A future world

What is blocking the way to economic and social progress? Socialists reply: The system of profit-making, the ownership and control of industry by a few capitalists for their own gain and not for the benefit of the people. Standing in the way of social progress and socialism is the ruling class composed of the owners, the share-holders and CEOs of the huge multinational banks and corporations that control the economic life with power that extends far beyond the boundaries of any one country and  controls the destinies of millions around the globe. These capitalists are very wealthy and live off the exploited labor of others.  In opposition to this minority is the vast majority of the rest of the population. The working class is systematically and exploited by capitalism, and is therefore a revolutionary class. he working class is composed of all wage earners – mental and manual, urban and rural – whether in basic industry, manufacturing, service, farm, sales, domestic, clerical, public, or other jobs. The working class is composed of skilled and unskilled, employed and unemployed. Some workers may make more money than others, but they are still members of the working class because they do not exploit the labour of others and must sell their labour power to survive. The vast majority of people belong to the working class. The working class produces the wealth appropriated by the capitalists and its basic interest lies in the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production. It is this fact leading the working class to the socialist revolution. Yet at this moment in time only a small number of workers see the need for fundamental change and want to bring this about. The majority of workers at present do not understand the need for basic change or socialism. They have difficult lives, but they do not see how their problems can be resolved. These workers want an improvement in their lives and often struggle against their employers, but they do not understand yet the need for revolutionary change. Many are generally content with their situation or feel that, even though things could improve, capitalism is the best system. Every time working people placed hope in what promised great changes would be bring about, they have been sadly disappointed.

As the conditions of life deteriorate more and more workers will become politically conscious and understand the need for socialism, becoming increasingly  open to the ideas of socialism. Through experience and education, workers are learning that their interest lies in the overthrow of capitalist private property and the establishment of socialist ownership. But such a revolution will require the unity of the workers of all lands. The working class is world-wide, composed of workers of many different nationalities. Their common identity is that they are all exploited by the capitalist class. Socialists must oppose nationalism and forge unity with their fellow workers of all nationalities for the struggle against our common enemy, in the common effort for full democracy and socialism.

The state suppresses and controls opposition to capitalism while maintaining social order to provide a stable environment for capitalists to conduct their businesses.  It does this through the massive state apparatus and bureaucracy , including the courts, police, army, and jails. It helps direct and supervise the capitalist economy. The working class would like to attain socialism without violence and will use every available means to attain its goal of socialism. It will utilize all legal possibilities and legislative approaches to improve the conditions of life and the struggle for socialism.

The solution for the ills of present-day society is the social ownership of the industries and national wealth and production for the common good, instead of profits for the few. Capitalism is the basic cause of war in modern times.  Capitalism controls the entire globe and war results from the struggles of the  leading capitalist countries to re-divide the world, to wrest from each other spheres of influence and market share, cheaper labour and supplies of raw material.

Socialism can be achieved only by the will of the people, when the conditions have become ripe for the historical changeover from capitalism to socialism. Socialism will thus triumph as the result of the will and actions of the people, and cannot be imposed from outside. The way forward for democracy is through the establishment of socialism, which will open up a new  future for all the people. The solution is to end the private ownership of the means of production and replace it with social ownership and production planned to meet the people’s needs, that is, socialism. Socialism puts an end to wars and the danger of wars because under socialism there are no capitalists who are interested in war profits and the conquest of new markets. Socialist planning abolishes anarchy of the market and thereby puts an end to depressions and unemployment. Social ownership ends exploitation of man by man because it is through private ownership of the factories and workshops, mills and mines that the wealthy minority exploit the great mass of the people. Social ownership frees the energies of the people and productive forces for economic, social and cultural advances.

 Socialism does not destroy democracy but, on the contrary, enormously extends democratic liberties. The only “liberty” which Socialism ends is the liberty of the privileged class to own industry and amass wealth at the expense of the great majority. Socialism ends all exploitation and oppression of the producers by a privileged parasitical class. By ending the political, economic and financial domination by the plutocratic  elite, socialism, for the first time, creates the conditions for the free expression of the people’s will. Nor does Socialism “worship the State” and aim at domination of the individual by an all-powerful State. As socialism becomes firmly founded, the State “withers away” and the full direction is in the hands of a co-operative society producing for the benefit of all.

How is Socialism to be achieved? What are the forces making for Socialism? How can we best go forward? Socialism can only be achieved through working class struggle. Only the organised power of the people can achieve this aim. Our aim is to achieve Socialism by peaceful means. The trade union movement, embracing a united working class, will play a key-role. Working-class unity, socialists in the socialist parties, in the unions, will strengthen the working class. The machinery of State will be transformed. Parliaments will be filled by true delegates of the workers movement, who will be subject to recall at any time by a majority of their electors and the whole of the people will be drawn into active participation in the administration of every sphere of daily life. The Socialist Party sees the future society as one of world-wide co-operation for the common good of all peoples. It means a peaceful, free world instead of one torn by rivalries, prejudices and war. The Socialist Party will work to win, the labour movement to this object. 

Capitalism or Socialism

There are the two main features of the production for profit economic system.

Firstly, the labourers on the average replace the value of their wages for the capitalist class in the first few hours of their day's work ; the exchange value of the goods produced in the remaining hours of the day's work constitutes so much embodied labour which is unpaid ; and this unpaid labour is so embodied is divided  in the shape of profit, interest and rent, the spoils to be argued over and shared out by the employer, the banker and the land-owner. The surplus value provided out of unpaid labour enables the idle classes and their dependants to live in luxury at the expense of persistent overwork and misery for the producers themselves.

Secondly the other feature is the antagonism between the socialised method of production and the individualised system of exchange. This brings about unmitigated anarchy in the shape of recurring world-wide crises, which throws workers out of work when they are as anxious for employment for their subsistence. The introduction of new technology increases uncertainty of employment.

 How to make money is the be-all and end-all of this ruinous system of competitive production for profit. All life is subject to the rule of the market - going, going, gone! Knocked down to the highest bidder. For re-construction and re-organisation of society is what we socialists continually strive for so none shall be able to force others to work for their profit. We say this is a class war. We mean to break down competition, and instead create  (or rather enhance) co-operation.

The Revolution is prepared in the womb of society, it needs but one organised effort to give birth to a new world. The first great revolutionary effort of the workers will be to take political power for so long as the capitalist stronghold of the State has not been captured, all proletarian measures will be refused or if conceded, it will be in such a form that they become illusory, and only benefit the capitalist class. When the capitalists are dispossessed of political power, then only will the workers’ party be able to commence their economic expropriation. There will be neither wages nor market prices. Human society will then once more have entered a period of communism.

The whole world has divided into two camps, for or against the social revolution.  Between socialism and capitalism there can be no peace, no co-operation, but only class war, till one or other wins. The workers can do away with the capitalist class and can exist without it, because the workers are the producing class. But the capitalist class could not exist without us.

Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid off. A relatively small minority recognise this and are consciously anti-capitalist, but the majority continue trying to satisfy their needs within the system rather than by overthrowing it. So there is no real possibility of overthrowing that system and attempts to do so degenerate into futile reformism and/or terrorism, whatever the “revolutionary” rhetoric. There is no difference between a Labour Party and a Tory’ Party today – both accept that they must make the system work, and work against us. These days people are rightly cynical about the “policies” and “programmes” of political parties. Leninist ideas are widely discredited. A substantial proportion of the population needs to be drawn into active political struggle and confront questions of what society is and how to get out of its clutches. There is no crisis that the ruling class could not resolve if it was allowed to, but with the masses politically active, the possibility arises of the ruling class not being allowed to recover and of people taking their future into their own hands.

In boom conditions, many workers can expect better jobs, with a higher standard of living and better conditions (relatively). Capitalists can find opportunities for profitable investment with international trade expanding although the different nations and sectional interests are fighting over their share of an expanding “cake” but there is always room for compromise about who benefits more. Nobody is actually asked to accept being worse off than they are already. Reforms may be fought bitterly, but there is scope for reform without shaking the whole system apart.

In a crisis all this is reversed. The cake has gotten smaller and the fight is over who is to bear the loss.  Among capitalists the fight is over who is to survive as dog eats dog. The struggle for international markets between nations as well as between individual financial groups intensifies. Between capitalists and workers there is no longer room for compromise. Reforms become impossible and even past concessions will be rolled back as the government and the bosses plaintively explain “We can’t afford any benefits any more”. Within the working class too, there is less unity as people find themselves in “hard times” where it is “everyone for themselves” and search out easy scapegoats to blame for their mounting difficulties.

All that stops the continued expansion of wealth and opportunities is the capitalist system of production for private profit. All that is needed for the unemployed workers to use the idle plant to produce goods that people want and need, is a socialist system of production for use instead of profit.

Fortunately, the confusion on the Left is so great there is at least a chance the existing “Left” movements will disintegrate completely and there will be room for something new and genuinely revolutionary to emerge. We witness the demise of a number of Left parties and mergers and unity of the survivors. The task of building an alternative to the Left is, at present, primarily negative – exposing and undermining their reactionary ideas. But we need to be constructive at the same time, to open the way for a revolutionary movement that is fighting for progress rather than reacting against capitalism, and that is about winning political power to actually implement the social changes it is fighting for, instead of whining about the present rulers of society. If the working class do not form a political party that aims to take power from the old regime then the old regime must continue. It will not just disappear in a burst of anarchist enthusiasm.

It has been said that there can be no blueprints for the future because the people themselves will decide how to build the new society as they are building it, nevertheless, it is appropriate to put forward a few ideas for discussion about what to do to start building socialism. Marxist concepts that sum up important truths from the history of revolutionary struggle seem empty because they have been repeated so often as banalities. If socialists do not propose alternative ways of living that are more desirable and effective than those of the old system, then why should anyone support a revolution? So we need to go beyond denouncing what the existing system is doing and start offering constructive alternatives, even though any such proposals are bound not to be fully worked out in every detail and aspect at this stage. Reformists will make endless proposals as to how the present system should deal with problems and questions of how socialism would cope with these problems will forever crop up.

We cannot always talk about revolution in the abstract.

A large part of the labour force, work for the state at one level or another, directly for the government or as part of a “publically” owned corporations. These are state capitalist industries. They remain capitalist because they still employ labour for making profit by selling goods on the market. The state is responsible for hiring and firing.

Some reformists view this as part of the  process that transforms capitalist production for profit into socialised  production for use, and wage labour into cooperative labour for the common good. But no matter how much state ownership and “social planning” there may be in a market economy, if production and investment decisions are all regulated by “the market”, they are still basically geared to employing workers to produce goods for sale at a profit on the market.  In regards to the labour if the products have to be sold on a market, and there is no market to sell more of that product, then its no good having the government telling a state-owned firm to hire more workers. Those workers might just as well be paid unemployment benefits direct - their services are not required. Labour power is a commodity that is purchased to produce other commodities for sale on the market.

The social revolution perceived by the radical reformists require the transformation of capitalist enterprises into cooperative worker-owned collectives which obviously involves far more than government decrees transferring ownership. It is also assumed that all problems of control would be resolved by decentralisation of authority. After all, the people in charge at the top are seen to be reactionaries, so the more room there is for localised units to determine their own affairs, the more chance there is to adopt more progressive policies. It is imagined that if everybody democratically discusses everything, production units will be able to exchange their products to supply each other’s needs, and to supply consumer goods for the workers, with no more than co-ordination by higher level councils of delegates from the lower level establishments. Actually any attempt to realise that vision would only mean preserving market relations between independent enterprises and not working to a common social plan. The concept has been accused by some critics as being  a sort of “parliamentary cretinism of the workplace” - the right to vote can not in itself transform bourgeois social relations into co-operative ones. Most workers expect to have bosses and within co-operatives there would be a tendency to retain or return to the old ways of doing things, with new bosses, in charge (or even back to the same old bosses!). Electing new bosses does not abolish the boss system.

Capitalist enterprises has always been based on  production for profit, and nobody actually has much experience in how to run it any other way. Indeed many people allegedly on the “left” seem to be unable to conceive of it being run any other way, and dream of somehow going back to a smaller scale of production, for it to be “more human”. The only real experience we have of socialised labour for the common good has been in a few “community projects” providing voluntary services to the public. Everything else is based on people working for wages under the supervision of bosses to produce commodities for sale on the market. All too often voluntary community projects  end up hopelessly inefficient and get entangled in factional disputes about who has the authority, in effect, who has the “ownership”. Then when they go under it reinforces the idea that capitalist production is the only system that can really work.

We should study the positive and negative lessons of the way small scale community projects and co-ops are managed, as well as studying capitalist management of big industry, in order to prepare for transforming the management of industry. The mentality that equates “popular”, “democratic” and “co-operative” with “local” or “community” projects is not just because we want to create some free space within which wage-slaves can manage some of their own affairs.  We want to overthrow slavery altogether.

If modern industry is to be run in a fundamentally different way, then essential policy and planning decisions to run it in that different way will have to be taken by some body. Whether they are called the workers council or the factory committee, or the cooperative guild, some body will have to take decisions about the sort of questions currently decided by the managing directors, CEOs and government departments. People will have to take decisions about questions which none of these bodies have the power to decide, since none of them controls the world market, either separately or together, such as in the issue of environment protection. No amount of elections from below or delegates consultations with the masses will change the fact that people will be responsible for the policy decisions in industry and will have to know what is happening. Nor would it change the fact that the appointees  are doing the job currently done by capitalists “bosses” and may develop into new bosses themselves (and bosses with wider and more totalitarian powers). This is where only a system of free access that deprives a section of the population of control of goods and services deprives them of the power to control.

The big issues are not decided “on the shop floor”, to use a phrase much loved by advocates of “self management”. Capitalism is already transferring more and more authority on the shop floor to workers themselves rather than supervisors or lower level line management as in so-called team-working. To combat climate change and create renewable sustainable energy sources, global decision-making is needed and we cannot all turn up at world conferences so we require accountable delegates. Socialism is about social control of production, not workers’control. Just saying “the workers will do it” does not solve a thing. Who are these workers who will do it after the revolution, without discussing what they will do, before the revolution? Slogans simply demanding a change in power because it is “more democratic” will get nowhere. The issue of “who decides, who rules” only arises in the context of “what is to be done”. Class conscious and politically conscious workers will be the ones discussing these problems beforehand, and if we do not have any ideas, how can we expect others to?

 A socialist revolution has the profound object of abolishing the ownership of wage-slaves by the master-class. A lot of production management has become a fairly routine function which could be readily taken over and transformed by workers’ councils. Workers should have no difficulty rapidly improving productivity over what can be achieved under a basically antagonistic system of “industrial relations” between hostile employers and employees.

The elimination of useless competition would save a lot of trouble, with unified marketing and supply arrangements under socialised planning. As the “market” is abolished, the supply function would become another aspect of production planning, rather than a separate problem of “marketing” and “pricing”.  Under capitalism there can be no substitute for the market in an economy based on commodity production. If social production is divided between separate enterprises with antagonistic interests, then they can really only be brought together through market exchange, the best measure of which is money prices. If instead they are brought together by some other form of external coercion, there will inevitably be some misallocation of resources because the quotas set do not exactly correspond to money – the only measure of social needs in a market economy. The socialist solution is to dissolve the antagonism between separate enterprises so that each is directly aiming to meet social needs, rather than responding in its own separate interests. The question of centralisation and decentralisation of enterprise management, is quite a separate question from abolishing commodity production.

Socialism does not imply the restricted range of products available any more than it implies the lower standard of living or longer working hours. There is no reason to anticipate major problems with the replacement of “commerce” by unified supply and marketing arrangements in advanced industrial countries.

If you flipped a switch and tomorrow every place was a co-op, we'd still all be competing with each other, just without bosses. The dizzying possibilities of broad social change that I imagined coming from democratic workplaces all over had been shown to have serious limitations. Even with bosses eliminated from the equation (what Marxists describe as "personifications of capital"), the logic of capitalism remained. Elected workers’ councils in capitalism behave in exactly the same manner as conventional enterprises of having to lay off staff, if there is no market for the goods they produce. Revolutionaries have to raise their sights above the blind workings of economic laws beyond our control because it leaves us, the workers, to enact the conclusions of capital on ourselves. In unprofitable years, if things got bad, we would be forced to fire ourselves, reduce health benefits, or cut our own wages or hours. Certainly we would have more say making those tough calls than if a manager were deciding those things for us and about us. But more say in the operations of capitalism is all that workers cooperatives can offer the working-class.

Worker co-operatives are a shuffling around of the roles that capitalism casts us in, and short-circuits the building of working-class confidence that comes when we confront capital together. Cooperatives in no way challenge capitalist markets, the drive for valorization, or the need to work for wages. I have never heard proponents of worker cooperatives, who believe they can end capitalism, satisfactorily explain how acting as a boss and a worker will challenge capitalist relations, except in the most superficial and rhetorical of ways (i.e. co-ops end hierarchies in the workplace and demonstrate that workers can run things, too).

The task of the Socialist Party is to uproot capitalist psychology from the minds of the workers. Why is the oppressed promised a paradise in the future? So as to blind them to the paradise which the capitalists build for themselves on this earth. It is the task of the Socialist Party to facilitate and to hasten the process of the liberation of the masses from the reformist illusions, to win the working class to the side of the class struggle.

The capitalist system has completely outlived its useful function. It is the system which puts profits above all other considerations. Capitalism offers no future to the people but recessions, wars, violence and a final plunge into barbarism. To avoid such a fate, workers must go into politics on their own account, independent of all capitalist politics to establish a society where the entire world will be united and planned on a socialist basis. This will bring universal peace—and undreamed of abundance for all people everywhere. The real upward march of humanity will begin. The working class can open up the way to this new world. They are the majority. They have the power and all that is necessary is for the working class to understand it—and to use it.

The crisis was world wide in its nature and in its devastating effects, although not uniform in its manifestations in the various countries. Before the economic upturn can be assured it is necessary for capitalism to restore confidence in the continuity of the process of reproduction. And since the realization of surplus-values provides the only inducement to what is popularly called the possibility of profitable investments the necessary steps are taken in that direction. It is accomplished by increasing the rate of exploitation of labour, lowering the cost of production, beginning with a low wage level, extending to the lengthening of working hours and increasing the speed-up of labour and of machine technology.  These are among the well known capitalist methods of revival. However, the process could not be set into motion entirely on its own accord. It needed the assistance of state intervention. On the one side were the measures of regulation of industry and finance and on the other the large scale government spending by way of subsidy to corporate enterprise. Freed from restraints employers lost no time in lengthening working hours, slashing wages and speeding up labor and introducing labour-saving technology in order to lower the cost of production. Finance capital has again strengthened its grip on the levers of production and distribution. Profits and dividends are on the rise once more in every field of activity. The main reason for the failure to reduce the number of unemployed is the increased application of new technology and diminishing number of workers employed compared to the total capital investments.

Capitalism has introduced a new form of want, want in the midst of abundance; a new torment of labor, the torment of workers deprived of work while there is an abundance of the means and objectives of working. Despite the so-called prosperity, capitalism is completely incapable of salving the problems of the world. There is the colossal wastage of armaments, and the insanity of national frontiers. Too often people forget the politician’s last lie almost before he invents another.

In socialism, we all shall benefit from the ready service of those who love work for its own sake. Their efforts will go directly to increase the common stock in which all will share.

What are profits

What is the source of profit? Its fundamental source is the labour of the workers. There is no emotional appeal in this assertion. It is simple fact. There is only one thing that diverse commodities, as different as chalk from cheese, have in common. That is that they are the products of human labour. They exchange in definite proportions. Even though in money terms the nominal magnitude of the exchange may be greatly enhanced by inflation, still the proportions in which commodities exchange against each other are definite. What determines the proportions is the amount of socially necessary labour time required for their production. So a pair of boots requires much less (socially necessary) labour time than a motor car. Accordingly the exchange of the two is represented by vastly different prices which reflect the different labour times socially necessary in their respective production.

Labour power is like every other commodity. It has a definite value. Its value, like all other commodities, is established by the amount of socially necessary labour time required in its production. Thus in capitalism the worker is paid fundamentally the amount needed to keep him and his wife and children alive. This is his wages. For wages he sells his capacity to labour to the factory owner. That capacity to labour as a matter of fact, as a matter of observation, exceeds in terms of time what is necessary to recoup the maintenance of the worker. In say 4 hours he produces the equivalent of his keep but in reality he works for 8 hours. The excess four hours belongs to the factory owner because for wages that owner has bought the worker’s capacity to labour. This is what Marx called surplus value. Surplus value is profit. In the capitalist process it undergoes distribution. That distribution can be quite complicated. Marx revealed that the value of labour power and the value produced by that labour power in the productive process are two entirely different magnitudes. The one magnitude is the value of the labour power, wages, the cost of production of the labour power of the worker, and the other the value produced by that labour power realised in the commodity produced. Labour power is the only commodity capable of producing a value greater than it itself has. It is the only source of profit. (“Value” increases in land etc. are not value in the scientific sense but a manifestation of the distribution of surplus value).

Profit is derived from unpaid labour time. Workers’ labour power is purchased on the market by the owners of capital.  Put to work, on average in half the working week, it produces values sufficient to cover wages to maintain a worker and family. The value produced in the remainder of the working week constitutes surplus value, the source of profit. he commodities produced by workers’ socialised labour are appropriated by capitalists. They will continue to be produced so long as they can be sold for profit on the market. The apparatus of state (the term “state” is used to describe public service, army, police, courts, gaols and not describe what are called States in Australia, for these States are provinces) maintains and enforces the system of exploitation.

 The total irrationality of this system is shown by the effect of technological advance. Technological advance under capitalism is dictated by competition for profit. Each capitalist strives to increase his production and reduce his labour costs. Hence today, computers displace large numbers of workers, cargo ships become container ships with mechanical loading and unloading, wheat, sugar, flour are loaded in bulk. So it goes on. The drive for profit and bitter competition leads one capitalist to improve technology; the other must follow or be ruined. Many are ruined and flung into the ranks of workers or unemployed.

When demand is great, profits are high. Production is stepped up. But the market is finite, limited. First it comprises these same workers. Their wages are basically determined according to the cost of production of their labour power, (that is, the amount necessary to maintain the workers and their families). Wages will vary above or below that according as the supply of and demand for workers vary, as the struggle of the workers for more wages keeps up wage levels a little, but the whole tendency of capitalism is to push wages down below subsistence level. By keeping them down the factory owners make more profit by the mechanism explained above. But by keeping wages down they contribute to restricting the very market upon which they rely to realise profit. Second, the market comprises all other sections of the population. Third, it comprises the outside world.  Each of these again is finite, limited. There is mad competition among the owners for profits by sale on the market. Sooner or later that market is glutted. This is so today. Motor vehicles cannot be sold, food is destroyed and so on. True, it is an uneven progress so that at the one time there may be excess of some goods and shortages of others. This arises from uneven development, uneven contraction of the market. The process takes place on a world scale. Re-division of the world constantly goes on.

It is inevitable that sooner or later these social conditions will impel people to organise to end the conflict between the socialised labour process and private ownership of the decisive means of production.  To camouflage and support the reality of ownership and non-ownership, of coercion to maintain it, there are many devices used by the owners of the means of production. It is not sufficient for the owners of the means of production to rely solely on coercion. It is necessary also to rely upon “public opinion”, to persuade a significant number of people that the social system, where ownership of the means of production is in the hands of a tiny minority and non-ownership is the fate of the vast majority, is desirable. Hitler’s Germany was the classic case of open resort to force to maintain private ownership of the means of production. Nonetheless Hitler relied also on “public opinion”, on deception. the ideology of the dominant class, of the owners, is put forward as the accepted ideology.  The class in control of ownership of means of production and the state apparatus imposes its thinking in many different ways, crude and subtle, open and insidious.

Names and terms have frequently given rise to disputes. Commonly the word “socialism” is used as a political trick. The Labour Party is called “socialist”. Obama is called a "socialist". It is suggested that countries with large welfare programmes are socialist or that nationalised industries are socialist. The word “reform” is heard more and more – “reform” of the economy, “reform” of industrial relations, “reform” of the way of government. If one accepts the theory of gradualism (reformism)—that socialism must come through the reform of prosperous capitalism—then of necessity one must agree to the measures to make capitalism prosperous as the necessary stepping stones to socialism. Otherwise, bang goes the theory. “Reform” never alters the fundamentals. “Reform” is just a manoeuvre to deceive people that these fundamentals can be altered. Reality is that their real nature will never change. This has nothing to do with genuine socialism as dealt with here.

With socialism, production takes place for people’s use.  A Socialist means a man or a woman who recognises the class war between the proletariat and the possessing class as the inevitable historic outcome of the capitalist system and of the direct economic and social antagonisms which it has engendered and fostered. And someone who sees that those antagonisms can only be resolved by the complete control over all the great means of production, distribution, and exchange, by the whole people, thus abolishing the class State and the wages system, and constituting a Co-operative Commonwealth or Socialism. The preliminary changes which must bring about this social revolution are already being made, unconsciously, by the capitalists themselves and socialists use political institutions and forms to educate the people and to prepare, as far as possible, peacefully for the social revolution, and holding that this great change should be completely democratic in every respect.

 Socialism arose because mankind had by the middle of the 19th century evolved through a succession of changes in the productive forces, these had given rise to corresponding changes in the relations of production, the shape of the real change (to socialism) could be seen within capitalism by the very process of socialised production and its contradiction with individual ownership. The  utopian Robert Owen advanced his “ideal” society in the early 19th century and first used the terms socialist and socialism.  Marx, and Engels deduced from their observation the general laws that governed social development. Their observation showed that the facts and the movement of those facts obeyed certain definite laws. These laws they discerned and expounded.  They showed that social change arose from changes in the productive forces. The very experience of workers of their exploitation in the socialised process of production educates them. Their education goes through various stages. They ultimately need and get socialist ideas. The theory of revolution arose from mankind's practice and summing up of that practice.

Money had arisen from the extension of trading several thousand years ago, its use as capital became possible. Merchants could add to their wealth by buying goods cheap and selling them dear; moneylenders and mortgage holders could gain interest on sums advanced on the security of land or other collateral. These practices were common in both slave and feudal societies.

But if money could be used in pre-capitalist times to return more than the original investment, other conditions had to be fulfilled before capitalism could become established as a separate and definite world economic system. The central condition was a special kind of transaction regularly repeated on a growing scale. Large numbers of propertyless workers had to hire themselves to the possessors of money and the other means of production in order to earn a livelihood.

Hiring and firing seem to us a normal way of carrying on production. But such peoples as the Indians never knew it. Before the Europeans came, no Indian ever worked for a boss, because they possessed their own means of livelihood. The slave may have been purchased, but he belonged to and worked for the master his whole life long. The feudal serf or tenant was likewise bound for life to the lord and his land. The epoch-making innovation upon which capitalism rested was the institution of working for wages as the dominant relation of production. Most of you have gone into the labour market, to an employment agency or personnel office, to get a buyer for your labour power. The employer buys this power at prevailing wage rates by the hour, day, or week and then applies it under his supervision to produce commodities that his company subsequently sells at a profit. That profit is derived from the fact that wage workers produce more value than the capitalist pays for their labour.  This mechanism for pumping surplus labour out of the working masses and transferring the surpluses of wealth they create to the personal credit of the capitalist was the mightiest accelerator of the productive forces and the expansion of civilisation. Capitalism has produced many things, good and bad, in the course of its evolution. The exploitation and abuses, inherent and inescapable in the capitalist organisation of economic life, provoke the workers time and again to organise themselves and undertake militant action to defend their interests.  The struggle between these conflicting social classes is today the dominant and driving force of world.

The aim of socialism is to introduce the rule of reason into all human activities. Under capitalism the wage worker is treated, not as a fellow human being, but as a mechanism useful for the production of surplus value. He is a prisoner with a lifetime sentence to hard labour. Compulsory labour is the mark of social poverty and oppression. When wealth of all kinds flows as freely as water and is as abundant as air and compulsory labour is supplanted by free time. When free time is enjoyed by all and has become as Marx suggested the true measure of wealth, this is the goal of socialism, and its promise.  

The Cheap and The Shoddy

From time to time various official bodies investigate social problems and come up with so-called solutions. Here is a recent example. 'The British Medical Association in Scotland is calling for integrated action to be taken to reduce the gap that exists between the health of those living in the poorest parts of the country and those in the more affluent communities.' (Times, 2 April) Despite the BMA's proposed pious "integrated action" as long as the class division between the working class and the owning class exists the workers will always suffer from the cheap and the shoddy whether it is in housing, education or even health treatment. RD

Their world or ours?

Economic recessions are an inescapable feature of the capitalist system, a system that cannot ensure the harmonious growth of the economy, cannot ensure work and well being for all the working people. The strategy of the employers in a crisis is the intensifying exploitation, further increasing the concentration of capital and production, carrying out various changes to create the best conditions for the extraction of maximum profits, shifting capital to the areas of maximum capitalist profit whether at home or abroad and stepping up its contention for markets and sources of raw materials with its rivals (which often leads to military conflicts)

The bosses shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the working people through the cutting of real wages, imposition of redundancies, the intensification of labour through speed-ups etc., the imposition of worse working conditions, and so on. , facilitated by the pressure of the vast reserve army of the unemploye. State expenditure is being transferred away from social spending such as on health, education, welfare and other areas in order to boost the profits of the corporations, and the burden of direct and indirect taxation is being increased to cover the increased state expenditure as a whole.

The economists pretends that they have the solution to the crisis and promise “recovery” provided the workers accept the burden of the crisis as the condition of ensuring recovery. But in reality those supposedly in charge has no control. Their demand that the workers accept further unemployment and further speed-ups and further reductions in real wages, social services, benefits, etc., is simply a demand that the workers accept still more of the burden of the crisis on their shoulders so as to ensure the recovery of profits which is the real concern of the employing class.

The wealthy have no solution to the crisis the working class should not harbour any illusions about “recovery”. The motive of capitalist production is profit and the only issue of “recovery” for the bourgeoisie is recovery of profits. Such “recovery” will not alter at all the condition of the working class as wage slaves, or change the conditions of the exploited in relation to the exploiters. In fact, the recovery of the profits of the capitalists can only take place on the basis of the further intensification of exploitation, the further impoverishment and ruin of the masses of the people, with a higher level of the permanent army of the unemployed, an increase in the impoverishment and immiseration of the working class.

In order to force through its programme, the rich and powerful are launching a savage offensive against  workers and their trade-union rights. The ruling class have escalated their efforts to defeat and undermine the workers’ struggles. Capitalism rests upon this fact that there is a class of men who are deprived of everything and consequently are forced to sell their labour.

Crisis is an inherent feature of capitalism and cannot be eliminated without eliminating the root, the capitalist system. The anarchy of production and crisis will not be eliminated without putting an end to the capitalist system, thereby removing the contradiction which is at its root, the contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist appropriation. The motive of capitalist production is the securing of maximum profits. Production of goods is in fact an incidental aim of capitalism, as is employment. The capitalist class organises production for the purposes of increasing profits. When conditions are such that profits can be increased by increasing production, the capitalist does so, and when conditions are such that profits can only be increased by cutting back production to keep up the price, then that is what the capitalist does. Thus if it serves to increase profits to increase the numbers of workers in production, then this is done; but if profits can only be increased by intensifying exploitation, getting more or the same amount of work out of fewer workers, then this is done instead. These fundamental features of the capitalist system cannot be eliminated without removing the capitalist system itself. They are following the policy necessitated by the capitalist system, one which would be followed in one form or another by any capitalist government, as shown by the record of Labour governments. All the capitalist parties, all the parties dedicated to the continuation of the capitalist system of wage slavery, are against the most basic rights and interests of the working class.

The apologists of the ruling class do everything to try to ensure that the idea of the transformation of the social system is not even discussed. They pretend that this crisis is not the result of the capitalist system but merely a result of “erroneous policies” of this or that individual, manager or government. The right wing preaches submission to economic “realities”. The left wing preach reformism to the workers. Each wing promising “prosperity for all” that never materialises.  Revolution is not only a possibility, it is a necessity.  Unless this is done the workers will not be able to avert the grave dangers the capitalist system threatens.

Capitalism expresses class-ownership and production for profit. Its destruction involves the change from individual or company ownership to the ownership of the community at large. Wage-slavery being finally done away with by the abolition of capital. The socialist commonwealth, liberates the individual from all economic, political and social oppression, would provide the basis, for real liberty and for the full and harmonious development of the personality, giving full scope for the growth of the creative faculties of the mind. There is a tendency to vulgarise the idea of socialism, to reduce its meaning to a mere mechanical alteration of the property system and the introduction of a state-planned economy. The State, as the owner of banking industry, agriculture and transport becomes the universal employer, the universal landlord. It controls everything on which the fate and happiness of the individual citizen depend.  The citizen is dependent on the State as regards employment, housing, supplies, amusement, educational and transport facilities. A conflict with the State might affect the citizen as an employee, tenant, etc. This enormous power of the State over the individual citizen must needs call forth or strengthen tendencies towards a dictatorship. Therein lies the chief danger of State capitalism. It hides an abyss into which the nation may easily tumble, sinking back into barbarism instead of making its way further towards the sunny heights of socialism. State capitalism does not yet solve any of the outstanding problems. It does not abolish crises, the classes, the wage system. Under State capitalism there is production of commodities for sale, not production for use.

The Fight For Socialism

To cut a long story short, it can be said that the class of persons owning the tools or the means of production is the ruling class. Socialism is a word which came into general use in the 19th century, and it has always been understood to signify a new state of affairs in opposition to capitalism. The use of adjective "scientific" is used to distinguish the concept of socialism from the schemes of these utopians and idealists who based their plans upon abstract principles, rather than the historical growth of society resulting from the friction between rival classes. Many great thinkers in the past, dissatisfied with the conditions of their times, had drafted out plans for a re-modeling of affairs. Some of them put their p1an into practice and experimented with communes. The Labour Theory of Value, the Theory of Surplus Labour, and the Materialist Conception of History as the three sides of scientific socialism.  Though the expectations of early Marxists have not been fulfilled,  the theory explains its own mistakes. Vain are the hopes of peace between the oppressed and the oppressors.  In its endeavour to increase its profits capitalism force the workers to take up a militant attitude upon the industrial and political fields.

The capitalist who does not accumulate, expand, is doomed. The winner is always the capitalist whose machines are better and more modern, whose plant and production system are more efficient, who can buy raw materials in larger quantities and therefore at lower unit cost. In other words, the large-scale enterprise based on a big capital has all the advantages over the small-scale enterprise based on a modest capital. The small-scale enterprise cannot stand up in the competitive race for the market. It goes bankrupt or is absorbed by the large-scale enterprise.

 What about enterprises that are approximately equal in size and efficiency, and therefore equally situated as competitors? They, too, must engage in the competitive race. The winner is the one that speeds up its production to lower unit cost and intensifies its exploitation. This last it can do, and does, in several ways. It lengthens the working day. It reduces the wages of the workers. It increases the productivity of the workers so that they make the same amount in less time. It cuts down on operational costs such as health and safety  on the job or in making less comfortable the workers conditions . To win the race for the market, the capitalist must do some or all of these things. If he does not, he loses. A capitalist  cannot survive if he just stands still, or continues at the old pace. Survival under capitalism – just survival – demands expansion, demands accumulation of more and more capital, demands, therefore, more and more profit, without which accumulation is impossible. Profit makes accumulation possible; accumulation makes profit necessary. No profit – no accumulation; no accumulation – no production. That is how it is, and that is how it must be under the capitalist mode of production. To live, capital must accumulate. To accumulate, capital must yield profit. So fierce is the drive of capital for profit, that it turns the world upside-down, if need be, in the hunt for cheap labor, on the basis of the lowest possible wages and poorest working conditions. Capital will shrink from nothing in the pursuit of profits. It spends millions of dollars for efficiency experts to work out all kinds of methods and systems to intensify labor by raising the work-rate of workers, paying little heed to the  broken bodies and exhausted minds. Capitalism is a ruthless devourer of human life. When socialists explains the nature of capitalism, we show how it destroys the humanity of wage-workers and their families.

Socialism is a system based upon conscious planning of production by associated producers (nowhere does Marx ever say: by the state), made possible by the abolition of private property of the means of production. As soon as that private property is completely abolished, goods produced cease to be commodities. Value and exchange value disappear. Production becomes production for use, for the satisfaction of needs, determined by conscious choice (ex ante decisions) of the mass of the associated producers themselves. Mankind will be organised into a free federation of producers’ and consumers’ communes.

Never forget the class struggle!

The Socialist Party are not the only political party that  appeals in the name of the working class, calling for its support and endeavoring to rally workers into its ranks. Even the pro-capitalist politicians have not lost any of their power of demagogy and still controls all the main avenues of working class influence, propaganda and education.

We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humankind.  It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in living standards with more poor people now in the world than ever before, starts murderous imperialist wars to steal the resources of less developed countries and causes the growing devastation of our natural environment.  Either we get rid of this outmoded and decrepit system or it will devastate humanity.  The hour is late and urgent action is necessary.

The only way forward is revolutionary struggle to achieve communism, a classless and stateless society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural environment.  To create a communist world it is necessary to overthrow the rule of capitalism and this can be done only through social revolution. People know that capitalism is no good but few can see a viable alternative and a better type of society.

The two main parties differ in name only. What earthly difference can it make to the millions of workers whether it is the Labour or Tory in office? Socialists hold that the ability of the present ruling class, the capitalists, to maintain their power is due to their using their economic strength to control the government and use it as an instrument of oppression against the rest of society. The political platform of the capitalists has been presented by their parties in as confused and treacherous a manner as possible so the people won’t grasp what they stand for. All the capitalist parties have been pledging that they will do something about unemployment, the rising cost of living and dwindling wages. All these pledges are deceptions – instead of providing solutions the capitalist parties will further aggravate these problems. The capitalist parties are the exploiters and oppressors.

Today there is not a single occupation that may not serve as a source of profit for it is the essence of wage labour that the worker sells not the value created by his own effort, but the ability to create the value for someone else. And he sells it at cost price – the cost of its maintenance and reproduction. All workers are exploited. Wage labour, like any commodity is saleable only in so far as it satisfies a social need – the demands of capital. Productivity in a capitalist economy means only one thing – the growth of capital. Capitalism is not particular what it turns out in the way of merchandise, computers, aircraft, motors or candyfloss. ...the common denominator is profit.

Goals determine methods. The task that lies before us all is to build the confidence, the understanding and the political clarity. We want a good life for ourselves and our families and a bright future for our children. And we don’t want it at the expense of our class brothers and sisters, but for the common benefit of all working people and the advancement of humanity. We can and we will build this good life and bright future, but we must be free to do so, free of the wealthy leeches who bloat themselves on the very blood of the workers.

The SPGB Programme

To change the world and to create a better one has always been an aspiration of people throughout human history. The hope that tomorrow's world can be free of today's inequalities, hardships and deprivations, the belief that people can, individually and collectively, influence the shape of the world to come, is a deep-rooted and powerful outlook in society that guides the lives and actions of vast masses of people. Clearly, everyone's image of an ideal world is not one and the same. However, throughout human history certain ideas have always come to the fore as the measures of human happiness and social progress.

Socialism sees the state as the organisation of the ruling class, an instrument of oppression and violence, and it is on these grounds that it does not countenance a "state of the future". In the future there will be no classes, there will be no class oppression, and thus no instrument of that oppression, no state of violence. The "classless state" is a contradiction in terms, a nonsense, an abuse of language, and if this idea is prevalent it is  really no fault of Marx and Engels or their teachings. They made clear that socialism is a STATELESS society,  the "administration of things" replaces the bygone "government of men".  If this is the case then what, in reality, does the distinction between anarchists and Marxists consist of?

There are two sides of the social revolution: the destructive side and the creative or reconstructive side. The destructive side shows above all in the destruction of the capitalist state,  the capture of power by the workers can become a reality only through the destruction of the power of the capitalist class. Once the workers has taken power, the most urgent task is to build socialism.

The socialist society for Marx and Engels was a free association of completely free men, where no separation between ‘private and common interest’ existed: a society where ‘everyone could give himself a complete education in whatever domain he fancied’. For ‘man’s activity becomes an adverse force which subjugates him, instead of his being its master’ when there is ‘a division of labour’; everyone must then have a profession, that is a ‘determined, exclusive sphere of activity’ he has not chosen and in which ‘he is forced to remain if he does not want to lose his means of existence’. In their socialism, on the contrary, a man would be given ‘the possibility to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner’, as he chose (‘The German Ideology’).

Marx and Engels never believed that socialism could be brought about on Earth by the will of the few and imposed on man generally. Nor were they advocates of what many consider hal-measures or steps towards socialism.

“State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution... neither the conversion into joint-stock companies nor into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital... The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme (Anti-Dühring)

During the twentieth century many organisations began labelling themselves as socialist, communist and Marxist. Most of these movements had very little in common with the basic principles of socialism  and, in reality, only desired certain reforms and moderations within the framework of the capitalist system. What took place in Russia was not the construction of socialism but the reconstruction of the capitalist national economy according to a stateist and managed model. Instead of the ideal of common and collective ownership, state ownership of the means of production was established. Wages, money and the wage-labour system all remained. This state-capitalist model became the economic template for other countries.

There was another alternative of  cooperative factories where ‘the associated labourers’ are ‘their own capitalists’, that is, ‘using the means of production for the employment of their own labour’, and according to Marx, the way in which a new mode of production may naturally grow out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production has reached a certain stage (Capital, Volume 3, Chapter 27).

 ‘The general capitalist’ (whether state or co-op) and the direct producers are wage-earners, that therefore the relations between them according to Marx are still the relations between capital and labour, between employer and proletarians.

Marx and Engels never had the contempt for democracy. They did not wish to destroy it, but to enlarge and perfect it.  ‘The emancipation of the working classes must be won by the working classes themselves’, as Marx wrote in the first sentence of Provisional Rules of the First International. Towards the end of his life, Engels again emphasised it once more, when he wrote in the introduction to the 1895 edition of Marx’s Class Struggles in France: ‘When it is a question of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for body and soul.’

Socialists are not a bunch of utopian reformers and heroic saviours of humanity. Socialist society is not a fantastic design or recipe conceived by well-wishing know-alls but a social movement arising from within modern capitalist society itself, a movement that reflects the vision, ideals and protest of a vast section of this same society. The history of all societies to date has been a history of class struggle, n uninterrupted, now open and now hidden, struggle has been going on between exploiting and exploited, oppressor and oppressed classes in different epochs and societies. This class struggle is the chief source of social change and transformation.

The capitalist system is behind all the ills that burden humanity today. Poverty, deprivation, discrimination, inequality, political repression, ignorance, bigotry, cultural backwardness, unemployment, homelessness, economic and political insecurity, corruption and crime are all inevitable products of this system. No doubt apologists for capitalism tell us that these have not been invented by capitalism, but have all existed before capitalism, that exploitation, repression, discrimination, women's oppression, ignorance and prejudice, religion and prostitution are more or less as old as human society itself.

What is being covered up here is the fact that, firstly, all these problems have found a new meaning in this society, corresponding to the needs of capitalism. These are being constantly reproduced as integral parts of the modern capitalist system. The source of poverty, starvation, unemployment, homelessness and economic insecurity at the end of the 20th century is the economic system in place at the end of the 20th century. The brutal dictatorships, wars, genocides and repressions that define the life of hundreds of millions of people today draw their rationale from the needs of the system that rules the world today and serve specific interests in this world. Women's oppression today is not the result of medieval economy and morality, but a product of the present society's economic and social system and moral values.

Secondly, it is the capitalist system itself that continually and relentlessly resists people's effort to eradicate and overcome these ills. The obstacle to workers' struggle to improve living conditions and civil rights is none other than the ruling class and its governments, and parties. Wherever people rise in the poorer regions to take charge of their lives, the first barrier they face is the armed force of the local and international capitalist class. It is the state, its enormous media and propaganda machinery, institution of religion, traditions, moralities and educational system which shape the backward and prejudiced mentalities among successive generations. There is no doubt that it is capitalism who stand in the way of the attempt by millions of people, driven to the edges and more or less clear about the outlines of a society worthy of human beings, to change the system. The consequences of the capitalist system's contradictions and crises are not confined to the economic sphere. Devastating global and regional wars, militarism and military aggressions, autocratic and police states, stripping people, and especially workers, of their civil and political rights, rise of state terrorism, resurgence of the extreme Right and of religious, nationalist, racist and anti-woman groups. The capitalist system and the primacy of profit have exposed the environment to serious dangers and irreparable damages.

The wage-labour system, the daily compulsion of the great majority of people to sell their physical and intellectual abilities to others in order to make a living, is the source and essence of the violence which is inherent of this system. This naked violence has many direct victims: Women, workers, children, the aged, people of the poorer regions of the world, anyone who asks for their rights and stands up to any oppression, and anyone who has been branded as belonging to this or that 'minority'.

 In this system, thanks essentially to the rivalry of capitals and economic blocs, war and genocide have assumed staggering proportions. The technology of war and mass destruction is far more advanced than the technology used in production of goods. The global arsenal can annihilate the world several times over. This is the system that has actually used horrendous nuclear and chemical weapons against people.  Capitalism can also take pride in its remarkable advances in turning crime, murder, abuse and rape into a routine fact of life in this system.

It is easy to see how the capitalist world is a world that is upside down. This inverted world must be put right side up. This is the task of and  the aim of the world socialist movement.  Capitalism is a world system, the working class is a world class, and the workers class war is a daily struggle on a global scale. Socialism is an alternative that the working class presents to the whole of humanity. The  socialist movement must be organised on a global scale with the building of an  International, as the body uniting the workers' global struggle for socialism, as an urgent task of the various sections of the workers’ movements around the world.

The socialist revolution puts an end to the class division of society and abolishes the wage-labour system. Thus, market, exchange of commodities, and money disappear. Production for profit is replaced by production to meet people's needs and to bring about greater prosperity for all. Work, which in capitalist society for the overwhelming majority is an involuntary, mechanical and strenuous activity to earn a living, gives way to voluntary, creative and conscious activity to enrich human life. Everyone, by virtue of being a human being and being born into human society will be equally entitled to all of life's resources and the products of collective effort. From everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their need — this is a basic principle of communist society. Not only class divisions but also the division of people according to occupation will disappear. All fields of creative activity will be opened up to all. The development of each person will be the condition of development of the society. Socialism is a global society. National boundaries and divisions will disappear and give way to a universal human identity. Socialist society is a society free of religion, superstitious beliefs, and archaic traditions that strangle free thought.

In socialism the ideals of human freedom and equality are truly realised for the first time. Freedom not only from political oppression but from economic compulsion and subjugation and intellectual enslavement. Freedom to enjoy and experience life in its diverse dimensions.

It is not a dream or utopia. All the conditions for the formation of such a society have already created within the capitalist world itself. The scientific, technological and productive powers of humanity have already grown so enormously that founding a society committed to the well-being of all is perfectly feasible. The spectacular advances in communication and computer technology during have meant that the organization of a world community with collective participation in the design, planning and execution of society's diverse functions is possible more than ever before. A large part of these resources is now either wasted in different ways or is even deliberately used to hinder efforts to improve society and satisfy human needs. But for all the immensity of society's material resources, the backbone of communist society is the creative and living power of billions of men and women beings freed from class bondage, wage-slavery, intellectual slavery, alienation and degradation. The free human being is the guarantee for the realization of communist society.

 It is not a utopia. It is the goal and result of the struggle of an immense social class against capitalism; a living, real and ongoing struggle that is as old as capitalist society itself. Capitalism itself has created the great social force that can materialise this liberating prospect. The staggering power of capital on a global scale is a reflection of the power of a world working class. Unlike other oppressed classes in the history of human society, the working class cannot set itself free without freeing the whole of humanity. a co-operative society is the product of workers' revolution to put an end to the system of wage-slavery; a social revolution which inevitably transforms the entire foundation of the production relations.  Nowhere in socialist theory is use of force viewed as a necessary component of workers' revolution.

The immediate aim of the Socialist Party is the social revolution of the working class. A revolution that overthrows the entire exploitative capitalist relations and puts an end to all exploitation and hardships. Our programme is for the immediate establishment of a society without classes, without private ownership of the means of production, without wage labour and without a state; a free human society in which all share in the social wealth and collectively decide the society's direction and future. Socialism is possible this very day.

Competition

Competition

From the January 1987 issue of theSocialist Standard

Some comedian once asked "If it's true that all the world loves a lover, why are there so many policemen in Hyde Park?" A good question but a better one for workers to ask themselves is "If competition is such a wonderful and desirable thing, why does every­body try so hard to avoid it?". For example, when solicitors lose their monopoly in house conveyancing, opticians lose theirs in selling spectacles, or shopkeepers hear that a super­market is to be built nearby, do they say "Good! Just what we need: the icy blast of competition"? They do not, instead they pro­test bitterly and do everything they can to preserve the status quo.

This dislike of competition is shared by all business, big and small. In 1980 the world's largest corporation, American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT and T) lost an anti-trust action brought against it by a much smaller rival, MCI, who were awarded 1,800 million dollars. AT and T have a near monopoly in the manufacture of vital equipment which MCI needed but they refused to sell them any. In Britain the giant British Oxy­gen Company, which had a turnover of £ 1,700 million in 1983, was exposed for try­ing to close down a small competitor whose turnover was only £150,000 - less than a third of the salary of BOC's chief executive. The competition of even such a minnow was more than BOC could tolerate.

The big three in the British drugs industry, ICI, Glaxo and Beecham's, are putting every obstacle in the way of small competitors who want to market half price, unbranded ver­sions of some of the big three's most profita­ble drugs. Although these drugs are patented the law provides for “licences of right” to be available to other companies but does not specify what royalties are to be paid. The big three use this loophole to ensure that would be competitors have to sell for little less than themselves.

The airline industry is notorious for ­eliminating competition. Remember how big Atlantic carriers, including British Airways, forced Freddie Laker out of business? Now they have a new target in their sights. Richard Branson's one-aircraft Virgin Atlantic airline. Branson's attempt to take over where Laker left off by providing cut-price fares between Britain and America was countered by BA, Pan-Am and TWA who all reduced their fares to equal Virgin's. Predictably Bran­son howled "unfair" but why should the game be played by his rules? If he really believes in free market competition then he cannot complain if the big airlines slash their fares too. Branson's problem is that his rivals have much greater resources than he has and can easily outlast him in a protracted fares battle.

Dislike of competition has also been shown by the cross channel ferry companies. They are trying to persuade the government and potential investors that the channel tunnel will be unsafe to use and unprofitable. If the tunnel scheme goes through then these champions of the free market want to remove competition between themselves by integrating their ser­vices in order to offset the expected loss of business. If this is not allowed then they will seek compensation from the government. Whatever happened to "standing on your own two feet"?

Although governments try to encourage competition within their own frontiers they assist their own industries to avoid it in inter­national trade by loading the dice in their favour. The governments of the EEC protect their own farmers from competition from abroad by erecting tariff barriers and sub­sidising their production. These subsidies produce such mountains of food that the EEC can sell it on world markets at rock-bottom prices­ – butter sales to Russia are an obvious case. The American government denounces these subsidies because they keep inefficient EEC farmers in business whereas American farming is extremely efficient and could easily undercut EEC farming if only it were given the chance. In 1983 the American government played the EEC at it’s own game by using subsidies to sell flour to Egypt which had been an EEC market. Did the EEC say “fair enough”? It did not, instead it threatened to retaliate by dumping farm produce in American markets in Latin America.

Does this mean that the United States is all for free trade? Only in those industries where it can win, such as farming. It is a different story when it comes to steel and textiles so they protect those industries with barriers against Imports. Most serious is the penetration by Japan of American home markets in cars, electronics and consumer goods. The United States’ trade deficit with Japan was over 50 billion dollars last year and members of Congress, business leaders and trade unions are demanding legislation aimed at reducing Japan’s exports to the United States.

Needless to say the Japanese are not in favour of this but they want to have it both ways - free trade for their exports but every obstacle placed in the way of imports from other countries. For example, Scotch whisky is subject to a level of taxation which makes it much more expensive than home produced spirits. Why don't these other coun­tries simply keep out Japan's exports? They are afraid that such a move would spark off worldwide tit-for-tat protectionism with the resulting collapse in world trade. The cure would be worse than the ailment and the Japanese government is taking advantage of this fear.

Groups of governments sometimes band together into a cartel or price-fixing ring to avoid competition among themselves. For years the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) shared out most of the world oil market. Each member-nation was allocated an agreed production quota of oil and no more. This year there has been a drastic fall in oil prices caused by the world slump, resulting in a sharp fall in demand, plus the entry of North Sea oil which is not controlled by OPEC. This fall in price has meant less income for OPEC members and some of them have been breading the agreement by increasing production to try make good the lost revenue.

This is what usually happens with governments or companies which organise themselves into a cartel. They are all for cartel when trade is booming and they can carve up the market but when trade is bad they will break ranks and look after themselves. OPEC has just reached a temporary agreement and the price of oil has started to rise again but no one knows what will happen in 1987.

Nevertheless, western governments do try to avoid monopolies within their own countries. As the executive committee of the national capitalist class a government must look after the interests of that class as a whole and not just one section of it. If a monopoly was allowed in an industry then the other capitalists will feel that they may be held to ransom when they purchase from the monopoly. But surely the soon-to-be­ privatised British Gas is a monopoly, the very thing the government wants to avoid? There are two reasons for this contradiction. The first is that the gas industry cannot really be split up into several competing companies for practical reasons, among them the cost of setting up alternative nationwide installa­tions. The second is the political factor which is that the government sees wide share ownership as a vote catcher at the next general election end the privatisation of British Gas gives it the opportunity to achieve this aim.

This episode has provided an example of the double standards used by politicians. Tory MP Michael Forsyth, a free market zealot. argued that privatised gas would not be a monopoly as it would have to compete with electricity, oil and nuclear power. This is like arguing that if some company owned the entire meat industry it wouldn't be a monopoly because it would have to compete with fish and chicken.

Both the American and British governments think they have a method of reversing what they see as the drift towards monopoly by stimulating competition. This is called de-regulation and is aimed at providing the incentive and opportunity for new companies to come into the market by removing whatever obstacles stand in their way. This has happened in the American airline indus­try since 1978 and the initial effect was an explosion of new, small companies and a drop in internal air fares. But the drift towards what is actually fewer and bigger economic units cannot be permanently reversed. Since 1978 sixty-three American airlines have gone bust and the big airlines are swallowing up the small fry in order to add the busy and profitable internal routes to their shakier international operations. The result is that air­fares in America are on the increase again. This is what happens with cut-throat com­petition. It cuts profits to the bone so that when business drops off companies get into trouble and the conditions are created for the very thing de-regulation is supposed to curb - mergers and the drive towards bigger and fewer companies.

Companies sometimes need to grow if they are to survive. How could a company meet its competitors if it merely stands still while they grow? This need partly explains the recent merger-mania which saw huge companies being taken over by others. Guin­ness, the British drinks giant, justified its plan to take over Distillers in order to meet the challenge of American and Japanese rivals like Seagram's and Suntory with full-page newspaper adverts which said "It will take our combined strength to defeat adversaries such as these."

This is also why Britain's biggest electronic engineering company, GEC, wants to take over its main British rival, Plessey. James Prior, GEC's chairman, explained that although GEC is Britain's biggest private employer with 180,000 workers, it is dwarfed by the likes of General Electric in America and Siemens in West Germany. Plessey rejected GEC's bid and instead offered to buy GEC's interest in the System X digital telephone exchange system. Their chairman pointed out that neither company had won any worthwhile export orders for the system and since 10 per cent of the world market is required to be profitable it would, he added, make sense to merge the two interests – under Plessey, naturally – to meet international competition.

How does this fact of life in capitalism square with the government's obsession with promoting small businesses and its frequent use of the Monopolies Commission to prevent the mega-mergers which are necessary to enable British capitalism to compete internationally? The simple truth is that many of those who are heavily into capitalism, like some of the free marketeers, don‘t under-­stand the basic laws of the system, one of which is that while small may be beautiful in business, big is infinitely more successful.

The supporters of competition claim that it is of benefit to society because it eliminates wastefulness. In fact it is the cause of massive waste of humanity's time and energy. For example, thanks to the elimination of their competitors, there are now only three makers of large jet aircraft engines in the world outside of the so-called communist bloc. They are Rolls-Royce and the two American companies, Pratt and Whitney and General Electric. All three employ numerous scientists and technicians in the competition to produce an engine for a particular type of aircraft. Of the three engines produced one may be a little cheaper in price, the second may use a little less fuel and the third may need a little less maintenance but really all three engines are practically identical. So true is this that the one which wins the orders is probably chosen more for political reasons than any other and this is why British Airways have recently chosen Rolls-Royce engines for its new aircraft.

And just look at the hordes of companies eagerly competing to supply us all with dou­ble glazing, fitted kitchens, and the like, with armies of salespeople chasing after the same order and all of them selling exactly the same product. This spectacle is repeated all over the world as millions of useful human beings engage in this wasteful duplication of effort. just how does this benefit society?

So competition isn't what it's cracked up to be. Even the capitalists and politicians only regard it as a necessary evil in the scramble for profit and avoid it whenever they can. Certainly it has nothing to offer the workers except the opportunity to become one another’ s enemies over their exploiters' quarrels and which have nothing to do with them. Socialists work for a society in which the watchword will be co-operation and where capitalism’s competition will seem as strange and awful as we regard cannibalism today.

Vic Vanni

Glasgow Branch

Politicians Galore

Politicians galore From the June 1987 issue of theSocialist Standard Roll on 12 June! We won't see the politicians for another five years. The usual election issues of poverty, unemployment and crime won't disappear so easily though. For the moment we're going to hear a lot more from the politicians. They will be dumping their leaflets—with nice pictures of them and their families on the front and damn all else inside—on our doorsteps. They'll be stopping us in the street to shake our hand and blame the weather on their opponents. And they'll be on the TV ("And I think I can safely say that I speak for the whole of this great nation of ours when I say blah blah blah"). Some lucky voters are blessed with the attention of the politicians all year round. During the cold spell at the start of this year, Breakfast TV just happened to have a camera crew crammed into some OAP's kitchen when who should pop in for a friendly chat but Neil Kinnock and Michael Meacher, the Shadow Minister for Health! But they weren't there for some cheap publicity shot and some political point-scoring. No, they'd brought some draught excluders with them, which they proceeded to nail up for the benefit of the lucky OAP. As she was getting it done for free, the old lady was prepared to put up with all the guff for the cameras about Labour's plans for rate reform that the Labour leader just happened to have prepared. That's the sort of thing Neil Kinnock means when he, "speaks for the whole of the British people about the indignity of old age blah blah blah". Obviously, the best place to live in Britain is right next to Shepherds Bush or TV-am, if you are prepared to open your door to any political conman with a nice smile and a camera crew, some new carpets for you and some old policies for the viewer. Regardless of the gimmicks, or even the policies of the parties, there is one thing that all the party leaders are trying to get over, and that is unity. Unity within their party and, more importantly, unity under the leader. That, after all, is what a leader is there for—to rule, to dominate. We can laugh at them and their antics but support for a leader, means someone else taking decisions for you. Leaders and democracy do not mix. As the election looms and the ranks close, this becomes all the clearer. The Alliance when they disagree, have a split for a few weeks until it is glossed over; the Labour Party have a few expulsions behind closed doors; and the Tories? Well the Tories don't look like they need to worry too much on that count. The Scottish Tory Party Conference recently spent three days in what they call "debate". Of the 294 resolutions put to the conference only one was in any way critical of the government. The whole charade was stage-managed as the first unofficial party political broadcast of the election campaign. It's just a taste of things to come. Every night we'll get the gimmicks—here's the party leader shaking hands, here's the party leader out shopping, here's the party leader driving a tank. And while wars and world hunger get relegated to the last item on the news, we'll see the party leader being cheerful, the party leader being caring, the party leader being defiant. It's not just confined to the news programmes either—David Steel appeared onGame For A Laugh dressed as a policeman and Thatcher had a go at playing Prime Minister in a sketch from Yes Minister. Even Saturday mornings aren't free from the vote-catchers—the children's programme Saturday Superstore recently had each of the party leaders on in turn. Each party's image makers had obviously done their market research—here's the party leader with no jacket, no tie, but a trendy cardigan. "I think I can safely say that I speak for the whole of this great nation of ours when I say my favourite disco record of the moment is blah blah blah". OK, they're not kissing babies, but molesting children's minds was what it amounted to. Of course, we shouldn't be surprised at a quick change of clothes to suit a different audience (after all, policies are jettisoned just as quickly) but the victorious SDP candidate in the Greenwich bye-election, in February of this year, has turned it into a fine art. Part of her campaign strategy that helped the SDP win Greenwich and break the mould for the seventeenth time, involved wearing "cheerful jumpers and sensible dresses" while canvassing on council estates and "smart sludge-coloured two-piece suits" for Tory areas (Guardian, 12 February 1987). In stark contrast to such patronising tactics that are part and parcel of the politics of leadership, the Socialist Party has no leaders, no secret committees and no advertising agency. We've also got damn few candidates—at this election anyway. We won't be jumping in and out of OAP's homes for the benefit of the viewer. Nor will we be jumping in and out of sensible dresses and sludge-coloured suits for the benefit of the voter. Let's not look to leaders to do our thinking for us, at this election or at any time. Brian Gardner Glasgow Branch