Federated Freedom

Socialism is not a religion but a method of understanding and changing the world. This is a speculative essay on how socialism may perhaps organise its decision making and should not be treated as party policy as our position is that when socialism is established, how it is organised will be determined by the majority at the time and not in advance by a small group as ourselves. We are also sure that there will be many adaptations to suit particular conditions and specific situations, taking into account the history, the geography and local customs.

Marx’s theory of socialist revolution is grounded on the fundamental principle that “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.” Marx held to this view throughout his political activity, and it distinguished his theory of social change from that of both those who appealed to governments and industrialists to change the world for the benefit of the working class and of those who relied on the determined action of some enlightened minority of professional revolutionaries to liberate the working class.

There is an enormous confusion in the use of the term “socialism.” It is mistakenly identified with state control and police rule. Socialist emancipation is incompatible with any state ownership or party rule, and true socialisation of the means of production requires true participation of all citizens in social decision-making. Socialist society is based on the free association of all individuals who work together to produce the goods necessary for their collective well-being. All will work according to their capacities and their needs will be fully satisfied. It is through such a free association, when labour in all its aspects becomes controlled by the workers themselves that production will rest not upon decisions of the planners, but of the freely determined wishes of the producers themselves. Socialism will have no need of the irrational remnants of a past age, such as prices, money or wages. The socialist view is that the future will see the rise of a free association, a society wherein neither class nor government shall exist. Socialism is a society of the free and equal, the rule of the people.  Each individual, with all his or her distinctive abilities and needs, is at the same time a social being. One becomes human only in society. Need for personal freedom goes together with the need to be recognized and esteemed in the community to which one belongs. Socialism presupposes a conception of mankind as a being capable of free creative activity, who brings to life the individual’s potential and at the same time satisfies the needs of others. The whole purpose of the socialist struggle for universal human emancipation is to create different conditions, different social structures, under which this potential can be brought to life.

Firstly, the means of production and means of other socially necessary activities must not remain the monopoly of any particular social group (bourgeoisie, bureaucracy, technocracy); they ought to be socialised not turned into the property of the state. The realm of democracy is not only the political sphere but the whole sphere of public life – production, education, scientific research, cultural activities, health service, etc. This is possible under the conditions of a thorough decentralisation. There is no need for any concentration of power in the hands of professional politicians. A form of democracy without professional politics is councils-democracy or self-government. Work has reached the point where it is now possible both to satisfy the needs of all individuals and to reduce the necessary working hours to a level which will allow everybody truly to participate in communal activities and decision-making processes.

Socialisation of the means of production is the transformation of private property into common social property. To be common social property means: (a) to belong to the society as a whole (b) to be put at the disposal of the community the fruits of such work to provide for individual and collective social needs. The justification for the socialisation of the means of production is that those means were actually produced by social work, by the accumulated, unpaid surplus work of hired producers over a long period of time. What makes socialisation a truly democratic act is the effective introduction of worker’s self-management. The assembly of all people (in small communities), or the council composed of delegates (in large ones) become responsible for the making of decisions regarding all issues of production, distribution and communal life.

 Marx's conception of what a fully democratic system would be like seems to had been influenced by events in France. Here's how he described the Paris Commune of 1871 which he held up as an example of how the working class should exercise political power once they had won control of it:
"The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time..In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents."

The democratic organisation of all people as citizens of the world would need to operate through different scales of social co-operation. Locally, in town or country, we would be involved with our parish or neighbourhood. Even now, there are many thousands of men and women throughout the country who work voluntarily on parish and district councils and in town neighbourhoods for the benefit of their communities. But these efforts would be greatly enhanced by the freedoms of a society run entirely through voluntary co-operation. Such local organisation would be in the context of regional co-operation which could operate by adapting the structures of present national governments. Whilst some departments such as Inland Revenue and the Treasury, essential to the capitalist state, would be abolished, others like Agriculture and the Environment could be adapted to the needs of socialist society and could be part of regional councils and would assist in the work of implementing the decisions of regional populations. With the abolition of the market system, communities in socialism will not only be able to make free and democratic decisions about what needs to be done they will also be free to use their resources to achieve those aims. Communities will be free to decide democratically how best to use those resources. Small units could be run by regular meetings of all the workers. In the cases of large organisations these could be run by elected committees accountable to the people working in them. In this way, democratic practice would apply not just to the important policy decisions that would steer the main direction of development, it would extend to the day-to-day activities of the work place.

Some anarchist advocates hold that all big systems are intrinsically bad and that all those activities that require them (for example, industrial manufacturing, air transport, even big cities) ought to be abandoned according to some. Murray Bookchin, an exponent of what he called libertarian municipalism has countered:
“....I don't want to go back to the past. I am not a primitivist...I think that the main causes of our problems lie in social relations — in capitalism, the nation-state — and in the commodification of all things and relations. If we organized social life along cooperative and humanistic lines, technology could be one of the major solutions to our problems. Primitivists believe we have too much civilization. I believe we're not civilized enough. Some primitivists are even against "society," but I think that without society you are not a human being. They believe in personal autonomy, I believe in social freedom. They seem to believe that there is a "natural man," an "uncorrupted ego," which civilization has poisoned. I believe that competition and other class and hierarchical relations have corrupted society, and that we need instead a cooperative civilization...”

Bookchin  goes on to explain:-

"Democracy is something that anarchism often seems to have problems with. This is one area in which I differ with authentic anarchists, who emphasize an individual ego and the fulfillment of its desires as the overriding consideration. Many anarchists reject democracy as the "tyranny" of the majority over the minority. They think that when a community makes decisions by majority vote, it violates the "autonomy" of the egos of the individuals who voted in the minority. They seem to think that somehow those who voted against a decision, because they are "autonomous," shouldn't have to follow it.
I think that that idea is naive at best and a prescription for chaos at worst. Decisions, once made, have to be binding. Of course minorities should always have the right to object to majority decisions and to freely voice their own views. Majorities have no right to try to prevent a minority from voicing its views and trying to win majority support for them.
The question is, what is the fairest way to make community wide decisions? I think majority voting is not only the fairest but the only viable way for a face-to-face democratic society to function, and that decisions made by majority vote should be binding on all the members of the community, whether they voted in favor of a measure or against it.
And unlike many anarchists, I don't think a particular individual or municipality should be able to do whatever it wants to do at all times. Lack of structure and institutions leads to chaos and even arbitrary tyranny. I believe in law, and the future society I envision would also have a constitution. Of course, the constitution would have to be the product of careful consideration, by the empowered people. It would be democratically discussed and voted upon. But once the people have ratified it, it would be binding on everyone. It is not accidental that historically, oppressed people who were victims of the arbitrary behavior of the ruling classes — "barons," as Hesiod called them in seventh-century B.C. Greece — demanded constitutions and just laws as a remedy...”

Decentralisation has a number of shortcomings, such as:
(1) The absence of necessary coordination leads to waste of natural resources, inefficiency. Some important social activities require common natural and human resources, division of roles and unique direction. These include energy production, public transportation, large-scale production of goods, protection of the natural environment, production of indispensable raw materials, defense.
(2) A low level of productivity based on small scale technology requires more labour. Many important human needs can not be met with small scale technology.
(3) Small scale social organisation and reduction of needs makes many rare, specific human skills redundant. Specialised scientific research, fine arts, cannot be supported by small, self-reliant communities.
(4) The inevitable social-psychological consequence of a narrow, provincial mentality returning after capitalism’s cosmopolitanism where any return to parochial forms of life and thought would constitute a major retrogression. The idiocy of rural life, as Marx described it.
(5) Decentralisation does not automatically  eliminate domination and oppression. One huge, faceless bureaucracy may be merely replaced by a number of small, personal, petty tyrants. Far from being more beautiful, the small master may be more inconsiderate, arbitrary and sadistic.

Rather than decentralisation, many prefer a federated system of organisation in the sense of a union of communities (regions, provinces, cultural organisations) which collaborate as equal partners while preserving a high degree of their autonomy. Certain issues can be resolved only in a global way; for example, efforts to improve the quality of the natural environment. In a world of growing interdependence, federalism appears to be the optimal way of transcending parochialism and localism. A federation is possible when all communities have an  interest in cooperation, in sharing resources and goods. The basic assumption of the federation is that it is a free creation of the parts rather than a primary whole that determines the conditions of its parts. No matter how high a degree of coordination in a union of this type, it does not have any dominating center because none of its component units aspires to domination, and/or because all of them strongly resist any such tendency. The stability of such a federation depends on a balance of two opposing forces.
One works irreversibly toward greater identity and uniformity; the other maintains diversity and preserves specific communal traditions and cultural values.
 In the same way in which an individual experiences a community as an indispensable social environment when he or she freely acts and develops in it, a community willingly accepts a larger society as its natural environment when it can freely develop within it, autonomously decide on its specific problems, equally participate in the solution of issues common for the whole society, and when it can collaborate with other parts without being abused or exploited by any of them. In fact the level of coordination among parts can be higher in a federation then in a centralist system. What makes it a federation is equal distribution of power regardless of the size, and full political, economical and cultural self-determination.

One difficulty is difference in size and population. If ordinary democratic rules would be applied, a bigger and more populous federal unit would have a larger electorate, a larger number of representatives in the federal self-governing body (federal assembly) and, consequently, more power. Purely quantitative and representative democracy must be corrected in order to diminish the importance of numbers and to protect the interests of the minorities. There must be a political culture that combines autonomy with solidarity. An association would fall apart if its constituent communities would pursue only their selfish, particular interests; fight all the time; and squeeze out half-satisfactory compromise solutions. The purpose of a common political culture would be to provide a consensus in basic premises for any conflict resolution. Such basic premises are, first, agreement about ultimate preferences, other conditions being equal; second, agreement about which ultimate preferences have priority when other conditions are not equal, and when they happen to be mutually incompatible. When a federal unit, for selfish reasons, raises a particular issue, it will be invited to justify it with reference to generally accepted principles. Dialogues cannot be won with short-sighted, self-centered policies. It is true that these policies can be stubbornly defended once one escapes the field of rational and moral discourse and turns to formalistic legal rationalization. After all, it is conceivable that, using its veto power, a part may blackmail the rest of the society. But in such a case either the particular discordant leadership would lose the support of its own constituency and would be recalled, or the federation’s social fabric would collapse, and it would practically fall apart. One of the basic purposes of living in any community is mutual aid, support of the whole for any of its parts when coping with a problem that exceeds its own powers. It is important to note here that while “aid” appears to be a one-way operation, a humanitarian act, it is, in fact, an expression of reciprocity. It turns out to be a rational thing to do, a matter of mutual interest.

Often seen as the most difficult problem of a socialist revolution is bringing to life self-government as the new form of democracy, the problem of the transcendence of the state - the “withering away of the state”.The practical meaning of the transformation of government into self- government may be spelled out in the following way:

(a) The members of a self-governing body, at any level of social organisation, are directly elected by the people or delegated by a lower-level organ of self- government. The procedure of election is fully democratic: no candidate can have any privileges because of his or her professional role, past merits, or backing by existing political organisations.

(b) The members of a self-governing body are elected for limited intervals of time; the principle of rotation strictly observed and it excludes perpetuation of the power of professional politicians.

(c) The members of self-government are directly responsible to their electorate. They are obliged to regularly give account to the community which they represent and are subject to recall. They articulate the needs of the community, but also by finding ways to reconcile particular interests of the community with interests of other communities and the society as a whole. The institution of self-government excludes authoritarian leadership. The will of the people must count all the time, and the use of force is out of the question. But it does not follow that the roles are simply reversed and that elected representatives have no other alternative but to follow blindly every twist and turn of the mass current. In case of conflict they will make an effort to prevail due to the strength of their arguments – or else they will resign. The road to becoming a career politician is closed. And the community is strongly motivated to have an able representative.

(d) Representatives must not enjoy any material privileges which would produce undesirable social differences, lowers the motivation of the representatives as well as the morale of the community, and eventually leads to the creation of a new alienated social elite.

(e) An organ of self-government constitutes the supreme authority at the given communal level. That is where it differs from analogous organs of participation, co-management, or workers-control which have only advisory, consultative, or controlling functions and, at best, only share authority with the political bureaucracy, capitalists, or the techno-structure. “Self-governing” institutions presuppose the elimination of all ruling classes and elites; professional-technical management must be subordinated to them. They create basic policy, formulate long range goals, establish the rules and control the implementation of accepted policies.

(f ) While there might be a plurality of organisations that mediate between people and self-governing institutions, none of them must be allowed to dominate the institutions of self-government. They can play useful and, indeed, necessary social roles: to express specific group interests, to politically educate people, to mobilise them for alternative programs of development, to contribute to the creation of a powerful public opinion. But none of them must have control over the institutions of self-government. Whatever the personal affiliations of individual elected representatives, their loyalty must go directly and fully to the people whom they represent, and not to any mediating organization.

(g) All power of self-governing bodies is delegated to them by the people from the given field and is not allocated from the center. When social power is alienated, all decision-making goes from the top to the basis of the social pyramid. When it is not, it is always the lower level of social organization, closer to the base, which decides how much regulation, coordination and control is needed at the next higher level. According to such a decision, a certain amount of power is, then, delegated. In such a way the authority of a central federal assembly rests on that of district or regional assemblies, and all of them are eventually authorized to decide on certain issues by the councils of basic working organizations and local communities. Learning from experience in a quickly changing world will give rise to changes of the whole structure. The problem is not central decision-making as some anarchists may argue but the source of authority for it. In self-government, power originates with the councils in the independent social communities, even when a considerable amount of it has been delegated to central self-governing institutions.

If self-government is to replace the state in all its socially necessary functions, it has to embrace a network of councils and assemblies constituted at several levels of social reality and on both territorial and productive principles. One would have to distinguish clearly among at least four levels:

(1) Basic organs of self-government in most elementary working and living communities;

(2) Organs of self-government in larger associations – enterprises, communes;

(3) Organs of self-government for whole regions and branches of social activity;

(4) Central institutions of self-government for the global society.

1. The basic level of self-government is characterised by direct democracy. Each individual has the right (although not an obligatory duty) to directly participate in decision- making in most elementary units of social life. Thus the individual has a chance to express and affirm oneself not only as a citizen, but also as a producer and a consumer (the last in a most general sense, with respect not only to material goods but also culture, natural environment and communal activities).

2. The next level is constituted by councils of larger working associations and the assemblies of larger local communities (communes). Here referenda and assemblies of all workers or residents maybe the forms of direct democracy. Councils composed of the elected representatives practically become the highest authority in the area or enterprise. But they are strictly responsible to the given community. However, they are limited in their decision-making by the existing legislation and accepted policies of the higher-level organ of self-government. In a true system of self-government the laws are not merely imposed from the center. The centre has been delegated power to pass them, therefore they can be revoked once they stop serving any useful social purpose.

3. Another intermediary level is constituted, on the one hand, by the coordinating self-governing boards for whole branches of activity ( industry, energy, agriculture, transportation, etc.); on the other hand, by regional organs of self-government coordinating the development of all communes from a definite area. Once a bourgeoisie and bureaucracy have gone from the historical stage, the purpose of better organisation, coordination and direction is no longer to increase efficiency in the struggle against another nation or region, not to control the market. The main purposes of coordination are now the elimination of waste, reduction of friction, joining forces for the solution of ecological problems, mutual aid and solidarity, aid for accelerated growth of the weak and underdeveloped.

The central organ of self-government – a federal assembly or congress of people’s delegates – must integrate both networks, one covering various types of activity, the other various territorial communities. There are a variety of forms possible for their inner organization, but all of them have to take into account the following three necessities:

The first is to reconcile the particular interests of various types of activity with the particular interests of various regions.

The second is to reconcile particular interests of both professional and regional groups with the common interest of the whole society.

The third is to preserve the unity of authority in order to secure efficiency and reduce wasteful inner conflicts, but at the same time to separate powers – in order to prevent dangerous concentration of powers in the hands of an oligarchy or a single dictator.

One possible solution is to have three different chambers: one composed of the delegates of all workers councils; another constituted by the delegates of all communes; a third composed of the directly elected representatives of all citizens. The former two would approach issues from the point of view of particular professional or regional interests. The third would mediate between them from the point of view of general interests of the whole society.

One of the most difficult problems of any democracy is how to preserve unity of purpose and protect the general interest without making it overwhelmingly strong. The classical liberal solution has been to separate legislative, executive and judiciary power – this is an achievement of lasting value. However at a much higher level of social organisation public institutions assume some new powers, e.g., regulation and planning of work and the overall control of the implementation of adopted projects. All these powers should be separated. This can be done, for example, by creating a council composed of elected members of the Assembly for each of these powers. Each member of the Assembly would thus participate in protecting a certain interest in one of the chambers, and would also participate in the execution of one specific power in one of the Assembly’s councils.

 Bookchin explains:-

"...The overriding problem is to change the structure of society so that people gain power. The best arena to do that is the municipality — the city, town, and village — where we have an opportunity to create a face-to-face democracy. We can transform local government into popular assemblies where people can discuss and make decisions about the economy and society in which they live. When we get power at the neighborhood level in a town or city, we can confederate all the assemblies and then confederate those towns and cities into a popular government — not a state (which is an instrument of class rule and exploitation), but a government, where the people have the power. This is what I call communalism in a practical sense. It should not be confused with communitarianism, which refers to small initiatory projects like a "people's" food cooperative, garage, printing press — projects that often become capitalistic when they don't fall apart or succumb to competition by other enterprises.

People will never achieve this kind of face-to-face democratic society spontaneously. A serious, committed movement is necessary to fight for it. And to build that movement, radical leftists need to develop an organization — one that is controlled from the base, so that we don't produce another Bolshevik Party. It has to be formed slowly on a local basis, it has to be confederally organized, and together with popular assemblies, it will build up an opposition to the existing power, the state and class rule. I call this approach libertarian municipalism...

... We live in a very confusing time. Sometimes people look for easy answers to complex questions. If a machine or item functions poorly, it is easy to blame technology rather than the competitive corporations that try to make money, or to blame people's attitudes rather than the mass media that shapes people's thinking, or to say we should go back to old ideologies — Christian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, orthodox Marxism, orthodox anarchism, even orthodox capitalism — for solutions.

People need new ideas based on reason, not superstition; on freedom, not personal autonomy; on creativity, not adaptation; on coherence, not chaos; and on a vision of a free society, based on popular assemblies and confederalism, not on rulers and a state. If we do not organize a real movement — a structured movement — that tries to guide people toward a rational society based on reason and freedom, we face eventual disaster. We cannot withdraw into our "autonomous" egos or retreat to a primitive, indeed unknown past. We must change this insane world, or else society will dissolve into an irrational barbarism — as it is already beginning to do these days."

Instead of centralised power and competition, socialists advocate decentralisation and cooperation. Decentralised communities can be federated horizontally, thus ensuring stability through a low center of gravity rather than the precarious, ever-shifting power configurations of top-down rule. Anarchism does not demand a “one size fits all” model, and therefore embraces the organic rather than the mechanical.

In The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society, Sam Dolgoff writes:
“Federation is the coordination through free agreement – locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. A vast coordinated network of voluntary alliances embracing the totality of social life, in which all the groups and associations reap the benefits of unity while still exercising autonomy within their own spheres and expanding the range of their freedom.”

An Uncaring Society

That capitalism is an uncaring, harsh society is hardly a debateable subject but the following news item takes a bit of beating even by its inhumane standards. 'The mummified body of an elderly woman has been discovered in her flat where  she had lain undiscovered for six years. Anne Leitrim, who was in her 70s, had not been seen since 2008 and neighbours had assumed she moved out of the area because her home appeared empty.' (Daily Telegraph, 27 June) And how did they discover her body? Her remains were finally found when bailiffs visited the property in the 1980s-built block to collect unpaid debts. RD

Socialism is the enemy of Nationalism

Book Review from the December 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nation et lutte de classe by Otto Strasser and Anton Pannekoek (Union generale d'editions, Paris.)

Before the first world war, Austria was a multi-national empire in which the Emperor and his bureaucracy ruled not only over Germans and Hungarians but also over Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Croats, Slovenes and others. As a result theoretical discussion of "the national question" became a speciality of Austrian Social Democracy. The problem was particularly acute in Bohemia where Germans and Czechs lived side by side and where a language quarrel raged over schools, jobs in civil service, signs in railway stations, and so on. Even the Social Democratic Party was not immune, the Czech party splitting in 1905 into those who wanted a separate Czechoslovakia and those prepared to work with the German-speaking party within the Austrian Empire.

Orthodox Social Democracy found difficulty in arguing against the Czech separatists since they were too nationalists, regarding the nation not only as a legitimate political form but even as the suitable framework for "socialism". However, within the Social Democratic movement, there were people who insisted on the world-wide nature of socialism and on the incompatibility between nationalism and socialism. They called themselves "intransigent internationalists". Among these were the authors of two pamphlets, first published in 1912, recently translated into French and published together as a single book: Otto Strasser, editor of a local German-language Social Democratic paper in Reichenberg (then in Austrian Bohemia, now in Czechoslovakia and called Liberec) and Anton Pannekoek, a native of the Netherlands then active in the Social Democratic Party in North Germany.

In his pamphlet L'Ouvrier et la nation (The Worker and the Nation), Strasser takes the various arguments of the nationalists as to why workers should regard themselves as part of a nation with a common interest (such as language, land of birth, national character) and demolishes them one by one. He also attacks those Social Democrats who argued that the best way to beat the nationalists was to meet them on their own ground by showing how the Social Democratic programme was in the "national interest". This (which was in practice the policy of the Social Democratic Party) was, said Strasser, self-defeating and should be opposed.

Pannekoek's pamphlet Lutte de Classe et Nation (Class Struggle and Nation) is more theoretical. He accepts the definition of nation given by Otto Bauer, the Austrian party's leading theoretician, viz. "a human grouping linked by a common destiny and a common character". He sees, however, nations as the product of the era of the rising bourgeoisie; at that time capitalists and workers did indeed have a "common destiny" against the forces of feudalism. But, with the development of capitalism, the class struggle more and more breaks out between capitalists and workers shattering their "common destiny".

For the workers the nation then comes to be replaced by the class as the "common destiny". Becoming class conscious, therefore, involves rejecting nationalism. He describes the "national conflict' in multi-national States such as Austria as merely an aspect of the competition between the capitalists within such states, with the different sections using language and nationalism to try to win mass support for their vested interests. He advocates that workers speaking the same language finding themselves divided between two different states (he gives as an example Ukrainian-speakers who were then to be found in both Austro-Hungary and Russia) should not form a single cross-frontier party, but should join the Social Democratic party of the state in which they happened to live, in order to help the struggle to win political power in that state.

Pannekoek emphasises the world, rather than inter-national, character of socialism:

The socialist mode of production does not develop opposing interests between nations as is the case with the capitalist mode of production. The economic unit is neither the State nor the nation, but the world. This mode of production is much more than a network of national production units linked with each other by an intelligent communications policy and by international conventions as described by Bauer on page 519. It is an organisation of world production as a unit and the common affair of the whole of humanity (Pannekoek's emphasis).

For him, "nations" will only survive in world socialism as groups speaking the same language and even then a single world language may evolve.

For all their criticism of the national policy of the Social Democratic parties, Strasser and Pannekoek were themselves Social Democrats and (at this time) shared many of their illusions, particularly that a socialist party should have a maximum (socialism) and a minimum (social and democratic reforms within capitalism) programme. This mistaken belief that socialists should try to combine the struggle for socialism with a struggle for reforms comes out occasionally in the text of both pamphlets. But this does not detract from the fact that both pamphlets put essentially the socialist case against nationalism.

Adam Buick

'The Good Old Days' - Glasgow in the Nineteenth Century

'The Good Old Days' - Glasgow in the Nineteenth Century From the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard The accommodation in which my family lived up to my teens was a crumbling Glasgow tenement at whose age I will not hazard a guess, though some idea of it can be gained from the knowledge that the lavatories were added many years after its original construction. I recall my mother telling me that there used to be dry latrines in the back-courts which were emptied by men with leather-lined wicker baskets. This information, even then when I was ignorant of social problems, filled me with disgust: to think that men should find it necessary to take up such employment in order to gain cash sufficient to purchase the bare necessities of life. Doubtless some of those early sewage workers considered themselves better off than their neighbours, for they had a steady job with little chance of being made redundant. As an added bonus they at least were outside in the streets away from the "dark satanic mills" and the ever-watchful eye of a charge hand ready to threaten with dismissal any lazyworkers who fell asleep on the job during their 14-18 hours' shift. Although it is true that these sewage workers risked contracting some disease in such unhygienic and noisome employment, were they any worse off than their neighbours who worked in a factory where machinery lay unguarded, and a moment's inattention (common among workers fatigued with long hours of labour, and bad diets), could result in their being caught up by the gigantic strength of the machine and "rent asunder, not perhaps for his own good; but, as a sacrifice to the commercial prosperity of Great Britain" — as Henry Morley so satirically puts it in his article Ground in the Mill? Morley tells us of: The boy whom his stern master, the machine, caught as he stood on a stool wickedly looking out at the sun-light and flying clouds. These were no business of his, and he was fully punished when the machine he served caught him by one arm and whirled him round and around till he was thrown dead. There were, of course, workers who protested against such conditions. In lots of cases they were marked as trouble-making radicals in some black book, and dismissed at the first opportunity presented to a vengeful employer fearful of workers learning the power of combination and political action. The sacked workers' places would be quickly filled from the ranks of the Irishmen and Highlanders who, forced from the land that their fathers had lived on for hundreds of years, all in the sacred name of improvement, found it necessary to flock in their hordes to the cities like Glasgow in the hope of earning a living from the newly-emerging industries: filling to over-flowing the tenements in that city, making it necessary for the ruling class to erect more because of the epidemics which broke out, threatening the health of the rich in their comfortable mansions. We must not think that the Glasgow tenements erected in the tremendous boom period that was the Industrial Revolution were built because the capitalists were full of altruism for the working class. In 1840, for example, W. P. Allison in a pamphlet criticizing the Scottish Poor Law, wrote: "The higher ranks in Scotland do much less for the relief of poverty than those of any country in Europe." The tenements were erected firstly to ensure a profitable income in rents and fees to the capitalists, and secondly to have the labour convenient to the large factories or industrial sites. When the "five minutes horn" sounded, the streets would become alive with men and women rushing to clock-in before the gates were closed, and they were either "quartered" or sent home for being late. Just opposite the tenement in which we lived was a vast piece of waste ground known as "The Foundry". This was formerly owned by the firm of John Neilson & Co., who built the first iron-ship, "Fairy Queen", in 1831. C. A. Oakley in his excellent (but expensive) bookThe Second City informs us that the ship was "transported through the streets accompanied by great crowds [of unemployed?] and launched by steam-crane at the Broomie Law", on the edge of the River Clyde.  Since the route from Garscube Foundry to the Clyde led downhill through the new working-class tenement areas, the sight of the ship must have been a mixed blessing, for in Glasgow when a ship was launched large numbers of hands were laid off work till their masters required their skills once more to use in their labour process — only in those days there was no Social Security payment (given out of the surplus-value created by workers) to keep them from dying of hunger if they were unemployed with no cash to buy food, for this was the period when men with no legs were exhorted to stand on their own feet. Thomas Carlyle in his tract on Chartism made a slashing indictment of this attitude, saying: The master of horses, when the summer labour is done, has to feed his horses through the winter. If he said to his horses: "Quadrupeds, I have no longer work for you — go and seek cartage" — They finally, under pains of hunger take to leaping fences, eating foreign property, and — we know the rest. But this was the age in which the theories of Thomas Malthus found favour, who said that population growth tended to exceed food production; and sad though it might be, some would have to suffer deprivation lest the delicate balance of nature be upset. It is not as if food was scarce in those days. Proof of this can be found in William Cobbett'sRural Rides. In it he tells of folk starving in the 1830s while livestock in abundance fed in the fields for the rich — because insufficient profit could be realized in the markets for meat. Under the capitalist economic system goods are not produced simply to feed, clothe or shelter people. In many countries even today workers who cannot afford the prices asked for goods can tighten their belts on their empty stomachs; lie down in their under a hedge, and die. If they should attempt to seize the food which lies in shops and warehouses, the law-enforcement officers will beat and shoot them down in fulfillment of their job as protectors of property. It was a great boast of the Church of Scotland that they could provide for the poor out of the offerings placed in the poor-box at the front door. Since the distribution of this charity was in the hands of domineering Elders, doubtless many workers in Glasgow went hungry rather than submit to their will, until sheer desperation drove them into the invidious position of "rice Christians". He who would sneer at such an attitude as "obsequious" should realize that the threat of starvation to a man and his family can make even the most proud humble himself at the feet of him who can relieve the hunger. One of Glasgow's most famous citizens was Thomas Chalmers, whose name is mentioned by Marx in Capital. He was a preacher with a tremendous gift of oratory (he must have had, for he actually made the rich cry — surely a most difficult task?). He originated a scheme for aiding the poor for which, for some strange reason, he has become famous. He undertook to "relinquish all claim to the fund [for relieving the poor] raised by assessment", and provide for the poor of his own parish by the church-door collection alone. W. Gordon Blaikie in his short Life of Chalmers tells us: Hitherto the cost of the poor in the parish had been at the rate of £1,400 per annum, whereas the collections amounted to only £480. Under the diligent hands of Dr. Chalmers the original requirement of £1,400 was reduced to £280. He did this by sending his Elders into the teeming slums, that were a blot on the face of Glasgow before the College was razed to the ground to make way for the railway station that was set up on that site. These Elders used their "spiritual" authority over the relatives of the poor (themselves desperately poor) and exhorted them to face up to their family responsibilities, and support their destitute relatives so as not to make them a burden on the rates or church. Let u seriously consider this question, putting aside any bias we may feel towards religion and those who imbibe it. Was Chalmers's scheme to relieve the poor a success? Did his efforts really aid the poor materially? No better answer can be given than that supplied by the gigantic Edward Irving, who was Chalmers's assistant in Glasgow during the period before and after the 1820 radical insurrection. In Mrs. Oliphant's Life of Edward Irving, one of Irving letters to a friend says "I have visited in about 300 families - and have seen them in nakedness and starvation." He writes in another letter of their wants, their misfortunes, their ill-requited labour, their hopes vanishing, their families dispersing in hope of better habitations, the Scottish economy of their homes giving way before encroaching necessity; debt rather than saving their condition; bread and water their scanty fare; hard and ungrateful labour the portion of their house. It is little wonder that John Galt in his interesting book Annals of the Parish (interesting because it shows the ideas that were commonly held in those times) says in his description of the Glasgow weavers:  It cut me to the heart to see so many fine young men, in the rising prime of life, already in the arms of pale consumption. The phrase "the good old days" is used to make the myth of an era when life was good and men happy. Capitalism has never provided, and cannot provide, such a time. H. Cunningham

Socialism is the only alterntive

The socialist objective is the simultaneous abolition of capital, wage labour and the state and it will be a self-organised workers movement which will bring about this transformation and socialisation of the means of production. No longer will society be based upon the capitalist system of business expansion and contraction, economic boom and slump, but instead will be replaced by the  collective conscious planned control, exercised by the producers at all levels of society. Socialism is the voluntary and free association of the producers, a conception of the decentralised, self-governing society, federated from the bottom upwards. This is the vision of a communal ownership and social control against the coercive alienated control of the state and of capital. This is a principle of self-emancipation where the working class will educate itself and develop its capacities for self-government through its own organisations.

Marxists are frequently accused of underestimating the complexity of modern economy and that we have  a mistaken view of production relations. We are told that the elimination of commodity production, and instead production for use rather than for exchange is not possible. Those who lack confidence in Marxist thought argue for a more reasonable feasible version of ‘socialism’ that incorporate markets and private ownership of the means of production, in other words, a 'mixed' economy with basic utilities run by public corporations, medium and small scale production undertaken by workers' cooperatives, and private or family concerns operating in many service industries and in retail distribution.

Central planning which socialists are accused of advocating need not entail centralisation in the top-down sense. This can be thwarted by democratic, de-centralised self-management, a system of administration and planning in which the mass of workers themselves allocate resources and democratically determine the priorities. Such a system requires that people articulate their own needs as producers, consumers and that they take control of their living and working conditions, and that they free themselves of the despotism both of the bureaucracy and the tyranny of the market.  Democracy in production is more likely to be realised if production units are smaller and decentralised. This is to bring matters within human scale so that individuals are able to fully participate effectively in processes of decision making and production.

But it can be argued that socialist administration and its practice are complementary and are neither centralising nor decentralising but can be described as centralising from the bottom up. No matter how  ironic it may seem to those who identify Marx with a bureaucratic state-ownership, Marx's earliest political passion was a hatred of bureaucracy and it remained with him throughout his life. Marx's writings embodies the freedom of the individual and argues that the worker of today, subjugated to a specialised function in the factory will give way to the 'individual an all round development' who is able to participate in a diversity of functions in production. Likewise, the Socialist Party looks to replace the coercive power of the state by the democratic community as the legitimate social authority. This new social authority will be the fusion of social and political relationships, removing the existing separation between the state and civic society. A new social network is to become integral to the practical life of the individual. The individual voluntarily constitutes this new identity rather than having it imposed upon individual life from the outside. The new social authority is a legitimate because individuals have given, continue to give and may, if they wish, withdraw their consent.

All the main features of organisation and planning under socialism are to be discerned according to this principle. The subordination of production to the satisfaction of human needs as opposed to the pursuit of profit, the abolition of the state, of capital and of the division of labour in so far as it prevents the participation in the diversity of life activities, the 'end’ of politics as a sphere independent of the practical life of individuals, the abolition of forms of representation disconnected to the practical, everyday world of individuals. Work is no longer a mere means to an end but has also become 'life's prime want', integral to unfolding the individual's human potentialities. Socialism replaces the ruling class control of the state and capital with social control. Socialism has abolished alienated and exploitative relations and its associated producers are capable of instituting a rational organisation of the productive forces.

Economic necessity drove the weavers of Rochdale into co-operation, and the same cause led to its expansion. In the past, optimistic co-operative proponents anticipated that soon they would monopolise the trade of the working class but the supermarkets threaten the very existence of the Co-operative movement. It is argued that they are, like the trade unions, training schools for socialism yet co-operatives are managed on purely business lines, (apart from the funds devoted to educational and charity purposes) and are unable to evolve into a non-exploitative society. Its  centralisation of production and distribution differs little from any chain-store.

Utopians create a blueprint of the future socialist society yet they often neglect to explain the political agency capable of giving practical effect to the blueprint. Utopian socialists confirm the associational principle but had been undermined by their belief that the nexus of power could be bypassed rather than confronted. Many have produced excellent blueprints of the feasible socialist economy, but nowhere do they indicate how their models might be implemented and merely rely upon the reasonableness of ideas to attract popular support. The Zeitgeist Project is an example.

Richard Wolff proposes what he describes as Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDE’s) and Gar Alperovitz suggests a “pluralist commonwealth” which is a system of cooperatives, neighborhood corporations, worker-owned companies, social enterprises, land trusts, and municipal utilities—along with, of course, small scale private businesses. Both men are responding to the traditional view of “socialism” as a command economy of state-capitalism , which at one time seemed  progressive to many but now stands revealed as limited to early phases of primitive accumulation and forced industrialisation, where the means of production have been taken over by the state but commodity production continues. The workers themselves remain subject to the political extraction of surplus value presided over by a bureaucratic class. The market has continued, along with the veil of the money form concealing the continued exploitation of the workers. Any idea of social control has been firmly suppressed  by the state. The abundance of cooperative wealth and the free supply of goods and services has nowhere been in evidence in these countries.

Lesser known advocates of market-socialism are:-

Diane Elson in 'Market Socialism or the Socialization of the Market?’ who proposes a model in which firms are publicly owned, internally self-managed but with representatives of consumers and the local community on their boards; the functions of the capital market are assumed by a 'Regulator of Public Enterprises';the dialogue between firms and 'Wage and Price Commissions' sets prices.

Geoff Hodgson puts the case for some form of market socialism, one that has an essential role for democracy in the planning of the economy as a non-capitalist market economy based upon a community of producer cooperatives, each cooperative is owned, and run by the workers themselves. Their products are sold on a market. The purchase the required raw materials themselves.There is little or no central planning. Hodgson describes such a system as 'market collectivist', challenging the identification of the market with capitalism. The market is to be made the servant of 'society', democratically constituted through its social relations, rather than that invisible, anonymous power exercised over society.

Tom Devine's model conceives economic organisation as a process of 'negotiated coordination' among representatives of those affected by the decisions involved, informed by participatory discussion among the multiplicity of affected interests (Democracy and Economic Planning). Devine makes a distinction between 'market exchange’ and 'market forces'. Market exchange involves transactions between buyers and sellers, where what is being exchanged consists of either stocks (inventories) or goods and services produced by enterprises using their existing capacity. Market forces refer to the process whereby changes are brought about in the underlying allocation of resources, the relative size of different industries, the geographical distribution of economic activity, through the interaction of decisions on investment and disinvestment that are taken independently of one another, with coordination occurring ex post.

However we should be fully aware if such idealised forms of ownership were implemented of  the danger of workers' autonomy of it eventually leading to the reintroduction of competition and capitalism and the creation of a social system that distinguishes itself from past capitalism only as regards formal ownership.

“Within the cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of  production the producers do not exchange their products." Marx (Gotha)

 Marx meant that production units will not buy and sell raw materials and producer goods to and from each other and that, as a result markets will not coordinate their economic relation. Thus, the relation between production units in the future society will be like the relation between the different departments of the capitalist firm. Marx argues against a system where the economy is based upon separate, competing cooperative enterprises would re-produce capitalist 'anarchy’. What matters is that the producers are associated with each other and produce according to a common plan. Workers' cooperatives must exist on a large scale and be able to regulate production within a common plan.

However, the conscious control under a common plan advocated by Marxian socialists is not to be identified with the control of an elite organised, in the state envisaged in the genuine democratic control of the producers and citizens. The dominant traditions of socialism, both parliamentary and revolutionary, have sought to achieve socialism through the nationalisation of the means of  production rather than through the transformation of social relation. State ownership, the transfer of the title deeds to property, does nothing in itself to alter the production relations, the relations which are more fundamental than the property relations. There can be no such thing as socialism, in Marx's perspective, without the free association and self-government of the producers.

Contemporary discussions on the viability of  an alternative economy  in the attempt to combine social justice with economic efficiency draws attention to the fundamentally uncontrollable nature of the market system, immunising it from any form of the social control other than socialism. Private ownership may indeed have been replaced by various forms of shared ownership but these enterprises are still directed by market forces.

Marx describes his views on the co-operative movement quite explicitly:
(a) We acknowledge the cooperative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising and despotic system of the subordination of labour to. capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers
(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wage slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the cooperative system will never transform capitalistic society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and cooperative labour general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to. the producers themselves.
(c) We recommend to the working men to embark in cooperative production rather than in cooperative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork.
(d) We recommend to all cooperative societies to convert one part of their  joint income into a fund for propagating their principles by example as well as by precept, in other words, by promoting the establishment of new cooperative fabrics, as well as by teaching and preaching.
(e) In order to prevent cooperative societies from degenerating into ordinary middle class joint stock companies (societes par actions), all workman employed, whether shareholders or not, ought to share alike. As a mere temporary expedient, we are willing to allow shareholders a low rate of interest.- Marx Inaugural Address of the I.W.M.A.

He was indeed sympathetic to the co-operative model.

Apart from the above he previously wrote in 1864:
‘The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands...’

And later in Volume 3 of Capital Marx argued of co-operatives that ‘the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour.'

However, in each case Marx also described the limitations of co-operatives NOT advocating them as solutions.

‘...however... excellent in principle and however useful in practice, co-operative labour, if kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen, will never be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, nor even to perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries. … To save the industrious masses, co-operative labour ought to be developed to national dimensions, and, consequently, to be fostered by national means. Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economic monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour. …To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.’ (IWMA 1864)

‘Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.’ (IWMA 1866)

‘The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system’ (Capital, Vol.3)

Marx was saying that workers taking control of their own productive work processes, of organising co-operatively in firms, appeared to be a positive reaction on the part of workers to private capitalism. As such it was a source of growing confidence for the working class, proof that the historically progressive role of private capitalists had come to an end:

‘Co-operative factories furnish proof that the capitalist has become no less redundant as a functionary in production as he himself, looking down from his high perch, finds the big landowner redundant.’ (Capital, Vol. 3)

Co-operatives are certainly run on capitalist lines; it has to be or they would go under.  But they possess a democratic constitution and are composed mostly of wage-earners who can mould it as they choose. Thus it is distinguished from a normal capitalist concern. If employees are badly paid and otherwise maltreated its members are  to blame and can make good again. That some   have exclusively argued  co-ops as the way to the elimination of poverty in no way proves their uselessness, but rather demonstrates the folly of such advocates attempting to solve economic problems without a full knowledge of the economic structure and evolution of society.

The more we explain the meaning of capital versus labour, in which the capitalists, with their huge capital invested in production and transit, and deriving therefrom a surplus-value far in excess of the wages earned by the workers, have every possible advantage when it comes to a real, deadly struggle, the more will co-operatives realise that whilst the movement may live for a time, by itself, it cannot hope to lift the people into economic salvation, but must simply act as a stand-by until the workers, by political action, seize hold of all land and capital and use these for social production and social distribution.

Empty Threats

Everyone has seen the TV adverts about payday lenders coming to the rescue of hard-up workers but it seems the ads are misleading. Wonga is the UK's biggest payday lender; in 2012 it made nearly 4m loans to more than 1 million customers, but it has recently been exposed as somewhat less than benevolent. 'Britain's best-known payday lender,Wonga, has been ordered to pay more than £2.6m compensation after it was found to have sent threatening letters to customers from non-existent law firms. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said Wonga had been guilty of "unfair and misleading debt collection practices". It said the firm would be compensating around 45,000 customers.' (Guardian, 25 June) RD

Empty Promises

Fewer than two in every 10 homes for sale in England are affordable for working families on average wages. And in some areas,  would-be buyers are priced out completely, even if they can raise a sizeable deposit, according to figures from Shelter that underline the extent of the housing crisis. 'Rocketing house prices in some regions, combined with stagnant wage growth, have combined to push homes out of the reach of buyers, so much so that in more than half the country fewer than one in 10 of the suitable homes on the market was affordable to families who could put a typical 18% deposit towards their purchase.' (Guardian, 25 June) When she was Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher boasted that she was making Britain "a property owning democracy". Like all other politicians' boasts this turned out to be another empty one. RD

Cuts Before Caring

Politicians like to portray themselves as caring individuals devoting themselves to the   betterment of their electorate, but the reality is somewhat different. 'Longer waits to see a GP in the UK are "becoming the norm", the British Medical Association is warning. BMA GP leader Dr Chaand Nagpaul said "chronic underfunding" meant patients were often having to wait one or two weeks for an appointment. Some patients struggled to get an appointment, he said. Data from the GP patient survey in England shows one in 10 could not last time they tried.' (BBC News, 25 June) Government cuts on  welfare spending is a favourite target despite political denials. RD

Demolish the Old - Build the New!

The World today is full of stark and bewildering contradictions. The greatest industrial and agricultural capacity in history cannot feed, clothe and provide a decent livelihood for millions. Poverty and economic insecurity exist alongside extravagance. What is the reason for the promises, the potential of this society, and its stark reality? Why is there such a yawning gap between what is and what could be?  The answers to these questions cannot be found in cynical condemnations of “human nature” or apologies about the “way things are.” Capitalism, the social system under which we live, is responsible for the contradictions of to-day’s World.  A system of exploitation, violence, racism and war strangles our lives. Capitalism thrives on the private control of society’s wealth and production – production involving the interconnected efforts of millions of working people. The rich have one basic goal in life: to make more and more profits, and they accomplish this by dominating the economics, politics, and cultural life around the globe. The capitalists will throw workers out into the streets to starve, promote violent nationalism, and build a military arsenal that can destroy the world several times over – anything for profits. This is an irrational system.

Workers are wage slaves who survive only by selling their labour power to the capitalists. Capitalists own the means of production and pay workers for their labor power. But the working class produces far more wealth than it receives in income. The difference is the source of capitalist profits. The capitalist tries to drive down the wages of the worker. The worker is employed only as long as he or she helps create profit for the employers. When the capitalist has problems maximising his profits, he does not hesitate to throw workers out into the street. The class struggle is the ceaseless struggle which goes on from day to day in every country. It may take the form of more wages or shorter hours or the alteration of some workshop practice; but the particular point really does not matter, the opposing forces are always the same – the employers and the working class.The  capitalist system exploits the working class and creates the poverty and economic insecurity of society as a whole. Capitalism is a system of international exploitation. The capitalist class invest  abroad, penetrate foreign markets, and plunder the natural resources of developing countries. They also attempt to dominate other countries politically and militarily. This neo-colonialism bring enormous profits for the big banks and corporations, and wretched lives for the people of the developing world.

The  capitalist system is a system of economic anarchy and crisis. Capitalism is plagued by periodic economic recessions, which are becoming more serious and complex. These crises are built into the economic system. Each business tries to maximise its profits by pushing production and cutting expenses, especially the pay of workers. Economic crises are also worsened by speculation, hoarding and other schemes of the bankers, financiers and industrialists. Each tries to profit in the short run, but because of this individual greed, the people suffer. Capitalism is an obstacle to the further advancement of the material well-being of society. It is unjust, wasteful, irrational and increasingly unproductive. The situation demands a new, more rational system of economic organization that will utilize the productive forces for the benefit of the vast majority of society. This exploitative and oppressive system, where profit is master, has choked our entire society with economic crises, political reaction and social decay. The drive for profits holds millions hostage to hunger and want; it has poisoned the very air we breathe; it spawns cynicism and violence, drugs, crime and other social problems.

But life does not have to be this way. We can change our lives and society, and we can eliminate exploitation and capitalist injustice, by overturning the capitalist system. We can replace capitalism with a rational and humane system – socialism. Socialism is a social system where social wealth is genuinely controlled by society and for the benefit of society; where the common good, not profits, becomes the chief concern; where the everyday working people become the rightful masters of society. The socialist revolution has become a historical necessity and possibility. There is no other choice today but for the working people to organize to struggle and, one day, win socialism.  We must look ahead to the future where socialism, as a more advanced social system, will be built on the powerful productive capacities now stifled by capitalism. Socialism will replace capitalism, just as capitalism replaced feudalism. Socialism does not consist merely in the overthrow of private ownership. Socialism is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled, and administered by the people, for the people, and under which, accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at end. That is socialism, nothing short of that. Socialism will qualitatively improve the lives of the working and oppressed peoples of the world. Women and men, young and old, and people of all nationalities are realising we must unite and struggle to survive, to be able to work, eat and live as decent human beings. If the working people, and not the corporations, controlled the great resources of our society, we could improve all our lives. These are the hopes and dreams of socialism and it will be the common woman and man who will bring about this historic transformation.

The Scots and the American Civil War

Substantial sections of Britain’s business elite were working with impunity to help the slave-owning southern states win the American Civil War – despite the fact that Britain was officially neutral  and had outlawed slavery almost 30 years earlier. The entirely illegal, but tacitly British-Government-approved pro-Confederate gun-running operation is thought to have lengthened the American Civil War by up to two years – and to have therefore cost as many as 400,000 American lives.

Bridge of Allan, at any one time, housed around 10 Confederate agents who held their planning meetings there – and used it as a base from which they could visit top shipbuilding magnates and others on Clydeside and "test drive" vessels to assess their speed.

“The clandestine headquarters was established just 32 miles by railway from Clydeside because it was the big shipbuilding magnates there who were being contracted to build or upgrade more than half of the two hundred vessels supplied to the Confederacy by UK shipyards.” said maritime historian Dr Eric Graham of Edinburgh University. “It demonstrates that Britain’s neutrality was, in reality, a complete sham,” said Dr Graham, the author of a major book on the Civil War gun-runners, Clyde Built: The Blockade Runners of the American Civil War.

The anti-slavery Dundee Ladies’ Emancipation Society realized who they were  and  informed the US consul in Dundee accordingly. After much pressure had been exerted by the US on the British Government, the exposure of the secret headquarters led a year later to the British preventing the export of a giant, potentially game-changing 130m armoured warship - and four other warships - to the Confederate Navy.

Much of the business sector were actively pro-Confederate, as there were considerable fortunes to be made from supplying guns, uniforms, medicines, textiles and even food to the South.Geopolitically, the British government saw the USA as a growing challenge to its global domination – especially in terms of merchant marine carrying capacity. The British also feared US expansionism and potential US-originating threats to Canada and British colonies in the Caribbean. “Economically Britain saw huge advantages in the break-up of the United States. It saw the American South as a source of raw cotton – and as a market for manufacturing goods, whereas it saw the North as an industrial competitor which sought to use protectionist policies to exclude Britain from American markets,” said Dr. Graham.

Exploring Trade Unions (Part 2)

More than Militancy

It is important to build the solidarity in common struggle against the source of our troubles, the capitalist system of wage slavery. In ‘Wages, Price and Profit’ Marx insisted that if workers were to abandon their battles around wages and working conditions, then “they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation ... By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.”
But these battles are not ends in themselves. In the very next paragraph Marx also warned against exaggerating the importance of such battles and becoming “exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ending encroachments of capital...”
Thus while this struggle is necessary if the proletariat is to resist everyday attacks and still more to develop its fitness for revolutionary combat, such struggle is not itself revolutionary struggle. Moreover, unless the economic struggle is linked to building a consciously revolutionary movement–unless, as Marx puts it, it is waged not from the view of “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” but under the banner of “abolition of the wages system”– then such struggle turns into its opposite, from a blow against the employers to a treadmill for the worker.

The trade union, as one socialist put it, is the arm the worker instinctively raises to ward off the blows of capital. It is an instinctive defensive response and, no matter how passive or militant, as long as the workers’ struggle is confined to such a narrow framework the trade union struggle can only perfect the chains that bind labour to capital. No matter how extensive the rank and file participation, no matter how democratic, the fact remains that the militant rank and file unionism are still striving for better terms and conditions within the framework of wage-slavery. While it is, of course, preferable that the trade unions be under rank and file control rather than run by a bureaucratic clique, that the workers themselves decide issues of wages, benefits, strikes, and compromises rather than having these things decided over their heads, and that the workers be able to appoint their own officials rather than being subject to appointments from the top, it should not be forgotten that such reforms will still reflect the workers’reformist aspirations  as the open collaboration of trade union leaders. While it is the task of socialists to show that even the most ‘revolutionary’ trade unionism cannot break the chains of wage-slavery, some activists will argue that if only the rust was removed and the chains were made a bit longer it will somehow be easier for workers to wear and bear them.

 As socialists it is our task to explain that the root of the problem is not corrupt leadership, not their anti-democratic manipulations, nor their behind-closed-door compromises and sell-outs, not the lack of palpable lasting results, not the integration of the unions into the state apparatus, not the lack of strike calls for resistance, and not even the restriction of the right to strike or any other curtailment of  ‘labour rights’ but the wages system itself. The problem is the entire system and not some particular injustice within it. We should not confuse the much needed struggle for trade union democracy with the struggle for socialism. Union reforms within the class struggle are a by-product of our real work of explaining the need for socialist democracy. It is not the task of the Socialist Party to adopt slogans of “class struggle trade unionism” or whatever passes at the time for radical posturing. It is the duty of socialists to show that this, too, is still only trade unionist striving to strike a better deal with the employers; that this, too, remains a form of  enslavement of labour by capital and that this, too,  can in no way resolve the workers’ fundamental interests. Militant trade unionism, no matter how much one may embellish it,represents the workers’ interests only within the framework of winning better terms for the sale of labour-power. But it is a starting point in educating our fellow worker to question of the  legitimacy of that sale.

In a strike there is always a  tendency to put forward only a militant trade unionist position, fighting hard for a victory in the strike, but failing to educate the workers about the character of the capitalist system and the need for socialism. We seem reluctant to explain that the fight for better wages or piecemeal reforms perpetuates this corrupt capitalist system that enslaves the vast majority. We need to say that our fight is not only for economic demands in a  particular factory or industry but  to abolish the entire system of wage slavery. We’ve got to combine and fight against this whole capitalist system together. Creating a socialist world, where people live from birth to death never having to suffer under the chains of wage slavery is what all workers should be fighting for.

How ousting the union bureaucrats and putting in their stead “good honest union militants” will advance the workers’ struggle for the requisite political power remains a mystery. How it will be possible for workers to understand that even the most militant trade unionism is still not enough, because it is still the acceptance of capitalist economics, remains unknown. It should go without saying that socialists struggle to expose the corrupt labour autocrats. But socialists are not at all satisfied or content to oust dishonest trade unionists and replace them with honest trade unionists. What we want at the head of the trade unions are not “honest union militants” but dedicated socialist workers. We do not want ‘democratic’ wage-slavery or even the workers to ‘aspire for fighting unions’ to get a better deal under wage-slavery. We want, first and foremost, an end to wage-slavery, and this cannot be accomplished by presenting trade union militancy as a panacea for all the workers’ woes.

We are often offered an analysis put forward usually by Trotskyists that the big union fat cats act as a brake on the working class militancy but it is exacly the the role of the union bureaucray to “see fit” to tie the workers to the trade union struggle alone. It is precisely the role of such bureaucrats to preach class peace and the steady ‘improvement’ of the workers’ conditions. It is precisely the function of such full-time officials to attempt to rally the masses of workers behind themselves. To accuse them of being traitors to the cause assumes that at one time they did not represent such policies of compromise and co-operation with management. One cannot, after all, betray something one has never upheld. But regardless, the working class is entirely capable, by its own efforts and without the assistance of the Socialist Party, of not only exposing but dislodging top trade union bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats may be replaced by militant trade unionists, but this in itself does not at all mark any transformation of the trade union movement. The militant trade unionists may fight to the end for the workers’ immediate interests, may rely upon and rally the rank and file to long and bitter strike battles, may be entirely above-board in their negotiations, may repeatedly break the barriers of legality, and so on. But however impressive this may be, the fact remains that such militant struggle still operates entirely within the bounds of capitalist relations and does not threaten the foundations of capitalist exploitation.  Too many Leftists possess a hazy conception that militancy plus militancy and screaming at the top of their lungs for a general strike is bound to lead to something. To what, they are not at all sure. We all too often hear inflated claims for the general strike from those who will argue that this one massive onslaught will knock the ruling class from their throne with an act of blind faith in the miracle-working power of direct-action. Despite its talk of ‘linking’ the militant trade union struggle to ‘socialism’, all that they accomplish is to perhaps gain for themselves the benefit of a few seats at the top table in the union bureaucracy and make their own deals with the employers. We have witnessed it over and over.

The left-wing militants conclude that every trade unionist struggle for a 'just’ demand  is part and parcel of the struggle for socialism. This will of course come as a surprise to many workers who, while struggling for a pay rise, will suddenly discover that they are actually struggling to capture the state machine and overthrow his employer. But workers know well enough that a trade union struggle, even if it involves the government and so assumes a certian political character, is still only a trade union struggle, and that after all is said and done they’ll be punching in their time dockets tomorrow as usual despite some left-wing party hack who comes along declaring that trade unionist politics equals the struggle for socialism. The fact that the workers may, on their own, militantly resist the onslaught of capital, or wage a struggle to influence the government on their behalf, does not mean that such struggles are socialist struggles. A  trade unionist is content  to influence the affairs of state, not to capture the State.

“It is not the name of an organization nor its preamble, but the degree of working class knowledge possessed by its membership that determines whether or not it is a revolutionary body.... It is true that the act of voting in favour of an industrial as against the craft form of organization denotes an advance in the understanding of the commodity nature of labour power, but it does not by any means imply a knowledge of the necessity of the social revolution." Jack Kavanagh, One Big Union

Exploring Trade Unions (Part 1)

The nature of capitalist society is such that the employer always tries to minimise the cost of production and maximise his profits. This can only be done at the worker’s expense, the worker that finds himself constantly the victim of attempts by management to lengthen the working day, or speeding up production and reducing wages. The workers and capitalist do constant battle over the level of wages, the price of “labour”. The trade unions see their struggle as one fought primarily inside the capitalist system for the improvement of the worker’s condition. The trade unions fight around contracts, and using contracts to improve the worker’s condition, the unions,  “negotiate” like people at a trading fair, like businessmen at an auction. But even a ”good contract” still simply means the worker has only won a better deal for the selling of his or her labour power, the fundamental causes of this problem still exists – the capitalist system. There are no solutions within the capitalist system.

Trade unions first arose out of the spontaneous battles of working people to defend themselves from the abuses and oppressive conditions imposed by the system of wage labour. Stripped of any means of survival other than the sale of their labor power; workers were forced to compete against each other, thereby enabling profit-hungry capitalists to drive down wages and force long hours and inhuman conditions on the people. In this situation of virtual enslavement, workers were bound to resist. In drawing together workers and teaching them through struggle the need for solidarity and unity against the onslaught of the capitalists, unions served as centers for organizing the working class as a whole.The capitalist class has taken increasing steps to try to ensure that workers remain reliable and loyal wage slaves. Revolutionaries point out that the historic task of the trade unions is to fight for the complete emancipation of labour from capital. Reformists, on the other hand, advances a programme designed to keep workers shackled as wage slaves, but simply better-paid wage slaves.

Associations of workmen of one type or another can be traced far back into history, but trade unions as we know them today date back only to the 18th century. Concerning the origin of trade unions, Marx points out how capital is concentrated social power, while the worker has only his individual labour power at his disposal. Therefore, the agreement between Capital and Labour can never be just. The only social force possessed by the workers is their numerical strength. This force, however, is impaired by the absence of unity. The lack of unity among the workers is caused by the inevitable competition among themselves, and is maintained by it. The trade unions developed originally out of the spontaneous attempts of the workers to do away with this competition, or at least to restrict it, for the purpose of obtaining at least such contractual conditions as would raise them above the status of virtual slaves. The immediate aim of the trade unions, therefore, was limited to waging the day-to-day struggle against Capital, as a means of defence against continuous abuses by the latter, i.e., questions concerning wages and working hours.  This activity of the trade unions is not only justified but also necessary. It cannot be dispensed with so long as the capitalist mode of production exists. On the contrary, it must become general by means of creating and uniting trade unions in all countries.  If the trade unions refrained from such struggle there would be no limit to the exploitation of the workers other than that of physical endurance. The workers would be reduced to the status of slaves.

Engels in 1881 wrote, “The time is also rapidly approaching when the working class will have understood that the struggle for high wages and short hours, is not an end in itself, but a means, a very necessary and effective means, but only one of several means towards a higher end: the abolition of the wages-system altogether”. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/05/28.htm#p2

Trade union organisation is as requisite as socialist organisation since it enables the workers to wage the class conflict on a higher plane and prepares the way for the higher Socialist organisation. Our struggle is to fight for genuine working class control of the trade unions. This is also a pre-requisite for the emancipation of the working class and the establishment of socialism. For all reformists such things as union democracy, the right to strike, etc., are goals in themselves rather than simply means for the complete emancipation of the working class from capitalist exploitation. John Maclean explained it:
“Effective unions will never exist till the workers are revolutionary Socialists, just as effective political action can never come till the masses are thoroughly class-conscious and are fully determined to stop all robbery by the moulding of present-day capitalism into the co-operative commonwealth.”

Trade unions are not revolutionary vehicles; they are capitalist institutions, not socialist ones.Trade unions organise workers as wage slaves selling labour power as a commodity. Marxists insists that the working class must also, in addition to their economic organisation, develop its political movement. To succeed in the class struggle, the workers will need more than economic organisation. They will need to be politically organised, using its‘political supremacy to wrest by degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie’(Manifesto of the Communist Party). Marx nowhere deprecates the political dimension but, rather, insists upon it. The working class must convert its economic movement into its political movement if it is to challenge and overthrow the power of capital and the state. Where the political party is strong all workers feel themselves brothers; their solidarity is not limited to his trade or occupation. However, one can search in vain for the ‘ideal’ instrument of socialist revolution, since all organisational forms will be, to a greater or lesser extent, implicated in the environment it seeks to change. The ‘perfect’ form may be sofar removed from the society to be changed and the social practices of the workers as to be either irrelevant or an abstract tool leading to political alienation.

Rosa Luxemburg was also to find out that it was the trade unions who curtailed the radicalism of the party, not vice versa. The syndicalists failed to understand just how much trade unions are part of the capitalist system, organising workers as wage labourers whose labour power is a commodity. There is, therefore, a structural tendency for trade unions to be incorporated within the capitalist system as permanent bargaining organisations and as managers of the conflict surrounding the employment relation. Because of this, trade unions could not function as vehicles of economic emancipation. Workers’ economistic socialism offers a reformism from below against the social democratic parties’ reformism from above.

The Trade Unions were organisations aiming to increase the proportion of social wealth going to the working class, an aim which Luxemburg described as a 'sort of labour of Sisyphus' since it was doomed to frustration by the processes of proletarianisation, the growth of the productivity of labour and unemployment. Luxemburg earned the continuing enmity of Trade Union leaders for this phrase, but Luxemburg was surely right. In a capitalist economy, trade union power can be used to make gains in pay and conditions within the wages system, but cannot be used to abolish the wages system. Trade unions in their functions cannot go beyond a certain critical level, to the point at which they obstruct and subvert the mechanisms of accumulation and investment, the very premise of union demands. When this critical level is reached, unions have to convert the economic struggle into a general political struggle aiming to change the economic and political system, at which point they cease to be trade unions,or restrain their demand within what the system can afford. Luxemburg was therefore pointing to the limitations of trade unions as vehicles of change.This does not, however,  mean that Luxemburg and socialists considered trade unions unimportant.

Taking the argument that trade unions are not political or revolutionary organisations but organisations for the sale of labour power. This is true, but is it not possible that, with the movement of the class, they could be more than economic organisations. Marx himself entertained this notion, and one needs to understand why. Marx understood that trade unions come too much to concentrate upon the economic struggle with capital whereas they should be looking to abolish capitalist relations; the wages struggle should be converted into the struggle for the abolition of the wages system. It is argued that the trade unions cannot do this. But Marx’s argument needs to be understood. For Marx, it is not the organisation, of any kind, that acts but the working class as the subject and creative agency. The working class itself converts its economic struggles and interests into the revolutionary socialist objective. The argument that trade unions are merely organisations for the sale of labour power can be considered as failing to appreciate the political inherent in the economic, the political potential of the wages struggle, the possibility of converting the economic movement of the class into the political. It is akin to arguing that the working class exists permanently as the class of labour power and is incapable of becoming the revolutionary class challenging capitalist relations.

The militancy, the consistency of purpose, the determination, the willingness to confront the authorities and the energy, vitality and discipline and the self-sacrifice displayed by the workers expressed something much more profound than ‘economism’. Certainly, economic issues were to the fore – wages, poverty, unemployment, speed up, overtime, managerial practices. Yet in the spirit of revolt workers are protesting against their exploitation and dehumanisation; the workers are contesting not poverty but their status as wage slaves. The workers are affirming their human dignity and are coming to assert the class power which derived from the increasing unity, development and maturity of the class.

“There is no possibility of achieving economic freedom, nor even of taking any steps towards that end, unless the workers themselves are conscious that what they suffer from, as a class, is economic subjugation and consequent exploitation by the capitalists. Moreover, unless the workers themselves protest against this subjugation and exploitation, and themselves form organisations for the specific purpose of persistently fighting the enemy until freedom shall be won –then all else is as nothing." wrote Tom Mann

But it must be made clear that neither industrial organisation, nor Parliamentary action, nor both combined, can achieve the emancipation of the workers unless such emancipation is definitely aimed at.

“Political and industrial action direct must at all times be inspired by revolutionary principles. That is, the aim must ever be to change from capitalism to socialism as speedily as possible. Anything less than this means continued domination by the capitalist class.” Tom Mann explained.

Far from putting its faith in the spontaneous revolt of the working class, still lest the voluntarist uprising of the political party, the syndicalist argument conceives revolution as a process in which the workers develop their intellectual, organisational and technical ability to assume control of the new social order. The workers thus come to create the foundations of the future social order within the shell of the present society. Hence the importance of the point that the workers will possess the capacity to carry on production having ejected the employing class. The workers, in short, from dehumanised and degraded under capitalist relations, would become capable of directing their own lives, taking the future in their own hands and assuming control of the new social order. The power of the state and of capital is indeed to be challenged and overthrown and this does require political organisation. But political activity with a socialist aim has to have a social basis if it is to be effective. The industrial (self) organisation of the working class, enabling it to exercise responsibility and initiative in the old and the new society, is the foundation of socialism. Proletarian autonomy has to emerge as the essential control of the revolutionary process.

 “The worker has but one problem before him, and that is how to control production in theinterest of himself and the community. And in the same way as he thinks it is his right to vote for the election of Parliament or a Municipal Council, so must he acquire the right to elect the organisers of industry, viz., managers, foremen, and all others necessary for the successful conduct of wealth production.” Tom Mann

 The railway worker Charles Watkins who founded and edited the Syndicalist Railwayman newspaper, writes “The first prerequisite to a scientifically organised, vigorously conducted working class movement is a clearer understanding on the part of the workers of the actual relation existing between themselves and the capitalists, and a more intelligent appreciation on their part of theimportance of the class struggle. To gain these, the workers must rely on their own experience and on the knowledge gained through the study of industrial history and working class economics. But even without a knowledge of economic theory, the workers will find their class instincts far more reliable as a guide than much of the advice tendered by some of their ‘leaders’.”

Apparently, everyone’s forgotten the role of resistance. Resistance isn’t simply important; resistance is everything. There’s a myth suggesting that companies pay their employees all that they can afford to pay them. That is patently false (which is why it’s a myth). They pay their employees as little as they can get away with. Union membership is at an historical low because there is not enough resistance to keep it from shrinking. Profits are high, but resistance is low. Unions need to mount a counter-offensive, and they need to do it now.

 A workers’ party that is of any use is one that recognises that the workers are robbed by the capitalist, and understands how that robbery takes place; and is one that is organised to prosecute the class struggle politically until socialism is attained. Such would be a socialist party based on Marxist principles. All other parties, no matter how named, and of whom composed, are useless.