Socialism is the Issue (3/4)

PART THREE

You cannot make socialists by passing resolutions. Men have to become socialists by study and experience, and they are getting the experience every day. There is one fact, and a very important one and that is the necessity for revolutionary working class political action. What is a party? It is the expression politically of certain material class interests. You belong to that party that you believe will promote your material welfare.  Our interests as workers are identical.  If you support a party that opposes your interests it is because you do not have sufficient understanding to know your interests. The question of poverty, which is really the question of all humanity, will never be solved until it is solved by the working class. It will never be solved for you by the capitalists. It will never be solved for you by the politicians. It will remain unsolved until you yourselves solve it. As long as you are willing to stand these conditions, these conditions will continue; but when you unite across the globe, when you present a solid class-conscious mass, economically and politically, there is no power on this earth that can stand between you and complete emancipation. As isolated individuals we are helpless, but united we are an irresistible force.

We may, at times, temporarily better our condition within certain limitations, but we will still remain wage-slaves, and why wage-slaves? For just one reason and no other we have got to work. As long as the bosses owns the machinery and the tools, he owns our job, and if he owns our job, he controls our fate. We are in no sense free. We are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether we shall work or not. Thus, he can decide whether we shall live or die. We will never be free, we will never stand proudly erect  until we are in charge of production, and when we can freely work without recourse to any employer, and when we do work, all the community shares in what we produce. Will you insist that life shall continue as it is, where it is always a struggle for existence and one prolonged misery to which death often comes as a blessed relief?

You organise in unions to fight the exploiting class. It is along the same line that you have got to organise politically. Nature has provided a bountiful abundance. There is plenty for all, and any system of society that denies a single one the right and the opportunity to freely help him or herself to the necessities and luxuries of life is an iniquitous system that ought to be abolished.

The Socialist Party is not satisfied with things as they are, and no matter what government is in office, there will be no material change in the condition of the people until we have a new social system based upon the mutual economic interests of the people - until all of us collectively control and in common own those things that we need and use. There are  only a few things that cannot be produced in abundance. Nature has provided a full larder and is a treasure-mine of raw materials. Marvelous machinery can transform these raw materials into whatever we desire. Why should any man, woman or child suffer for the want of food, clothing or shelter?  Look at the great technology at our disposal, why should we permit any one individual to lay claim to this legacy of all humanity and demand tribute? Instead, why not jointly own the machines, and operate them co-operatively and share the products among ourselves. Farmers work all day long and hard enough to produce enough to live the quality of life fitting a man, not as of one of his animals, but of a human being.

We socialists propose that society with all its capacity to produce enough that all shall take according to needs and give according to abilities; that every man and every woman shall be economically free; that all have what is necessary to keep them in comfort and satisfy their requirements. We will reduce the working day and give every person a chance to develop their talents and indulge their pleasures.

The development  of industrial processes has rendered the capitalist a useless functionary while  at the same time evolved productive organisation co-operative in character, so that industry may be carried on without friction, for the benefit of the whole people instead of the profit of the individual capitalist. The control of industry will be delegated to men and women who are technically familiar with all its processes, similar as it is now entrusted to line managers by the shareholders of a corporation.  Actual details of the re-organisation may well be left to the future when the time comes. It is not the responsibility of the Socialist Party to speculate concerning the manner in which the workers will conduct their affairs when they have taken possession of their inheritance. Society will have a new birth and humanity a new destiny.

Workers have had their eyes opened in spite of themselves. They have been made to see what the present system means to them and to their children.  They see machinery that possess the potential to liberate but produces only misery and deprivation. They see millions idle and poverty-stricken all about them, while a few are glutted to levels of degeneracy. They see parasites in palaces and honest workers in hovels. They see the politics of the ruling corporations dripping with corruption. They see vice and crime eating away at society like a cancer. They see disease sapping the mental and physical vitality of people.

 ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! THERE MUST BE A CHANGE!

We are not a party who regard vote-getting as of supreme importance and of no matter by what method they are secured. The Socialist Party holds out no inducements and makes no representations which are not at all compatible with the principles of a revolutionary party. Other supposed socialists may seek to make their  propaganda so attractive by eliminating whatever may give offense so that it serves as a bait for votes rather than as a means of education, and votes thus gained in such fashion do not properly belong to the socialist movement and do injustice to our party,  as well as to those who cast them. These type of votes do not express a desire for socialism and in the next ensuing election are quite as apt to be turned against us and favour our enemies. It is better, in the first place, that they be not cast for the Socialist Party, as they register a degree of progress the party is not entitled to and indicating a political position the party is unable to sustain. Socialism can never genuinely grow by obtaining for it a fictitious vote. We seek only the actual vote of socialism, no more and no less. In our propaganda we state our principles clearly, and speak the truth, seeking neither to flatter nor to offend, but only to convince those who should be with us and win them to our cause through an intelligent understanding of its case.  We make it clear that the Socialist Party wants the votes only of those who want socialism, not for the sake of gaining political office to pass some palliative measures.

The working class character and the revolutionary integrity of the Socialist Party are a priority. The Socialist Party is organised and run from the bottom up. There is no leader and there never can be unless the party abandons its principles and ceases to be a socialist party. The education of the people, not the few alone, but the entire class,  in the principles of socialism can be performed only by themselves.

The Labour Party and the Conservative Party are in fact one. They both stand for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation of the workers, and for wage-slavery. Both of these old capitalist class party machines have become corrupt and are worse than useless. They now present a spectacle of political degeneracy rarely witnessed in this or any other country. Both are torn by dissension and rife with disintegration. Cameron and Milerand engage in a mad fight for the spoils of government and they exposed the whole game of capitalist class politics and reveal themselves and the whole brood of capitalist politicians in their true role before the people. They are all the mere puppets of the ruling class. They are literally bought, paid for and owned, body and soul, by the powers that are exploiting, enslaving and robbing the toiling class. What earthly difference can it make to the millions of workers whether the Tories or Labour are is in office? These two parties differ in name only. There is no depth of dishonour to which they have not descended. Their hypocrisy and corruption cannot be efficiently expressed in words. How can any intelligent, self-respecting wage-worker give support to either of these corrupt capitalist parties?

 Labour and the Tories are on the side of the corporations, the banks, the plutocrats, the parasites and job-hunters of all descriptions; the filth and the slime of the ruling class glorify their plundering. Professional politicians of whatever party are very much alike and serve the interests of their masters. Their noisy theatricals have lost their magic and now excite but the scorn and derision. No longer can the political harlots of capitalism betray the workers. Both the Tory and Labour parties reek with corruption in their servility to the wealthy. Their manifestoes are filled with empty platitudes and meaningless phrases, but they are discreetly silent about the millions of unemployed, about the starvation wages of factory slaves, about the bitter poverty and hopeless future of the poor, and about every other vital question which is worthy of a moment’s consideration by any caring person. They are impotent and senile capitalist parties, without principles and without ideals.

There is but one issue for the Socialist Party and it is the unconditional surrender and utter destruction of the whole capitalist class. To this end the Socialist Party has been organised; to this end it devotes all its energies and resources; to this end it makes its appeal to the workers. In the name of the workers, the Socialist Party condemns the capitalist system. In the name of freedom, it condemns wage-slavery. In the name of abundance, it condemns poverty and famine. In the name of peace it condemns war. In the name of civilisation, it condemns the slaughter of  children. In the name of enlightenment, it condemns religious ignorance and superstition. In the name of the future, it arraigns the past as a barrier to the future. In the name of humanity,  the Socialist Party demands social justice for every man, woman and child.

Now is the time for the workers to develop and assert their political and their economic power, to demonstrate their unity and solidarity. In the coming social order, based upon the social ownership of the means of life and the production of wealth for the use of all instead of the private profit of the few, for which the Socialist Party stands in this and every other campaign, peace will prevail and plenty for all will abound in the land. The brute struggle for existence will have ended, and the millions of exploited poor will be rescued from the clutches of poverty and famine. Sexual exploitation and human trafficking, fostered under the old system, will be a horror of the past. Every child will then have an equal chance to grow up in health and vigor of body and mind and an equal chance to rise to its full stature and achieve success in life. These are the ideals of the Socialist Party. The spirit of our time is revolutionary and growing more so every day. The signs of change confront us everywhere. The Socialist Party stands for social ownership and co-operation, against  industrial despotism and for industrial democracy. The workers who have made the world and who sustain  the world, are preparing to take possession of the world. This is the meaning of socialism and is what the Socialist Party stands for. We demand the machinery of production in the name of the workers and the control of society in the name of the people. We demand the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery and the surrender of the capitalist class. We demand that all children born into the world shall have equal opportunity to grow up, to be educated, to have healthy bodies and trained minds, and to develop and freely express the best there is in them in mental, moral and physical achievement. The Socialist Party is the only party that has the children at heart. We demand complete control of industry by the workers; we demand all the wealth they produce for their own enjoyment, and we demand the Earth for all the people. Not the modest demands of the reformists but the necessary ones for a social revolution.

No Housing Problems Here

Many workers face trouble paying rent and mortgages on their homes but no such problems exist for these New York residents. It has been labelled "the world's most powerful address", the luxurious Manhattan tower block where Wall Street titans, foreign oligarchs, technology moguls and film and music stars live away from prying eyes. But a book has now revealed the secrets of 15 Central Park West, an imposing $1 billion tower block where the ultra-rich and famous enjoy commanding views of New York's famous green space. 'It is no surprise that the building is home to New York's most expensive apartment, a palatial $88 million penthouse. It was bought by a trust fund from the fortune of Dimtry Rybolovlev, a Russian fertiliser tycoon, for his 22-year daughter, but it is now at the centre of the world's most expensive divorce battle with his estranged wife, Elena. Apartments at 15 CPW currently on the market include a 6,000 sq ft unit owned by steel magnate Leroy Schecter. He initially listed the property for $95 million. It is now available for a snip - at just $65 million. (Daily Telegraph, 12 March) RD

Socialism Is The Issue (2/4)

PART TWO

The working class are learning. They are beginning to spell solidarity and to pronounce socialism. Our propaganda is one of education to teach workers to unite and vote together as a class in support of the Socialist Party, the party that represents them as a class. Organised labour does not lie down at the command of  Prime Ministers or Presidents.  No strike has even been lost, and there can be no defeat for the labour movement. No matter how disastrous the day of battle has been, it has been worth its price, and only the scars remain to bear testimony that the movement is invincible and that no mortal wound can be inflicted upon it. The union has from its inception taught, however imperfectly, the fundamental need of solidarity; it has inspired hope in the defeated and despairing worker. The union has fought the battles of the worker upon a thousand fields, and though defeated often, rallied again and again. The union was first to outline the lesson that the worker needs to learn, that only through the collective interest and welfare of his or her class and embracing our class as a whole is permanent change of conditions possible. Although only vaguely and imperfectly accomplished the union has promoted the class-conscious solidarity of the working-class.

Perhaps the trades-union movement has in some respects proved a disappointment, but it may not on this account be repudiated as a failure. The worst that be said of it is that it has not kept up with changing conditions and situations but there are reasons for this as most know. The trades-union movement of the present day has enemies bent upon destroying it or reducing it to impotency. Step by step the writ of legal injunction has invaded the domain of trades-unionism, limiting its influence, curtailing its powers, sapping its strength and undermining its foundations and this has been done by the courts in the name of justice but at the behest of the indusrrial oligarchs and financial plutocrats. Court orders have been issued restraining the trades-union  members from striking, from boycotting, from voting funds to strikes, from walking on the public highway, from gathering together in public spaces, from asking others not to scab and  from communicating with those who had taken or were about to take their jobs. In fact the law has been evoked hindering unions from doing anything and everything, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the employing class in their unalienable right to run things to suit themselves. The law have found in favour of the bosses, leaving the workers and their unions defenceless. The court system is under the control of employers, and so shamelessly  perverted it reveals the class character of our capitalist government and leads to the inevitable conclusion that the labour question is also a political question and that the working class must organise their political power to put an end to class rule forever.

The members of a trade-union should learn the true importance and discover the labour movement means  infinitely more than a paltry increase in wages and the strikes necessary to secure it; that while it engages to do all that possibly that can be done to better the working conditions of its members, its higher object must be to overthrow the capitalist system, abolish wage-slavery and achieve the freedom of the whole working class (and all mankind.)
The trade-unions, however, is not, and can not become, a political machine and nor can it be used for political purposes. The Socialist Party has no intention to convert the trades-union into a political party and would oppose any such attempt on the part of others. The important thing to impress upon the mind of trade unionists is to do their own thinking. Unions are an economic organisation with distinct economic functions and as such is a part, a necessary part, but a part only of the labour movement. It has its own sphere of activity, its own platform and is its own master within its economic limitations.

The socialist movement is its political side and  the Socialist Party expresses the political power of the labour movement. The class conscious worker uses both economic and political power in the interest of his or her class. The struggle between labour and capital is a class struggle; that the working class are in a great majority, but divided, some in trades-unions and some out of them, some in one political party and some in another; that because they are divided they are helpless and must submit to being robbed of what their labour produces; that they must unite their class in the trades-union on the one hand and in a socialist party on the other hand; that industrially and politically they must act together as a class against the capitalist class and that this struggle is a class struggle, and that any worker who deserts the union in a strike and goes to the other side is a scab, and any worker who deserts the Socialist Party on election day and goes over to the enemy is a traitor to their class. Capitalism can only rule by corrupt means and its politics are essentially the reflection of its debasing economic character. He who controls my bread controls my head.

The capitalists are far more thoroughly organised than the workers. In the first place, capitalists are comparatively few in number, while the workers number millions. Next, the capitalists are men of financial means and resources, and can buy the best brains and ability the market affords. Then again, they own the factories, the communications, the transport and retail stores and all the jobs that are attached to them, and this not only gives them tremendous advantage in the struggle, but makes them for the time the absolute masters of the situation. The workers, on the other hand, are poor as a rule but they are in an overwhelming majority. In a word, they have the power, but are not conscious of it. This then is the task of activists and militants; to make them conscious of the power of their class, or class-conscious workers.

The working class alone does all the work, has created and  produced the world’s wealth, constructed its roads, drives the trucks, laid its rails and operates its trains, spanned the rivers with bridges and tunnelled the mountains.  The working class alone - and by the working class we mean all useful workers, all who by the labour of their hands or the effort of their brains increase knowledge and add to the intellectual wealth of society - the working class alone is essential to society and therefore the only class that can survive in the world-wide struggle for freedom.

The Socialist Party is to the workers politically what the trades-union is to them industrially; the former is the party of their class, while the latter is the union of their trade or profession. The difference between them is that while the trades-union is confined to occupation, the Socialist Party embraces the entire working class, and while the union is limited to bettering conditions under the wage system for its members. The Socialist Party is organised to conquer the political power, wipe out the wage system. Trades-union and the Socialist Party, the economic and political wings of the labour movement, should not only not be in conflict, but act together, in harmony, in every struggle, whether it be on the one field or the other, in the strike or at the ballot box. The main thing is that in every such struggle the workers shall be united and be no more guilty of scabbing on their party than on their union, by voting a pro- capitalist on election day and turning the working class over to capitalist misrule. Would a worker ever think of voting in the union to turn it over to his employers and have it run in the interest of management?


To do its part in the class struggle the trade union need no more go into politics than the Socialist Party enter into the trade unions. Each has its place and its functions. The union deals with work issues and the Party deals with politics. Trade unionism is by no means the solution of the workers’ problem, nor is it the goal of the labour struggle. It is merely a line of defence within the capitalist system. Its existence and its struggles are necessitated only by the existence and predatory nature of capitalism. Until the workers shall become a clearly defined socialist movement, standing for and moving toward the unqualified co-operative commonwealth they will only play into the hands of their exploiters. The socialist must point this out in the right way. He is not to do this by seeking to commit trade-union bodies to the principles of socialism. Resolutions or commitments of this sort accomplish little good. Nor should socialists be  meddling with the details or the machinery of the trade-unions. Or trying to commit socialism to trade-unionism, and vice versa,  trade unionism to socialism. It is better to have the trade-unions do their separate distinctive work, as the workers’ defence against the encroachments of capitalism and  giving unqualified support and sympathy to the struggles of the organised workers to sustain them economically. But let the socialists also build up the character and strength of the socialist movement as a political force, that it shall command the respect and confidence of the worker, irrespective of union obligations.

 It is imperative we keep in mind the difference between the two so that neither shall handicap the other. The socialist movement, as a political development of the workers for their economic emancipation, is one thing; the trade-union development, as an economic defense of the workers within the capitalist system, is another thing. Let us not interfere with the internal affairs of the trade unions, or seek to have them become distinctively political bodies in themselves. The unions can never become a political machine, but they must recognise the necessity for a united political party. Let socialists attend to the development of the socialist political movement as the channel and power by which labour is to come to its emancipation and its commonwealth. It is of vital importance to the trades-union that its members be class-conscious, that they understand the class struggle and their duty as union men on the political field, so that in every move that is made they will have the goal in view, and while taking advantage of every opportunity to secure concessions and enlarge their economic advantage, they will at the same time unite at the ballot box, not only to back up the economic struggle of the trades-union, but to finally wrest the government from capitalist control and establish socialism. Declaring  opposition to the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production, and urging upon the working class the necessity for working class political action is as far as the trade union organisations need to go. If you were to use your economic organisation for political purposes you would disrupt it, you would wreck it.

The mainstream parties have sounded a note of alarm at the so-called “apathy” of the voters, and there is reason for their fear. Unintelligible sound-bites from campaign spin-doctors will no longer answer the insistent questionings of a slowly awakening electorate. The workers are refusing to get enthusiastic over the many fake election issues, for all these dwarf into insignificance before the very practical question of “What are you going to do about the problem of the unemployed”? To which questions the Tories and Labour can answer only, “Who knows!” The Socialist Party is the only one that gives the worker a practical and logical answer to his elemental question.

If you have no right to work you have no right to life because you can only live by work. And if you live in a system that deprives you of the right to work, that system denies you the right to live. No work, no food and all this in the shadow of the abundance these very workers have created. In capitalism a  worker can only work on condition that he or she finds somebody who will grant them permission to work but for just enough of what his or her labour produces to keep them in sufficient fit state and working order. Why should any worker need to beg for work? Why be forced to surrender to anybody any part of what his or her labour produces? No matter whether you have studied this economic question or not, you cannot have failed to observe that society has been sharply divided into classes into a capitalist class upon the one hand, into a working class upon the other hand. The capitalist has become a profit-taking parasite. The capitalists are absolutely unnecessary; they have no part in the process of production – not the slightest.

So long as the means of production are privately or state owned, so long as they are operated for the profit of the capitalist or a bureaucracy, the working class will be exploited, millions will be reduced to want, some of them driven to be vagabonds and criminals, and this condition will prevail in spite of anything that organised labour can do to the contrary.

What is it that keeps the working class in subjection? What is it that is responsible for their exploitation and for all of the ills they suffer? Just one thing, the working class have not yet learned how to unite and act together. The capitalists and their retinue have managed during all these years to keep the working class divided, and as long as the working class is divided it will be helpless. It is only when the working class learn (and they are learning ) and by very bitter experience to unite and to act together, especially on election day, that there is any hope for emancipation.

 We have now no effective revolutionary organisation of the workers along the lines of this class struggle, and that is the demand of this time. The capitalists are combined against you. They are reducing wages. They have control of the courts. They are doing everything they can to destroy your power. You have got to follow their example. You have got to unify your forces. You have got to stand together shoulder to shoulder on the economic and political fields and then you will make substantial progress toward emancipation.

Who owns the North Pole part 70

A Russian military official told Russian media that the Kremlin was forming a new strategic military command to protect its interests in the Arctic. The formation of the new command follows a December 2013 order from Russian President Vladimir Putin to ramp up Russia's military presence in the Arctic. Putin said Russia was returning to the Arctic and "intensifying the development of this promising region" and that Russia needs to "have all the levers for the protection of its security and national interests."

"The new command will comprise the Northern Fleet, Arctic warfare brigades, air force and air defense units as well as additional administrative structures," a source in Russia's General Staff told RIA Novosti.

Russia created the Northern Fleet-Unified Strategic Command to protect oil and gas fields on the Arctic shelf.

 Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the United States — the five countries that have a border with the Arctic — have been rushing to secure rights to drill for oil and natural gas in places that are now accessible. Hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake. Experts estimate that the Arctic holds some 30 percent of the world's natural gas supply, and 13 percent of the world's oil. That's why companies like Royal Dutch Shell, the U.S.-based Arctic Oil & Gas Corp. and Russia's Gazprom have all been making exploration claims on land in the Arctic.

Countries are making new claims in the Arctic as well. Each of the five nations with Arctic borders is allotted 200 nautical miles of land from their most northern coast. Putin's military expansion was in direct response to a claim of additional land by Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, who last year asked scientists to craft a submission to the United Nations arguing that the North Pole belongs to Canada. The Canadian claim also asserts that it owns the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain range located between Ellesmere Island, Canada's most northern border, and Russia's east Siberian coast.

 The American Department of Defense last November released a new Arctic strategy outlining American interests in the region. The new strategy calls for the Pentagon to take actions to ensure that American troops could repel an attack against the homeland from a foe based in the Arctic and calls for increased training to prepare soldiers for fights in Arctic conditions. It makes clear that the Pentagon believes the Arctic is becoming contested territory, and the DOD would act to protect American interests.

http://theweek.com/article/index/256908/the-race-for-arctic-oil-russia-vs-us

Poverty and Ill Health

Harry Burns ,  Scotland's chief medical officer had some words of wisdom to say before retiring from his post. "As a doctor at the Royal, I never once wrote a death certificate saying the cause of death was living in a horrible house or unemployment. People die of molecular deaths, such as proteins coagulating in arteries and causing heart attacks and strokes. Yet we know that poor [social] conditions lead to poor health and premature deaths." (Guardian, 12 March) For many members of the working class being exploited all their lives is bad enough but it can even lead to poor health and premature death. RD

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