million dollars) in 2010 and that number grew to 6,124 in 2012. Conclusion – the rich act the same the world over – do anything anywhere anytime that money will allow you to do. John Ayers

A Sane Society?

A paper written by two eminent medical researchers is calling for restrictions on the production and use of neurotoxins, industrial chemicals that affect brain development in children, to say nothing about the rest of us. Conditions such as ADHD (up 88% in the US in the past decade) and autism (up 600% in twenty years and now present in one out of eighty-eight children) are cause for concern. Since 2006, the number of neurotoxins, such as lead and methyl mercury, have doubled and there are believed to be many more as yet unrecognized. A sane society would surely act on this to prevent any further damage. Sorry, I forgot, this isn't a sane society! John Ayers

Engels Against The Nationalists

A word of caution against those Left Nationalists that evoke the authority of Marx and Engels and cite their sympathy for Irish and Polish independence. All is not so simple.

Engels concluded an article, "The Magyar Struggle,"  (1849),  with these harsh words:
“But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat,... the Austrian Germans and the Magyars will gain their freedom and take a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will scatter this Slav Sonderbund, and annihilate all these small pig-headed nations even to their very names. The next world war will not only cause reactionary classes and dynasties to disappear from the face of the earth, but also entire reactionary peoples.And that too is an advance”

Was Engels advocating nothing less here than the physical extermination of the Slavic peoples? Not really. What Engels really wished to make "disappear from the face of the earth" were the Slavic national movements, the political parties of the Czechs, Croats, etc., and their leadership.  The peoples themselves would be subjected by the victorious "revolutionary nations" to a (not altogether peaceful) Germanisation, Magyarisation and Polonisation.

Even so,  that attitude of Engels is bad enough to dismiss Left Nationalists hoping that Marxism offers credibility for their independence campaign.

That "no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations" held true, as far as Engels and Marx were concerned, only with respect to the large, viable, historic nations, and not with respect to the "small relics of peoples which, after having figured for a longer or shorter period on the stage of history, were finally absorbed as integral portions into one or the other of those more powerful nations whose greater vitality enabled them to overcome greater obstacles." Engels wrote in "What Have the Working Classes to Do with Poland?" (1866)

Engels' statements of 1849 and 1866 mean the denial of self-determination to the small, "non-historic" peoples. Engels was even more specific.

"There is no country in Europe," Engels wrote, “that does not possess, in some remote corner, one or more ruins of peoples, left over from an earlier population, forced back and subjugated by the nation which later became the repository of historical development. These remnants of a nation, mercilessly crushed, as Hegel said, by the course of history, this national refuse, is always the fanatical representative of the counter revolution and remains so until it is completely exterminated or de-nationalized, as its whole existence is in itself a protest against a great historical revolution.
In Scotland, for example, the Gaels, supporters of the Stuarts from 1640
to 1745.
In France the Bretons, supporters of the Bourbons from 1792 to 1800.
In Spain the Basques, supporters of Don Carlos..
In Austria the pan-Slav South Slavs [in the wider sense], who are nothing more than the national refuse of a thousand years of immensely confused development. It is the most natural thing in the world that this national refuse, itself as entangled as the development which brought it into existence, sees its salvation solely in a reversal of the entire development of Europe, which according to it must proceed not from west to east but from east to west, and that its weapon of liberation, its unifying bond, is the Russian knout.”

He writes “Thus the counter-revolutionary uprisings of the Highland Scots have to be explained in terms of a people still living within the clan organization and therefore opposing capitalist development, which would indeed use them ill in the end.' The counter-revolution in Brittany, just as in neighbouring Vendee, has to be understood above all as a result of the peculiar agrarian structure of this region and of the local peasantry's dissatisfaction (for the most part justified) with the early agrarian legislation of the French revolution. And finally, as for the Basques, they supported Don Carlos because in Spanish absolutism they saw a threat to their "fueros" and to their "altogether democratic"(to quote Mane) organisations of self-government."

Amongst all the nations and nationalities of Austria there are only three bearers of progress,
which have actively intervened in history and are still capable of independent life: Germans, Poles and Magyars. They are therefore revolutionary now. The next mission of all the other great and small peoples is to perish in the universal revolutionary storm. They are therefore now
counter-revolutionary."

In November 1847, Engels wrote: "Through its industry, its commerce and its political institutions, the bourgeoisie is already working everywhere to drag the small, self-contained localities which only live for themselves out of their isolation, to bring them into contact with one another, to merge their interests,... and to build up a great nation with common interests, customs and ideas out of the many hitherto independent localities and provinces.  The bourgeoisie is already carrying out considerable centralization The democratic proletariat not only needs the kind of centralisation begun by the bourgeoisie but will have to extend it very much further. During the short time when the proletariat was at the helm of state in the French revolution, during the rule of the Mountain party, it used all means—including grapeshot and the guillotine—to effect centralisation. When the democratic proletariat again comes to power, it will not only have to centralise every country separately but will have to centralize all civilized
countries together as soon as possible." said Engels in "The Civil War in Switzerland,"

Engels is so thoroughly convinced of the finality and irrevocability of this verdict that he even risks offering this statement:
“We repeat: apart from the Poles, the Russians and at most the Slavs of Turkey [not of Austria and Hungary!], no Slav people has a future, for the simple reason that all the other Slavs lack the primary historical, geographical, political and industrial conditions for a viable independence.
And he continues:
“Peoples which have never had a history of their own, which come under foreign domination the moment they have achieved the first, crudest level of civilisation, or are forced onto the first level of civilization by the yoke of a foreigner, have no capacity for survival and will never be able to attain any kind of independence. And that has been the fate of the Austrian Slavs.
There is no country in Europe where there are not different nationalities under the same government. The Highland Gaels and the Welsh are undoubtedly of different nationalities to what the English are, although nobody will give to these remnants of peoples long gone by the title of
nations, any more than to the Celtic inhabitants of Brittany in France Here, then, we perceive the difference between the "principle of nationalities" and of the old democratic and working-class tenet as to the right of the great European nations" to separate and independent existence.
The "principle of nationalities" leaves entirely untouched the great question of the right of national existence for the historic peoples of Europe; nay, if it touches it, it is merely to disturb it. The principle of nationalities raises two sorts of questions: first of all, questions of boundary between these great historic peoples; and secondly, questions as to the right to independent national existence of those numerous small relics of peoples which, after having figured for a longer or shorter period on the stage of history, were finally absorbed as integral portions into one or the other of those more powerful nations whose greater vitality enabled them to overcome greater obstacles. The European importance, the vitality of a people is as nothing in the eyes of the principle of nationalities; before it, the Roumans of Wallachia, who never had a history nor the energy required to have one, are of equal importance to the Italians who have a history of 2,000 years, and an unimpaired national vitality; the Welsh and Manxmen, if they desired it, would have an equal right to independent political existence, absurd though it would be, with the English. What is pan-Slavism, but the application, by Russia and Russian interest, of the principle of nationalities to the Serbians, Croats, Ruthenes, Slovaks, Czechs and other remnants of bygone Slavonian peoples in Turkey, Hungary and Germany! ... If people say that to demand the restoration of Poland is to appeal to the principle of nationalities, they merely prove that they do not know what they are talking about, for the restoration of Poland means the re-establishment of a state composed of at least four" different nationalities."

Engels denied the national future of these peoples and counted on their absorption and their assimilation by the great "historic" nations.

For those who call themselves socialists, "the right of peoples to self-determination" has become so self-evident a principle but it is not a principle of Marxism.

Engels and Marx acted and fought in a world very different from that of today and to understand them we must understand the special range of problems posed by that world. Above all, they very obviously misjudged the speed of historical development, from which, for obvious reasons,  they were never able to free themselves completely They were reluctant  to concede to capitalism, which had scarcely reached maturity, a longer lifespan, and they therefore regarded the socialist revolution as the direct, practical task of their generation. On this premise their nationalities' policy is understandable.

It is simply not true (as some would have us believe) that Marx and Engels' negative
attitude towards the non-historic Slavic peoples was only a short-lived passing phase limited to the revolutionary years of 1848 and 1849. And it is also not true that this attitude can be explained completely by the counter revolutionary role of these peoples and by the danger of pan-Slavism. A national-German undertone is sometimes clearly audible in the national policy of Marx and Engels, although for them a united, republican Germany never meant anything else but the most suitable base of operation and the most competent agent of the socialist revolution.

So  the Marx and Engels position is wherever several nationalities are forced together in a single state, the internationalist policy of  Marxists not only strives to make the workers of the oppressed nation recognise the workers in the ruling nation as their comrades-in-arms and subordinate their particular national goals to the interest of the common struggle for socialism, but also above all encourages the workers of the oppressing nations, notwithstanding their national "pride" and  privileges that may benefit some strata of the working class,  to dissociate themselves entirely from all the policies of national oppression pursued by their ruling
classes.

 Should workers let themselves be "diverted" from the class struggle by the national question? How can one demand that they support the party of one capitalist against another
in a competition between sections of the ruling classes which given the present social order, every national struggle can be reduced to?

The question arises why oppressed nationalities cannot wait with their emancipation until
the hour of freedom arrives for the working class? And why should the English, German,  and Russian workers have been concerned with the establishment of independent (or even only autonomous) Irish, Polish, South Slavic and Ukrainian states, whereby large political and economic regions would be broken up, whose integrity would facilitate socialist development These are the issues that the theorist Roman Rosdolsky raises in his work on the national problem in regards to the position of Marx and Engels.

Today, we find the debate has not gone away but has in fact heightened in the past decades. What has most definitely changed,  is that many of todays “Marxists” possess little comprehension of where Marx and Engels stood regards the various manifestations of European nationalism.

Food for Thought

Toronto will host the 2015 Pan-American games. The organization recently fired the CEO who earned a salary of almost $400,000 and collected a severance package worth over half a million dollars. How does this compare with the wages of those workers who construct the facilities. One would think they would be worth something similar but will just get the boot when the work is finished. Time to get boot the wages system. John Ayers

Lacking Sprinklers and adequate Staff!

A recent fire in a retirement home in Quebec that killed about thirty residents has highlighted the lack of sprinkler systems and adequate staff in these facilities. The sprinklers would have put the fire out and adequate numbers of staff would have been able to evacuate all residents in time. Both are tied to the money aspects as they are run by for-profit organizations and underline the stupidity and heartlessness of our economic system. John Ayers

An Ode to Engels

Marx described Engels as "a veritable walking encyclopedia,  he’s capable, drunk or sober, of working at any hour of the day or night, is a fast writer and devilish quick in the uptake" 

Socialist Courier came across the following poem honouring Engels. 

Frederick Engels 

Most don’t bother coming next and get the silver,
Or being the second highest mountain in the world.
But that was not the style of Frederick Engels,
He held Marx’s flag aloft, proud and unfurled.
When the brightest star is shining in the heavens,
You would think a darker piece of sky was worth a try.
But not if you were dear old Frederick Engels,
He stood right next to Marx and held his head up high.
You could never say he lived in Karl Marx’s shadow;
Shadows weren’t the sort of thing to bother Fred.
In honest proletarian cooperation
He helped multiply Marx’s light and shadows fled.
No one knew their dialectics like old Engels
And though his death was the negation of his birth,
A great productive life came in between them
And negating the negation shows its worth.
The negation of the death of Frederick Engels
Doesn’t take us back to little Fred,
But to the birth of a great proletarian movement
With Marx and Engels ever at its head.

by Godfrey Cremer, 
28 November 1999

Food for Thought

A recent report issued by Freedom House that has ranked national trends  in civil rights since the 1970s, said it was worried by 'a new trend in totalitarianism'. Civil rights and liberties have declined for the eighth year. This included another Egyptian military coup, South Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Central African Republic, and Yemen. According to the Washington-based research group, fifty-four nations showed declines in political rights and civil liberties. They are rights that have been fought for and won, however temporarily, after years of struggle in which many of those fighting for liberty were murdered. They would have been better advised to fight for a world where would be no ruling class to take away those rights. John Ayers.

The Horrors of War

The magnitude and horror of war is hard to imagine but this news item gives you a notion of how awful it is. 'A soldier who lost his testicles and both legs to a Taliban landmine says servicemen should donate sperm before they go to war.  Rick Clement, 34, almost died in the blast in Helmand Province, Afghanistan,  in May 2010.  He wed fiance Leanne Isaacs a year later but the marriage didn't last.'  (Daily Telegraph, 7 March) The horror that Rick experienced is not going to be lessened by any sort of legislation. What we need is world socialism and the end of war for ever. RD

The Slave’s Prayer

The Slave’s Prayer

O freedom, we thank thee from the fullness of grateful hearts. Thou art pure and incorruptible. Thou lookest down with pity and compassion upon the children of toil bent with their burdens and weary with oppression. Thou biddest them to join hands and hearts, shake off their cruel fetters, and rise to the realms of peace and joy.

We thank thee, above all, for thy supreme justice in withholding thy favors from masters and rulers, and rejecting with righteous scorn all special pleas for thy boon, rebuking thus the soulless few who would, to free themselves, see all their brethren perish in slavery. We hear they cheering voice and understand thy revolutionary mission — thou art to us the noblest of ideals; and when trials and vexations multiply and clouds hang low, we find in thee unceasing solace and unfailing strength and inspiration. We know that when the hour strikes for thy reception; know that when class robs class no more; when humanity, slaveless and masterless, rises to its dignity, then wilt thou come to earth to abide with the children of men in the reign of freedom from evermore

Amen
Eugene Debs 

"American Hustle"

The latest movie that fans are raving about is "American Hustle" and it is predicted to sweep the upcoming 'let's promote business' awards, otherwise known as the Oscars. The most commendable aspect is some great acting by Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence. The plot is that a pair of con artists is caught in the act by an FBI agent, who promises them immunity if they help to catch other fraudsters. There are no admirable characters in this movie. It's simply set a thief to catch a thief and shows capitalism at its most corrupt. In fact the one honest character is hell bent on furthering his career. The audience is asked to empathize with the original hustlers. The trouble is they're not worth it, like the economic system they believe in. John Ayers.

Unpaid Overtime

A favourite piece of owning class propaganda is that workers are lazy and they have to be constantly watched to make sure they are working hard enough, but what are we to make of this piece of information supplied by the TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady? 'Times are tough for public sector workers. As the cuts bite and fewer staff find themselves having to take on more work, unpaid overtime inevitably grows. Some of the increase will be down to the professionalism and commitment of staff who want to provide decent services. But there is also evidence of bullying and excessive management pressure in some workplaces. ....... Hours are up, workload has increased, pay has been frozen, pensions cut and jobs insecure as public sector staff know that 60% of the cuts are still to come.' (ITN News, 23 February) Unpaid overtime hardly seems to point to a lazy workforce, does it? RD

Money cranks

Major C.H. Douglas
Money Crank

Economic crises always have a falling-out-among-thieves with  different capital sectors seeking advantage for themselves by fixing capitalism’s problem on others. Many of todays radical economists pin-point the central cause of the problems of capitalism is to be found in the sphere of the circulation of commodities - a financial banking and consumer spending crisis, rather than at the point of production, where the Marxist locates it. They seek  to solve the social problem of capitalist production without changing the existing relations of production. Currency reformers of the Ellen Brown and Positive Money type wish to save capitalism by making changes in the monetary system alone and  reform capitalism by an alteration in the monetary mechanism. They ignore the industrialist capitalist and concentrate their attacks upon the bankers. They  propose to socialize credit and leave the capitalists in control of industry. It is a dream of reform shrinking away  from any genuine revolutionary consequences  hope to attain their heart’s desire by legislative measures , as simply and easily as signing a decree. Their practical political programs reflect a timidity that trembles at the prospect of  revolution. They sincerely desire to abolish all the miseries of exploitation, but without upsetting the existing social relations of production and without compelling anyone but a handful of bankers to yield up their present privileges. We are assured banking reform is not socialism but ‘economic democracy’.

They find the scapegoat in the money supply and the credit monopoly of finance capital. They often “prove” the existence of “the banker’s conspiracy” by exposing the Federal Reserve. They insinuate that bankers deliberately instigate panics and crises. They do pay no heed to  credit crunch as a symptom and evidence that the crisis is already under way, instead of being the fundamental cause of its occurrence, and pass over the fact that bankers, like other capitalists, can only invest money where there is the prospect of profit. The financial magnates are as helpless as any other capitalist group to start or stop a general capitalist crisis, although they have induced temporary credit stringencies for their private purposes. They hold a basic belief that money is not (or should not be) a commodity, but a system of worthless tokens (fiat money). They mistake the superficial forms of modern money (its paper dress as currency or its phantom bookkeeping existence as checks) for its inner nature. They completely fail to comprehend the function of money in a commodity producing society, and particularly under capitalism. As the general equivalent of value, money is not only a commodity but the king among commodities, destined to reign so long as capitalism endures.

Nor do these currency cranks fully comprehend  that money is subject to all the laws of capitalism. Chief among these laws is the necessity of transforming money into capital, and using capital to appropriate surplus value. The financier accomplishes this by loaning money to the industrialist or the merchant, who, in their turn, appropriate their share of surplus value directly from the working class. The self-same capital is used for exploiting purposes by both groups of capitalists, and yet the new economists  condemn the bankers alone. Their position amounts to this: the capitalist may exploit the working class, but the finance capitalist must not exploit his brother capitalists.

At the bottom of it all is the fear of the small businessmen of the Frankenstein monster of  the Big Banks. The monopoly of credit is the means by which large corporations exploit the lesser capitalist groups. They charge the banking industry with the creation of debt although that process is only a special case of the continuous transformation of social wealth into private property under capitalism. First, the power of creating credit is to be taken away from the private bankers and vested in the state. Either by nationalization of the banks or the creation of the North Dakota State Bank model. The scheme is utterly utopian. If credit was nationalized, as it is for all practical purposes in many capitalist countries today, it would simply put a more powerful weapon in the hands of the monopoly capitalists who control the state, and be used, as it is in those countries, to protect the profits of national capitalists against foreign competition. It appears radical in form but proves to be reactionary in substance. Its propagandists  pander to all the confused prejudices of the impoverished ‘middle’ classes, providing a pseudo-socialist covering for their outspoken hatred of finance capital, their nationalism and, in many cases, their anti-semitism.

 The fundamental cause of capitalist crises is to be found in the antagonisms of capitalist production and this cannot be repeated too often until it eventually sinks into the minds of those who want capitalism with a humane face.

100 Years of Conflict

The centenary of the first world war has produced a plethora of TV programmes and newspaper articles but one fact seems to be usually overlooked. 'British forces are set to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. If 2015 is a year of peace for the UK, it will be the first for at least 100 years.' (Guardian, 11 February) The British army has been involved in wars all over the world constantly since 1914. Ireland, Iraq, Aden, Kuwait, Palestine, 2nd world war, Korea, Suez and so on ad nauseam. Ironically the 1914-18 war was named the war to end all wars. RD

The Gap Widens

The desperate poverty that forces millions to eke out an existence on the equivalent of $2 a day when we have a handful of billionaires living in luxury is a contrast that was well illustrated recently. 'Microsoft founder Bill Gates has regained the top spot as the world's richest person, according to Forbes magazine's annual ranking of global billionaires. Mr Gates' total net worth was estimated at $76bn (£45.5bn) this year, up from $67bn in 2013.' (BBC News, 3 March) Gates is not the only one enjoying this bonanza - in total, there were a record 1,645 billionaires, according to Forbes. RD

Fighting for Peace

PEACEFULLY IF POSSIBLE
FORCIBLY IF NECESSARY
"If your enemy has massive capacity for violence - and modern governments today have massive capacity for violence - why deliberately choose to fight with your enemy's best weapons? They are guaranteed to win, almost certainly." - Gene Sharp

To the average person Marxists are regarded as ultra- revolutionaries who advocate of violent overthrow of all constituted order in government. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has not been enamoured with the idea of violence. We are not  insurrectionists. But we are realists. Above all do they try to guard against the sporadic, meaningless and inevitably self-defeating violence that suffering and resentment are so likely to prompt. We have never advocated the use of indiscriminate violence.  Nor do we incite needless bloodshed. Our position is non-violent resistance  is a more effective method for bringing about desirable social change in the modern world than violence. We are not interested in maintaining that non-violence is morally preferable to violence, but that non-violence is superior as an instrument to bring about social change. And we are speaking of non-violent resistance, not of non-resistance, which is a very different proposition. We do not argue that Man is innately good which will lead to the capitalist and the worker clasping hands in brotherly love. Men are “innately” neither good nor bad. The interests and values they hold to are based upon the objective historical conditions of their lives. What we insist is that violence alone will not achieve socialism and we will judge the effectiveness of non-violence on its efficiency.

In capitalism private property relations can only be protected by coercion – the have-nots had to be coerced by the haves, just as in feudal or slave society, expressed in the police, the laws, the standing army, and the legal apparatus of the bourgeois State. Man cannot but act. And since man is always acting, he is always exerting force, always altering or maintaining the position of things, always revolutionary or reactionary.   The web of physical and social relations that binds men into one universe ensures that nothing we do is without its effect on others, whether we vote or cease to vote. Man can never rest on the absolute; all acts involve consequences, and it is man’s task to find out these consequences, and act accordingly. Therefore it is man’s task to find out the consequences of acts: which means discovering the laws of social relations.

The support of large numbers of people begins to increase consciousness and when enough people withdraw their cooperation the government begins to break down.  The use of non-violent methods of action comes to be seen as the most effective use of force open at present to socialists. Commitment to civil disobedience is more than sore feet on marches and cold arses on wet pavements.

Hating the violence of the capitalist State, the revolutionary must produce a society which needs neither violence in peace nor in war. We must seek the only path by which capitalist social relations of violence can be turned into peaceful communist social relations. To expropriate the expropriators, to oppose their coercion by that of the workers, to destroy all the instruments of class coercion and exploitation crystallised in the capitalist State, is the first task. Violence departs from the world of men. Man at last becomes free. It is difficult  to see another way.

The Socialist Party is a revolutionary party, but not a revolution-making party. We know that our goal can be attained only through a revolution. We also know that it is just as little in our power to create this revolution as it is in the power of our opponents to prevent it. It is no part of our work to instigate a revolution or to prepare the way for it. And since the revolution cannot be arbitrarily created by us, we cannot say anything whatever about when, under what conditions, or what forms it will come. We do know that the class struggle cannot end until the workers deprive the employers of political power and come into   full possession of the political powers to use them to introduce socialism. We do know that this class struggle must grow both extensively and intensively to achieve this. But we can have only the vaguest conjectures as to when and how the last decisive blows in the social war will be struck. Since we know nothing concerning the decisive battles of the social war, we are manifestly unable to say whether they will be bloody or not, whether physical force will play a decisive part, or whether they will be fought exclusively by means of economic, legislative and moral pressure. We are, however, quite safe in saying that in all probability the revolutionary battles of the proletariat will see a much greater predominance of these latter method over physical, which means armed force.

In ‘Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict’co-authored by Erica Chenoweth, an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, and Maria J Stephan, a strategic planner with the US State Department, they analysed  323 examples of resistance campaigns and rebellion from 1900 to 2006, Chenoweth and Stephan conclude non-violent campaigns have been twice as successful as violent campaigns in achieving their objectives. They contend that this difference is down to non-violent campaigns being more likely to attract mass support. Non-violent resistance is not a magic wand and does not guarantee success. However, the hard evidence shows it generally has the strategic edge over violent resistance.

What gives a government -- even a repressive regime -- the power to rule? The answer, Sharpe realized, was people's belief in its power. Even dictatorships require the cooperation and obedience of the people they rule to stay in charge. So, he reasoned, if you can identify the sources of a government's power -- people working in civil service, police and judges, even the army -- then you know what a dictatorship depends on for its existence. Once he'd worked that out, Sharp went back to his theories of nonviolent struggle: "What is the nature of this technique?" he asked himself. "What are its methods ... different kinds of strikes, protests, boycotts, hunger strikes ... How does it work? It may fail. If it fails, why? If it succeeds, why?" If a dictatorship depends on the cooperation of people and institutions, then all you have to do is shrink that support. That is exactly what nonviolent struggle does. By its very nature, nonviolent struggle destroys governments, even brutal dictatorships, politically.  All power has its sources. And if you can identify the sources you can cut them off.

Non-violent means will increase your chances of the soldiers refusing to obey orders. But if you go over to violence, the soldiers will not mutiny. They will be loyal to the dictatorship and the dictatorship will have a good chance to survive. A non-violent struggle can be successful without a leader but people need to understand what makes this succeed, and what makes it fail. If they have no leader, this can be an advantage at times, because then the regime cannot really control the situation by arresting or killing off the leadership. But if you are going to do it without leaders, you have to do that skillfully, and know what you’re doing. If you spread information about what is required, and have a list of “do this, and not that”, and everybody understands that, the struggle can have greater chances of success. If you don’t have that basic understanding of what you’re doing, then you’re not going to win anything.  It is possible for ordinary people to maintain non-violent discipline, maintain their courage, to continue the struggle, despite the repression. Non-violent struggle opens the door to greater control over your society and makes democracy durable. 

A socialist party

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

Marx and Engels in the ’The Communist Manifesto’ write :
"The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority."

He later elaborates in his address to the First International:
 “To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes...One element of success they possess — numbers; but numbers weigh in the balance only if united by combination and led by knowledge.”

So there must be both organisation and knowledge in the workers’ hands if they are to emancipate themselves. A socialist party only functions as a catalyst for the working class to act on its own, combining the “ knowing" with the doing. The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not strive to lead each and every struggle, nor is it an association of cadres offering themselves up as enlightened leaders.

The purpose of the socialist party is according to Engels in ‘Socialism – Utopian and Scientific’:
“To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.”

And as Marx addressed the Brussels Communist Correspondents’ Committee:
“To address the working man without a strictly scientific idea and a positive doctrine is to engage in an empty and dishonest preaching game, which assumes an inspired prophet, on the one hand, and nothing but asses listening to him with gaping mouths, on the other... Ignorance has never yet helped anyone.”

It is clear that class consciousness is the prerequisite for the class party, but just what is meant by class consciousness, still less how it is fostered, is never properly dealt with by professed socialists. Working class consciousness can only develop to the extent that capitalist and reformist attitudes  are driven out by working class ones.  The working class is not only held prisoner by the chains of the capitalist mode of production. It is shackled by the unperceived but overwhelming intellectual, social, political and moralistic hegemony of the bourgeoisie, which anchors it in capitalism. The working class remains a prisoner. It is necessary personally to re-experience that total rupture with bourgeois society. It is necessary personally and critically to recover the historical experience of successive generations of communists.

The dominant form of struggle is trade unionism -  bargaining for the sale of labour power. Under capitalist production it is both inevitable and spontaneous. Bargaining as they do within the limits set by capitalist production, unions are forced constantly to compromise with capital, and are entities not constituted to go for working class power. On the contrary, the trade unions become an essential structural element in the system of the production and reproduction of the relations of production.  To call either for revolutionary trades unionism such as the anarcho-syndicalists call for, or to argue for the dissolution of trades unionism as some Left Communist groups do, lacks any viability. The first, revolutionary trades unionism, is a structural impossibility; the second, precludes any substantive intervention into the arena of the workers most generalised form of struggle.

What appears to be  required is a form of organisation of the labour struggle that recognises the necessity for bargaining and compromises on the economic terrain, but which provides the opportunity for the labour struggle to develop into an economic and then political class struggle. The most representative form of such organisation so far has been the  'One Big Industrial Union’ model of  the Industrial Workers of the World. Changes, however, in working class organisation cannot be brought about simply by ‘seeing and weighing up’ relative advantages and disadvantages, but only when the historical conditions are ripe for change, and when the conditions which have sustained previous forms of organisation have been undermined. Craft union,  the basis of trades unionism as it has hitherto existed – that of selling particular categories of labour power to individual employers – has been undermined and that form of union is now obsolete, as it divided the working class and prevent an effective labour struggle. Unions amalgamated, became “general” unions and industrial unions and these mergers are still continuing.

Scotland's Humanitarian Crisis

A campaign aimed at highlighting the "humanitarian crisis" caused by poverty in Scotland has been launched by a group of charities. The Scotland's Outlook campaign claimed hundreds of thousands of people were being "battered" by welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity. And it said many families were having to use food banks to feed themselves.

It claimed more than 870,000 people in Scotland were living in poverty, with a fifth of children in Scotland living below the breadline and 23,000 people having turned to food banks in the past six months. Figures from Scotland's chief statistician also showed there had been a fall in the average household earnings in Scotland, from £461 per week to £436.

The campaign is being run jointly by Macmillan, Shelter Scotland, Oxfam, Alzheimer Scotland, Children's Hospice Association Scotland (CHAS), Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), the Poverty Alliance and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO).

Martin Sime, chief executive of the SCVO, said: "With nearly a million people in Scotland living in poverty, we have a humanitarian crisis on our hands and we need everyone's help to tackle it. Thousands of people are turning to food banks, struggling to heat their homes, and to clothe themselves and their children. It's not right.”

Graeme Brown, director of Shelter Scotland, said: "People across Scotland are being battered by welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity. Set against the background of 155,100 households on council waiting lists and nearly 40,000 homelessness applications last year, it is clear that much more needs to be done to combat the root causes of poverty if we are to improve the prospects for everyone living in Scotland. "We see and hear the misery poverty causes every day. Not only does it have a devastating impact on home life, it has long-term detrimental effects on people's health, wellbeing and life chances - especially children."

It called on people across the country to "join the fight against poverty". The Socialist Party, too, joins in that call to fight against poverty - by enlisting in the socialist movement for only socialism will do away with the cause of poverty, capitalism.

A campaign aimed at highlighting the "humanitarian crisis" caused by poverty in Scotland has been launched by a group of charities. The Scotland's Outlook campaign claimed hundreds of thousands of people were being "battered" by welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity. And it said many families were having to use food banks to feed themselves.

It claimed more than 870,000 people in Scotland were living in poverty, with a fifth of children in Scotland living below the breadline and 23,000 people having turned to food banks in the past six months. Figures from Scotland's chief statistician also showed there had been a fall in the average household earnings in Scotland, from £461 per week to £436.

The campaign is being run jointly by Macmillan, Shelter Scotland, Oxfam, Alzheimer Scotland, Children's Hospice Association Scotland (CHAS), Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), the Poverty Alliance and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO).

Martin Sime, chief executive of the SCVO, said: "With nearly a million people in Scotland living in poverty, we have a humanitarian crisis on our hands and we need everyone's help to tackle it. Thousands of people are turning to food banks, struggling to heat their homes, and to clothe themselves and their children. It's not right.”

Graeme Brown, director of Shelter Scotland, said: "People across Scotland are being battered by welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity. Set against the background of 155,100 households on council waiting lists and nearly 40,000 homelessness applications last year, it is clear that much more needs to be done to combat the root causes of poverty if we are to improve the prospects for everyone living in Scotland. "We see and hear the misery poverty causes every day. Not only does it have a devastating impact on home life, it has long-term detrimental effects on people's health, wellbeing and life chances - especially children."

It called on people across the country to "join the fight against poverty". The Socialist Party, too, joins in that call to fight against poverty - by enlisting in the socialist movement for only socialism will do away with the cause of poverty, capitalism.

Billions of Dollars

We are constantly reminded by the mass media that we are living through a recession and must be prepared to cut down on our economic expenditure, but no such advice is proffered to the owning class. 'The investment firm run by the US billionaire Warren Buffett has reported a record profit for 2013. Berkshire Hathaway made $19.5bn (£11.6bn) last year, up from $14.8bn (£8.8bn) in 2012. "On the operating front, just about everything turned out well for us last year - in some cases very well," Mr Buffett wrote to shareholders.' (BBC News, 2 March) Investors in Berkshire Hathaway with an additional $4.7bn culled from the exploitation of the working class will have no need for any cuts in their expenditure. RD

Why be a socialist?

FOR A WORLD OF FREE ACCESS

 “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs!”

We live in a world where war and the threat of war, hunger and poverty, racial and sexual discrimination, plus many forms of repression, including the most barbaric, such as torture and genocide, are the lot of the majority of the earth’s inhabitants. We are living under the yoke of capitalism.

The aim of the World Socialist Movement is to replace world capitalist economy by a world system of socialism. A socialist society is mankind’s only way out, for it alone can abolish the contradictions of the capitalist system which threaten to degrade and destroy the human race.  For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the struggle against the forces of nature, to the development and strengthening of its own collective might. Socialism will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will present a united commonwealth of labour.

By abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, the world socialsim will end the forces of the world market competition and its blind processes of social production, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of capitalism devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces.

Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of a class enemy: instead of being merely a means of livelihood it will become a worthwhile communal co-operation to produce the necessities of life.   Culture will become the acquirement of all and  a great field will be opened for the harmonious development of all the talents inherent in humanity. Private ownership in the means of production and its lust for profits, retards technical progress. The closest possible co-operation between science and technique, the utmost encouragement of research work and the practical application of its results on the widest possible social scale; planned organisation, statistical accounting and the scientific regulation of economy will secure the maximum productivity of social labour, which in turn will release human energy for the powerful development of science and art. The development of the productive forces of world society will make it possible to raise the well-being of the whole of humanity and to reduce to a minimum the time devoted to material production and, consequently, will enable culture to flourish as never before in history. This new culture of a humanity that is united for the first time in history, and has abolished all State boundaries, will, unlike capitalist culture, be based upon clear and transparent human relationships. Hence, it will bury forever all mysticism, religion, prejudice and superstition. The social relationships between people will be above-board and principled. Labor will be conscious and enthusiastic as the way of life rather than only as a means of survival. The forces of production will be unleashed and there will be high standards of social wealth. There will be broad and profound advances made in the fields of education, art, culture and science, as the masses of people are free to pursue these endeavors.

Socialism may not be the “utopia” many have describe. But we can be assured that there will no longer be the struggle between opposing classes. Want and economic inequality, the misery of enslaved classes, and a wretched standard of life  will disappear. The hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed. At the same time,  the State will disappear also,  being the embodiment of class domination. It will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire. The State is nothing other than the instrument of the dictatorship of one class over the others. Freedom in capitalist society means freedom for the worker to sell him or herself into slavery, and freedom for the capitalist to exploit the worker. The difference between socialists and  anarchists must not be formulated by saying that the socuialist wishes to maintain the existence of the State but the anarchists wished to annihilate it. The real dispute has always been how the State is to be annihilated. The socialist view is that the suture will see the rise of a free association, a society wherein neither class nor government shall exist. The creation of a society without government is the aim of the socialist movemen to be accomplished by “destruction of bourgeois supremacy; conquest of political power by the proletariat.” [Communist Manifesto] Marx elaborates later in 1872 “What all socialists understand by anarchism is this: as soon as the goal of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, shall have been reached, the power of the State whose function it is to keep the great majority of the producers beneath the yoke of a small minority of exploiters, will disappear, and governmental functions will be transformed into simple administrative functions.” Here lies the fundamental difference between Marx and Bakunin - socialists hold that the working class must seize political power in order to destroy the class division of society and the existence of the State will become impossible owing to the annihilation of its foundations. The capitalist class seizes possession of the state apparatus and makes it the instrument of its exploitative interests in a manner which is apparent to every worker, who must now recognize that the conquest of political power is in his or her own most immediate personal interest. The blatant seizure of the state by the capitalist class directly compels every worker to strive for the conquest of political power as the only means of putting an end to his or her own exploitation.

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.

The goal of the World Socialist Movement is socialism, and to be part of the liberation of all humanity from the chains of exploitation and oppression. The emancipation of the workers will be accomplished by the workers themselves. They will achieve it through socialist revolution.  Workers everywhere are arriving at almost identical decisions as to tactics and organisation. Workers offer a solution of their own - socialism, the organization of production, the conscious control of the economy not by and for the benefit of capitalist corporations but by and for society as a whole. Socialism is not a remote ideal, an 'ultimate aim' but our 'immediate’ demand. For the time being the World Socialist Movement stands alone in its clear conscious goal - the entire transformation of human society.

Food for thought

The death of a welder in Toronto when a roof he was working on collapsed, highlighted two things. One, unlike the death of a policeman or fire-fighter, he will not get a public parade with workers from around North America in attendance (the jingoism factor); two, the number of worker deaths – in 2012 seventy- three in Ontario alone from accidents and 367 including those succumbing to occupational diseases acquired on the job. In fact, in a recent list of the most dangerous jobs, the top 10 was dominated by, not surprisingly, blue collar jobs such as construction, farming, electrical, trucking, refuse collecting, roofing, logging, and fishing. Police and fire-fighters did not figure in the top 10. Police and fire-fighters are workers too and we do not begrudge them due respect for performing the dangerous aspects of their jobs, but it is obvious that work place deaths and injuries are kept below the radar for obvious reasons. John Ayers.

Growing Old Disgracefully

Capitalism is a vindictive society based as it is on the exploitation of the working class. After a lifetime of insecurity and poverty in work many must face an even worse old age. 'According to figures produced by independent researchers at the House of Commons, at least 241,700 pensioners were suffering physical, psychological, financial or sexual abuse at the time of the last census in 2011. However, an upper estimate suggested the true figure could be as high as 353,300.' (Sunday Telegraph, 2 March) Needless to say this fate doesn't apply to the owning class. RD