1% OWN 50% - 50% OWN 1%

Those who fight against capitalism must not settle for reforming a system that is as broken as it is dangerous. Any viable, transformative struggle needs a bold democratic vision; durable, longstanding organizations and strategies that make politics revolutionary. Corporate interests are powerful lobbying groups and as such have control of the major seats of political power and the commanding institutions necessary to insure that the deeply anti-democratic state rules in the interests of the few while exploiting and repressing the many.  The ruling class no longer care about the social contract and make no concessions in their ruthless pursuits of power and profits.  The decisions that shape all aspects of the commanding institutions of society are made largely in private, behind closed doors by the anonymous financial elite, corporate CEOs, rich bankers, and other almost unassailable leaders of the military-industrial complex.

A recent Princeton University study analyzed policy initiatives passed from 1981 to 2002 and concluded that the United States had become an oligarchy where power is effectively wielded by "the rich, the well connected and the politically powerful, as well as particularly well placed individuals in institutions like banking and finance or the military."  People participate willingly in their own oppression, often out of deep insecurity about their freedom and the future. Even as markets causes increased misery, the political and social consensus remains in place, suggesting that the economic system needs to be challenged by  consciousness, ideas, language and values.

Poverty, joblessness and low-wage work has produced among many  the ongoing fear of a life of perpetual misery and an ongoing struggle simply to survive. Insecurity and the climate is fed daily by endless moral panics, whether it is immigrants flooding the country, ISIS terrorists blowing up neighorhood malls or Ebola spreading like The Plague and Black Death. Such conditions more often than not produce withdrawal, insecurity, paranoia and cynicism rather than rebellion. All social problems are now defined as a problem faulty character and a deficient sense of individual responsibility.

Valuable resources and wealth are extracted from the commons in order to maximize the profits of the rich while the public is treated to a range of distractions and diversions. A predatory and commodified culture turns violence into entertainment, aggression into a video game and domestic violence into celebration of masculinity. Meanwhile, the real violence used by the state against poor people of color, women, immigrants and low-income youth barely gets mentioned. The rich get more powerful just as the working class sink into economic and existential despair and young people are saddled with the prospect of a future of low-skill jobs and a limited sense of dignity and hope.  Personal freedom is reduced to consumerism and self-interest becomes the only guiding principle for living one's life.

If capitalism is not addressed as a system of social relations it will continue to diminish the capacities and possibilities of people to move beyond the necessity of mere subsistence and survival. Capitalist power and politics leads to cynicism and despair. In order to fully participate in exercising some control over the myriad forces that shape their daily lives our rulers’ authoritarianism has to be challenged and overcome. It is crucial that people in all their various social movements unite to reclaim democracy as a central element in fashioning a radical imagination.  Democracy entails a challenge to private property.  Democracy is not compatible with capitalism but is congruent with socialism in which the wealth, resources and benefits of a social order are shared in an equitable and just manner. Genuine social democracy enables all members of the community to participate in the decisions and institutions that shape their lives.

Any viable struggle must acknowledge that if the current mode of production and its economic  domination needs to change. Such a struggle will not emerge out of protests and demonstrations but out of a vision that what is required is transformative social revolution. We must re-radicalize our labor traditions. If our old language has grown stale we should re-vitalise it with new vocabularies. We need to inspire a vision of real change, starting with ourselves. It is bout the self-education of workers to understand the nature of both capitalism and socialism, so that, armed with this understanding, we ourselves can carry out the political act of our own emancipation.  Opportunist leadership is based on lack of understanding among the workers. Our fight with capitalism must go beyond the nationalist rhetoric of union leaders. It must spread across countries. Capitalism is a WORLDWIDE problem.

 “There’s always a class war going on.... The business classes are very class-conscious—they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition..."We don’t use the term “working class” here because it’s a taboo term. You’re supposed to say “middle class,” because it helps diminish the understanding that there’s a class war going on...” Noam Chomsky explains.

He goes on, “...Unions had the slogan, “solidarity,” even though they may not have lived up to it. And that’s what really counts: solidarity, mutual aid, care for one another and so on....Market systems don’t offer common goods; they offer private consumption. If you want a subway, you’re going to have to get together with other people and make a collective decision. Otherwise, it’s simply not an option within the market system...”

Chomsky recognises that things can change for the better. “Each time labor has been attacked...popular efforts were able to reconstitute it. That can happen again. It’s not going to be easy. There are institutional barriers, ideological barriers, cultural barriers...getting people not to think in terms of their own interests, let alone the interest of communities and the class they’re part of. Overcoming that takes a lot of work. I don’t think it’s impossible, but it’s not going to happen easily... in all societies, the most brutal, the most free, the governed can be controlled by control of opinion. If you can con trol their attitudes and beliefs and separate them from one another and so on, then they won’t rise up and overthrow you....but people don’t have to submit to it. You can see through it and struggle against it.”

The poorer - the sicker

A Scottish government report covering a 15-year-period from 1997 to 2012 revealed that hospital admissions for heart attacks were three times higher in poorer areas than in the least deprived areas. The report said the admission rate for heart attacks in the most deprived areas had increased by 45% since 2007 and by 15% in the last year. Deaths from heart disease are about five times more likely in Scotland's worst-off areas, compared with its most affluent communities.

 Cancer is more common in deprived parts of the country. Those aged 45-74 who are diagnosed with the disease in deprived areas are also more than twice as likely to die.

The rate of  alcohol-related admissions in the most deprived areas is around eight times higher than in areas of low deprivation.

Deaths in the poorest areas of the country were more than three times as common as in the most affluent in 2012.

Public Health Minister Michael Matheson said "At the root this is an issue of income inequality - we need a shift in emphasis from dealing with the consequences to tackling the underlying causes, such as ending poverty, fair wages, supporting families and improving our physical and social environments."

Andrew Fraser, director of public health science at NHS Health Scotland, said: Measures such as the ban on smoking in public places and minimum unit pricing (MUP) for alcohol are likely to be effective, as would further regulation of the food industry. However, many of the most important causes of inequalities relate to taxation, welfare provision, education and opportunities for good work.

"As the impact of current welfare and tax changes come to fruition, competition for less-skilled jobs tightens, and as in-work poverty continues to rise, these factors may well increase health inequalities in the coming years.”

The SPGB and the Anti-Statists

The Socialist Party calls for a revolution without leaders to abolish the wages system and we are therefore implacably opposed to Leninism and its concept of a centralised vanguard to lead the working class.

 In our view the working class must organise consciously and politically first, for the conquest of the powers of government, before it can convert private property in the means of production into common property. Our reasoning goes like this. We want the majority in society (workers of all kinds) to take over and run the means of production in the interest of all. However, at the moment these are in the hands of a minority of the population whose ownership and control of them is backed up and enforced by the State.

The State stands as an obstacle between the useful majority and the means of production because it is at present controlled by the minority owning class. They control the state, not by some conspiracy, but with the consent or acquiescence of the majority of the population, a consent which expresses itself in everyday attitudes towards rich people, leaders, nationalism, money and, at election times, in voting for parties which support class ownership. In fact it is such majority support expressed through elections that gives their control of the state legitimacy. In other words, the minority rule with the assent of the majority, which gives them political control. The first step towards taking over the means of production, therefore, must be to take over control of the state, and the easiest way to do this is via elections. But elections are merely a technique, a method. The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the useful majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority; they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule - they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control. We simply argue that it is quite possible, and highly desirable, for a large majority to establish socialism without bloodshed. The more violence is involved, the more likely the revolution is to fail outright, or be blown sideways into a new minority dictatorship. Far better, if only to minimise the risk of violence, to organise to win a majority in parliament, not to form a government, of course , but to end capitalism and dismantle the State.

There are those who describe themselves as class-struggle anarcho-communists, who as their name suggests, are anarchists who are also communists, standing for common ownership without buying and selling, in accordance with the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. They are more or less for what we choose to call socialism.  So long as there are revolutionaries out there with the energy to act and the will to think, we want to talk to them. The difference between us is not the same as our hostility to the opponents of socialism but upon a difference on  the question of the better way to achieve it. No-one can be exactly sure which form the revolutionary process will take and it may well involve some of the things some anarchist point to. However, we in the Socialist Party believe that the potential use of parliament as part of a revolutionary process may prove vitally important in neutralising the ruling class's hold on state power. For us, this is the most effective way of abolishing the state and thus ushering in the revolutionary society. We emphasise mass democratic political action by a majority of the global working class which may well involve socialist delegates being sent to parliaments as the best means for attaining world socialism, while the class struggle anarchist’s predominant view is the revolutionary process is more in terms of community/worker resistance and direct action through the likes of strikes and mass disobedience. However, nevertheless, some of their views seem remarkably similar to those of the Socialist Party.
“Anarchist communism would depend on mass involvement. This is both to release everyone's inventiveness and ideas and to prevent the formation of some sort of elite. Two forms of organisation are crucial in this context. The first is regular mass meetings of communities and workers, to ensure that full discussion and participation in matters affecting a locality could be achieved. The second is federation, as many issues need a broader perspective than the local. Federalism would run through successive bands—local, district, regional, international—to take decisions appropriate to that band” [The Anarchist Federation’s ‘Against Parliament. For Anarchism’.]

We hold that the means have to prefigure the end but reached this conclusion from a quite different starting point: that of democracy in the proper sense. Democracy means, literally, the rule or power of the people, i.e. popular participation in decision-making. It allows various ways of reaching a decision but, in the end, if consensus cannot be obtained, it has to come to a vote; in which case the majority view prevails. Democracy does not mean that all decisions have to made at general assemblies of all concerned or by referendum; it is compatible with certain decisions being delegated to committees and councils as long as the members of these bodies are responsible to those who (s)elected them.

Socialism is a society based on the common ownership of the means of life but, since something cannot be said to be commonly owned if some have a privileged or exclusive say in how it is used, common ownership means that every member of society has to have an equal say. If there wasn't such democratic control there wouldn't be common ownership, so there wouldn't be socialism.  Democratic control is not an optional extra of socialism. It is its very essence. This being so, socialism cannot be imposed against the will or without the consent and participation of the majority. It simply cannot be established for the majority by some vanguard or enlightened minority. That is our case against all forms of Leninism. The socialist revolution can only be democratic, in the sense of both being what the majority of people want and of being carried out by democratic methods of organisation and action. No minority revolution can lead to socialism, not even one that destroys the state (our case against certain anarchists) - and of course socialism will involve the disappearance of the state as a coercive institution serving the interests of a minority. Hence our conclusion that the movement to establish socialism, and the methods it employs, must "prefigure" the democratic nature of socialism.

Anarchists admit that not all decisions can be made by general assemblies or referendum, they get round this by saying that "delegation" is acceptable. But any attempted distinction between "representative" (bad) and "delegate" (good) is just playing with words. The SPGB's anti-reformism, allied with our insistence on gaining control of the machinery of government through the ballot box, goes beyond the  simplistic equation of reformism with electoral activity and revolution with anti-parliamentarism.

The Socialist Party maintains (as a fact, and not because we like it) that the great majority of workers have no wish for socialism, nor possess an understanding of it. Because of prevailing traditional ideas, most workers see capitalism as the only practicable method of running society. We also realise that we face a difficult struggle considering the stranglehold the ruling class have over the ideas held by the working class. We face powerful weapons wielded by the State which operate from the day we enter this world until the day we leave it. Insurrectionists would fail in any attempt to overthrow the capitalist system while the masses are still conditioned in this way. Workers in conflict with management may often counterpose their own conceptions and ideas of how production should be organised but these conceptions and ideas are equally capitalist in character. The number of workers who understand the need for doing away with production for sale and profit, remains very tiny. Socialist understanding does not drop out of heaven like the holy ghost, in the space of a few hours.

 A number of Leftists who claim to be communist insist that the class struggle alone will be the basis for the change without the need for education by an external 'elite', by which they mean, in this instance, the Socialist Party. Our problem is a movement that thinks that 'material circumstances' talk to humans. Whilst it retains that philosophy, it won't take the necessary steps to build a conscious workers' movement, because it believes that ideas, propaganda and education are not the basis of the change. Whilst we keep pretending that consciousness emerges from material circumstances, we will continue to be irrelevant. Those of us who have become socialists/communists are just members of the working class arguing the case for socialism with our fellow workers. We are not an elite from outside the working class, not even those of us who have got together in a separate organisation to do this more effectively.
What in fact we are doing is trying to ensure that hearing the argument for socialism is part of the "experience" of the working class since (as all of us here know) there is no such thing as experience without thought. So the Trotskyists (and others) are wrong to argue that the working class can learn to be against capitalism through mere struggle or by the experience of failure to achieve some reform without them also hearing the case for socialism argued. Which they reject as casting pearls before swine. Socialists are no more than workers who argue for Communism/Socialism. They cannot be an 'elite' who 'know' better, but simply a group of workers who hold another opinion out, for the consideration of the wider class. If the wider class say they prefer capitalism, the wider class are 'correct'. There is no route allowing the 'knowing elite' to compel the class to 'understand the truth'. The class always 'knows best' what its interests are. If we can't persuade the class otherwise about their interests, then we are wrong. Simple. We are not an external elite, but a group of workers who have 'got it wrong' in the opinion of the majority of workers.
They believe that if they have the theory (which the workers don't need to be cognisant of) and push workers to have 'experiences' driven by a theory which is provided for them by this 'knowing' elite, then the unconscious workers will then develop the correct consciousness after their experiences. It's bollocks, of course. If workers 'fight for higher wages', and lose, they don't conclude that they should get rid of wages, but that since the bosses have the power to set wages, and that workers need higher wages (as the 'knowing' elite have told them, thus the need for their 'struggle'), then they need to cosy up to the all-powerful bosses, and their bosses' ideas. Thus, 'low wages are caused by immigrants'. "Everybody knows that!".
Struggle without conscious theory is not only scientific nonsense, but is nothing to do with workers developing their consciousness, and realising, prior to their own struggle, that they need to destroy the wage system. If workers can't grapple with theory and make democratic decisions based upon their understanding, then workers really can't run the world.

 Many class-struggle anarchists take the view that  revolutionary goals emerge from industrial or social struggles. If any form of "struggle" intensifies, it is welcomed  as a sign of "rising consciousness" (even if often the workers involved are just as conservative in their ideas as they were before). If the "struggle" escalates even further, this is now seen as a "revolutionary situation," and in such situations the actions of determined activists, usually a minority of  the participants, are thought to be decisive. It is argued either that the workers really do want a revolution, but this desire is "inarticulated" (even "instinctive"!) Or else it is admitted that they have no such aim, but the claim is made that in certain circumstances they will be forced by necessity to adopt the revolutionary course.  Emma Goldman declared, in an essay entitled “Minorities versus Majorities”, that “the living, vital truth of social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass”. These views are often defended with the statement that people learn by experience. In an economic recession with mass unemployment, socialists will recognise this as a consequence of the anarchic capitalist market. However, born-again fundamentalist christians will conclude that lack of righteousness and prevalence of sin among the population has brought divine  retribution. While common-or-garden reformists will believe that incompetence or  abnormal circumstances are responsible. Meanwhile, the extreme right-wing fascists and the left wing will put the blame on “finance capitalists" and attack political democracy and demand better leadership. Most workers, sadly,  will probably decide that "their” country has been too soft on too many immigrants, idle benefit scroungers and commie-led trade unions wreckers. These ideas will largely determine the way they act and vote. Naturally, experiences spark off changes in ideas, but until the possibility of socialism has become widely known and discussed, there is no hope for the emergence of mass socialist understanding. When two explanatory systems compete in people's minds, then events may decide which is adopted. But given the present near-monopoly of capitalist ideas, it is impossible for the minds of millions to wake up to socialism until there is a sizeable socialist movement spelling out the arguments for social revolution.  Those anarchists who seriously believe the people in struggle do draw conclusions which are fundamentally socialist in content, not that they occasionally do, nor that they might do, but that they always and must do,  must explain if this were the case why we shouldn’t have achieved socialism long ago.

In fact,  experience does not lead of itself to a specific conclusion. If a group of people are subjected to a similar experience, they may draw a variety of conclusions about it: the decisive factor will be the system of ideas they have formed before the experience. If we are to appreciate how the revolution in ideas (a necessary precondition of the social revolution) will occur, we must first rid ourselves of the simplistic fallacy that people change their minds only when they burn their fingers. We have to win the battle of ideas, and the test of the winning is a vote.

The SPGB and the State

The state is a coercive institution standing above the rest of society and a product of the division of society into antagonistic economic classes. Once these classes are abolished through the common ownership of productive resources, then the state will become redundant; its coercive features will be dismantled and its useful administrative functions merged into the democratic structure of classless society. This was a position of Marxists. Marx wrote at the height of his controversy with the anarchist Bakunin in 1874:
"All Socialists understand by 'anarchy' this: the aim of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, once achieved, the power of the State, which serves to keep the great producing majority under the yoke of a small exploiting minority, will disappear and the functions of government will be transformed into simple administrative functions" (Conspectus of Bakunin's 'Statism and anarchy').

 During the brief period when it would be getting used to abolish classes Marx thought it should be thoroughly democratic, with mandated and recallable delegates. This, for instance, is what Marx write about the Paris Commune of 1871 which he then described (somewhat inaccurately, as he later conceded) as a government of the working class", i.e. having the form the state should take while being used by the working class to abolish classes:
"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  . . . Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible at all times revocable agent of the Commune. So were the official of all other branches of the Administration . . . Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsive and revocable"

The popular conception of the state is that of a kind of neutral pendulum which can be swung in different directions in accordance with the philosophy of the dominant political party. In other words, that the degree of authority which the state institutions wield, the levels and methods of coercion and oppression which these institutions employ in practising this authority, and whether this authority is put to "good" or "bad" purposes (e.g. whether it is used to inaugurate or maintain a "Welfare State" or a police state dictatorship) is determined by the aims and aspirations, or indeed, sometimes even by the personalities within the party which constitutes the government. To a certain extent this is true. Outwardly, the modern state takes many different forms, and is coercive and oppressive to varying degrees. The totalitarian state, whether of the "left" or "right", is undoubtedly more oppressive than the "democratic state" in as much as those who control it (regardless of how they came to do so) have to rely more heavily on the services of the police and army, the political allegiance of its "officials" and subjugation of its citizens.

To view the state merely as a passive, autonomous body, ready to be put to the service of "good" or "bad", to be steered in the "right" or "wrong" direction or to be manipulated at will by political philanthropists for the benefit of the population, or by tyrants for the benefit of themselves, is to imagine that the state exists in a kind of social and political void. It is to accept the assertion that the state (i.e. the armed forces, police, legal system, civil service, etc.) acts in isolation, uninfluenced by the social conditions and social relations within which it operates. No matter what its form, or how its government is chosen, the state does not, and can not, act in isolation. It is a machine for the domination of one class by another, an instrument of class rule, and therefore can not be neutral, passive or independent.

Irrespective of whether a government in capitalism is democratically elected or not, or whether it describes itself as Conservative or Communist, Social Democratic or Socialist, Labour or Liberal or whatever it is in office to run capitalism. Consequently, regardless of any good or bad intentions its members may or may not have had, it has no choice but to act against the interests of the working class, by wielding the forces of the state in the interests of capital.

Within each national segment of capitalism, the apparatus of the state, at every level, is staffed by personnel charged with the maintenance of the capitalist social order. This personnel comprises the police, army and navy, judiciary and legal system, prison staff, civil service and the "education" system, each in its turn, playing a part in making sure the working class constitutes a docile, indoctrinated and exploitable army of wage labour for the capitalists to feed off. "Ah!" protest the apologists of capitalism, "but they all play their part in maintaining law and order and ensuring that we can all sleep peacefully in our beds at night." Indeed they do maintain "Law and order", but what do these cherished words mean in practice?

Law and order means preserving stability in a society based upon class ownership of the means of life. It means people living on the streets of cities in every country in the world, because capitalism can't provide houses for them. It means houses remain empty because it is "unlawful" for people to occupy them. It means that people throughout the world go hungry and cold because it is "unlawful" for them to take food and heating materials from the shops and stores. Law and order means the right of a minority class of parasites to monopolise the resources of the earth, and legally to rob and exploit the rest of the human race. A society based upon production for profit requires a police force because it produces criminals, by forcing people to steal, rob and kill in order to live or in order to "prove themselves" in its jungle of social and political madness. The construction and building of armies and navies, far from being capitalism's anathema, are its life blood, because it is a system divided into national segments, the capitalists of which are in constant conflict, a conflict which inevitably breaks out from time to time in open violence, over markets, resources, land and cheap labour forces from which they can wring their profits. Capitalism needs "Law and order" to survive because it is riddled with contradictions and insoluble problems. It has long outlived its usefulness in the history of the human race and should be replaced with something new — socialism.

The establishment of world socialism will involve the abolition of the state, but this must be achieved by first gaining control of the entire powers and machinery of governments, including the armed forces. The practical question involved in this is that the socialist majority must be in a position to implement its object. It must be in a position to control events, which means being in a position to enact the common ownership of the means of production, and to ensure that society is completely transformed on this basis. At the centre of capitalist class power is their control of the forces of the state, therefore this must be taken out of their hands. he operation of the entire capitalist system arises from the antagonistic relations between capital and labour, and this determines not only commodity production for profit but also the function of the state in enforcing these class relations. It therefore follows that with the establishment of a classless, socialist society, the state will be redundant, and the machinery of government will be converted for the purposes of useful, democratic administration. This position will be established with the socialist capture of political control. The capture of political control by the World Socialist Movement will establish the position whereby socialist delegates will be in control of the machinery of governments at local and national level throughout the world. Their first action will be to implement the common ownership of the means of production. Classes will thus be abolished and a classless community come into being.

The Leaderless Socialist Party

One myth is that leaders can create democracy and prosperity while those who want it need do no more than cheer from the sidelines and drop the equivalent of blank cheques into the ballot box. As if liberation can be achieved while the minds of the liberated are still chained to the illusions of class society. As if the mighty are high for any reason but that the meek are holding them upon their shoulders. A leader cannot lead unless there are followers to follow. ou cannot be a socialist and have a leader. You cannot be a socialist and be a leader. Socialism means self-emancipation of the working class by the working class. Only when a majority of workers understand and want it will socialism be a practical possibility. It is all a question of consciousness allied with democratic political action.

 There exists an assumption is that without leaders, there can be no civilisation. Our contention is the opposite. Leaders, and the followers who create them, are holding us back from any real global civilisation. Each of us can be our own leader. The greatest command is that over oneself. Our capitalist world, controlled by a few rich people and their minions, has done its level best to school out of us the very things which make us such a great species in the first place--initiative, experimentation, imagination, diversity. The leaders we are asked to support, and sometimes choose between, are a myth, created and maintained by--leaders. They are poor examples of honesty, integrity, even of humanity. They are not interested in truth, justice, or any of the grand notions they spout about. They exist, have always existed, will always exist, for one purpose only: to line their own pockets and empty yours. They are parasites on the social body, unwanted, unnecessary and destructive. To follow leaders is to hand over your heart on a platter, with knife and fork attached. It is an admission of defeat, acceptance that you are inadequate, in and of yourself. It is an act of submission and indeed an act of cowardice unworthy of the human animal.

The world is obsessed by leaders and leadership. The Socialist Party has never had time for leaders, pariularly those who aim to come into the working class political movement and get socialism on our behalf. Labour leaders, to say the least, are useless to the workers in their conflict with the capitalist class. An organisation whose members have no desire to control affairs for themselves, and therefore hands over the management to certain individuals, by so doing gives them the opportunity to use that organisation to obtain any object they may have in view. And judging by the past actions of these leaders their purpose seems to be always the same, that is, to earn a reward from the capitalist by betraying the workers whose interest they are supposed to safeguard. The shameful way in which the workers have been betrayed should surely force them to consider a method by which their organisation can be made proof against the undermining operations of such traitors.

To appear on a public platform for the Socialist Party or to regularly write articles for the Socialist Standard is usually enough for some  to appoint you the leader—in spite of indignant protests and denials. The Socialist Party even has a General Secretary so isn't that a leader? The Socialist Party has no leaders in fact or theory. Socialism wouldn't operate that way and neither do we. All decisions are made by common vote, all administration is above-board and open to inspection, and all work is voluntary. None of us is perfect, and that's why democracy works better than le adership. Mistakes by one person are not disasters for the many. Private interests don't count. Power doesn't exist. Socialists are their own leaders, and they follow nobody but themselves. The Socialist Party is a leader-less political party where its executive committee is solely for housekeeping administrative duties and cannot determine policy or even submit resolutions to conference (and all the EC minutes available for public scrutiny access on the web as proof of our commitment to openness and democracy). All conference decisions have to be ratified by a referendum of the whole membership. Even our General Secretary has no position of power or authority over any other member. Despite some very charismatic writers and speakers in the past, no individual personality has held undue influence over the the Socialist Party..

 William Lovett, the London Working Men's Association’s first secretary, renounced all leaders in the early 19th century:
“The masses, in their political organisations, were taught to look up to "Great Men" (or to men professing "greatness") rather than to great Principles. We wished therefore to establish a political school of self-instruction among them, in which they should accustom themselves to examine great social and political principles, and by their publicity and free discussion, help to form a sound and healthful public opinion throughout the country...We have not wished, neither do we desire to be, Leaders, as we believe that the principles we advocate have been retarded, injured or betrayed by Leadership, more than by the open hostility of opponents. Leadership too often generates confiding bigotry, or political indifference on the one hand, or selfish ambition, on the other.
The principles WE advocate are those of the peoples' happiness, and for these to be justly established, each man must Know and feel his Rights and Duties. He must be prepared to guard the one; and perform the other with cheerfulness. And if Nature has given to one Man superior faculties, to express or execute the general wish, he only performs his Duty at the Mandate of his bretheren; he is therefore the "Leader" of none, but the equal of ALL.”

The dubious and unprovable proposition that most human beings are "natural" followers and that leaders are, therefore, essential is a claim serving only the convenience of those who wish to lead. Indeed, such evidence that does exist would surely elicit the conclusion that the absence of leaders, far from creating chaos is a prerequisite to end it. Because we are a democratic Party all our meetings are open and our propaganda meetings organised to allow open debate. To this end visitors are given ample opportunity and encouragement to ask questions or state an opposing view. To refuse to follow leaders is a liberating step, one which the working class has yet to take. When we realise that the post-scarcity world can be run very efficiently and healthily by democratic co-operation, that our own lives would be vastly better without states, governments, police, and all the trappings of leadership, we will collectively be in a position to make that step. And then we will see a revolution unprecedented in history. Working class emancipation necessarily excludes the role of political leadership. Even if it could be conceived of a leader-ridden working class displacing the capitalist class from power such an immature class would be helpless to undertake the responsibilities of democratic socialist society. Socialism could not work with people unwilling or unable to think for themselves, to take responsibility, or to co-operate, but fortunately it doesn't have to. Human beings are better than that. We can think, and we can co-operate, and we don't need the Right to tell us we're unworthy and worthless, nor do we need rescuing by some "heroic" and entirely disreputable vanguard of the Left.

It is NOT the party’s task to lead the workers in struggle or to instruct its members on what to do in trade unions, tenants’ associations or whatever, because we believe that class conscious workers and socialists are quite capable of making decisions for themselves. For the Trotskyist Leninist Left, all activity should be mediated by the Party (union activity, neighbourhood community struggles, etc.), whereas for us, the Party is just one mode of activity available to the working class to use in their struggles, a tail to be wagged by the dog.

The Socialist Party is like no other political party in Britain. It is made up of people who have joined together because we want to get rid of the profit system and establish real socialism. Our aim is to persuade others to become socialist and act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about the kind of society that we advocate. We reject the idea that people can be led into socialism. Socialism will not be established by good leaders but by thinking men, women and children. There can be no socialism without socialists.

Eugene Debs, a Socialist Party of America, presidential candidate but never ever a member of of its executive committee, once said“I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and mis-representatives of the masses — you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.”

And another time he said :-

“I am not a labor leader. I don’t want you to follow me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out.”

Fact of the Day

220,000 Scots children languish in poverty; nearly 180,000 families are trapped on social housing waiting lists and one in five workers are paid below the living wage, forced to earn their poverty. Another 120,000 Scots are on zero-hour contracts, denied security or basic rights like pensions and paid leave.

“...the tradition of working people in the UK uniting against their common enemies – today, bankers, tax dodgers and poverty-pay firms stripping workers of rights and security – must surely be strengthened...” Owen Jones

A Socialist Demands

Meet the Socialist Party

There is something seriously wrong with the world we all live in.  We in the Socialist Party are organised to remove the causes of those problems. Tinkering with the many local and global problems achieves little if anything.  It is first necessary to get a clear idea of what the problems are.  The world is at present divided up into some 190 countries - some large some small - but no matter where you go you will find common features. These features never change:

1. Everywhere you go most things have a price.
2. Everywhere you go the vast majority of people will be working for wages or salaries. It’s true that there are a still a few areas which practice a subsistence economy but they are small and getting smaller.
3. The majority of the world’s population are engaged in the cash economy. In order to live the majority of the world’s population have to sell their ability to work for a wage or a salary.
4. Conversely everywhere you go there will be a small proportion of the population whose function in society is to buy that ability to work and exploit it. Now they are able to do this because they own and control the means of existence – the land, the mines, the factories and offices, the means of transport, and so on – all the things that human beings have developed and perfected over the past millennia in order to gain a living from nature.
5. Everywhere you go wealth is produced to be sold. Everywhere the motive behind wealth production is the hope and intention of making a profit.

And that in a nutshell is capitalism - class ownership and the profit motive.  Capitalism cannot be humanised, cannot even be slowed down. It will grind its own remorseless way until we organise to replace it with socialism. In the class struggle it is not only what you are against but what you are for that counts. Workers who advocate capital accumulation and production for profit are in the end just as welcome to the capitalist class as members of the élite itself, provided they realize on which side their bread is buttered. That working-class movements should have poured so much of their energy into securing approval from the master class to administer its system only testifies to general obtuseness on the part of the workers themselves in regard to their own material interests. Workers whose organizations do not act in accordance with a conscious and deliberate interpretation of these interests are in the end no better than spineless lackeys; they are not really free individuals. Having made their peace with profit, they cannot thereafter produce any organizations uniquely their own - even though there is not a recognizable capitalist to be found in their ranks.

You cannot embark upon the path to socialism unless you know what socialism means. Sincere individuals are swept up by movements such as Occupy; but these movements have no substance and are not acting with a clear understanding of the nature of the problems. The Socialist Party proposal involves the taking back of what was in the past ours anyway. We propose a return to shared ownership of the Earth and its resources.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that civilisation was invented by a man who put a fence around a piece of land saying in effect "This is mine" and who then managed to persuade the rest of humanity that he had exclusive right to dispose of it as he wished. Capitalism has roots in just such a massive historical theft - a theft involving enclosures and land clearances across whole continents and the physical enslavement of millions. If you really want to change the world it is that social arrangement that has to be changed. The poor are poor because they are denied full and free access to the means of life. The present owners allow us to operate the means of production only so long as it is profitable to them. We live on their terms.

Consider this. Across the globe there are literally hundreds of thousands of campaigns and protest groups and many more charities, some small, some enormous, all pursuing tens of thousands of issues, and their work involves many millions of sincere workers who care passionately about their individual causes and give their free time to support them unquestioningly. Many will have campaigned on some single issue for years on end with no visible result; others will have celebrated minor victories and then joined another campaign groups, spurred on by that initial success.

And, considering the above, two things stand out: firstly, that many of the problems around us are rooted in the way our society is organised for production, and are problems we have been capable of solving for quite some time, though never within the confines of a profit-driven market system; secondly, that if all of these well meaning people had have directed all their energy - all those tens of billions of human labour hours expended on their myriad single issues - to the task of overthrowing the system that creates a great deal of the problems around us, then none of us would be here today. Instead we would have established a world without borders, without waste or want or war, in which we would all have free access to the benefits of civilisation with problem solving devoid of the artificial constraints of the profit system.

We say to our campaigning and protesting political activists don’t repeat the mistakes of the past;
don’t fritter away your efforts chasing an impossible goal; don’t fall into the easy trap of only treating outcomes. Take up the challenge of organising to remove the causes. Socialism alone, offers a way of escape from the insecurity and penury and misery that result from the robbery of the working class. Nothing else will avail. We want control of the machinery of government, national and local, because that is essential to the achievement of Socialism. This is our reason for contesting elections. We do not invite workers to vote for our candidates because of the possibility of getting "something now" on either local councils or in Parliament, but because we cannot afford to leave this machinery in the hands of the capitalist class.

 Every aspect of our lives is subordinated to the requirements of profit - from the moment you brush your teeth in the morning with the toothpaste you saw advertised on TV until you crawl into your bed at night. Pick up a newspaper and try locating any problem reported there outside of our "cant pay - cant have system". Crime, the health service, poverty, drug abuse, hunger, disease, homelessness, unemployment, war, insecurity - the list is endless. All attract their campaign groups, all struggling to address these problems, and all of these problems arising because of the inefficient and archaic way we organise our world for production. You've got it! Were unlike any other group here today out to reform capitalism, who beg governments to be just a little less horrid, who ask our masters to throw us a few more crumbs from the bread we bake. We are not into the politics of compromise and we certainly are not prepared to be satisfied with crumbs. We demand the whole bakery! Plus the wheatfields!

We urge you to stop belittling yourself by making the same age-old demands of the master class. Hope is not, however, enough. A century of hope has produced nothing but more capitalist misery and failed reformist efforts. Only organisation for socialism will do. The working class must organise not to reform capitalism but to abolish it . Join us in campaigning for a system of society where there are no leaders, no classes, no states or governments, no borders, no force or coercion; a world where the earth's natural and industrial resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled and where production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used to the benefit of all; a world of free access to the necessaries of life. Wouldn't such a campaign movement not only address the real root of every campaign and protest currently being waged?  The choice is yours - the struggle for world socialism and an end to our real problems or a lifetime attached to the 'pick-your-cause' brigade and the certainty you will be retracing your footsteps here today in years to come. 

Introducing socialism

As a world system organised to satisfy human needs socialism can only be conceived as universal. The socialist speaks of common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community. The whole community is simply every person on earth. The days of national politics are long since ended as a useful framework of political action. We live today in a world of potential abundance. Yet, while millions are in want and many starve. Commonsense would suggest that to derive full benefit for all from worldwide production, it should be owned and controlled by all humanity; that it should belong in common to all mankind and be controlled by them to satisfy their own needs. By production solely for human need we mean direct co-operation between people in producing goods and maintaining services directly for need. This requires the abolition of the market, including that for labour power in socialism, production would not begin with an economic exchange of labour time for wages and salaries, but would arise as social co-operation in direct response to community requirements. Free access by the community to available goods and services would replace the present restricted access to goods based on buying and selling, and the use of money as a means of exchange. This is what socialism means and the Socialist Party has consistently held this as its sole object.

In a socialist society, for the first time ever, the global communication network - which capitalism itself has built up and which socialism will develop even further - will be used to ensure that everyone can have an input into the decisions which affect their lives on a global, regional and local basis. A united humanity, sharing a world of common interests, would also share world administration. This is the socialist alternative to the way that capitalism divides the planet into rival states and sets people against each other.

In socialism, for the first time, local communities will be free to make decisions about the development of their areas. With the release of productive resources solely for needs, for the first time they will enjoy real powers to act on those decisions. These would be decisions about local services such as health, education and transport, public facilities such as parks, libraries, leisure centres and sports grounds; local housing, the siting of production units, management of farming, care of the local environment, cultural events, and so on. The principle determining the practice of local democracy would be that decisions affecting just local populations would be made by them and not for them by any larger or outside body.

Nor will people in socialism be just concerned about whether a piece of local land should be used for housing, growing food, a cricket pitch or left as it is. People will  be engaged with issues affecting them which extend far beyond their local areas. So, as well as being citizens of their parish or district they would also be citizens of the world with all the opportunities for, and responsibilities of decision making and action in every sphere of life. As well as the face-to-face contacts of our daily lives participating in local affairs, at the same time we would be involved with all other people in world issues and events of every kind.

Socialism will begin with its delegates being in control of national and local governments and from this point the role of these bodies as part of a state machine will be replaced by democratic organisation operating solely for the needs of communities. It follows that all the socially-useful parts of the previous state machine will be continued. At the local level these include planning, education, health and transport developments, etc. Socialism is a society shaped by the free actions of all people.

To move socialist ideas to the centre of popular politics they must be developed as a positive and practical alternative to the present system, argued in association with forward looking change. As has been emphasised, we live in a world of rapid change which includes the world of ideas. This means that the differences between socialist ideas and popular politics are neither static nor fixed in time. Sadly, not all developments in ideas are progressive. It would appear that the consensual body of ideas which make up popular culture moves sometimes forward but sometimes backwards in cycles. The present lurch towards extreme religious nationalism, conservatism and the politics of hate is regressive and can only bring more misery. But this is not the whole story. However divided the world may seem to be, all people share common needs which can only be served, ultimately by cooperation. These needs arise from our human make up, are expressed in the best ways to live, and are inescapable. They rise above national divisions or differences of race, culture and language. Throughout the world, all people share a common need to live in peace and material security and to be at friendly ease with their communities and with other peoples in other countries.

Under the clamour of conflict and the divisive politics that prevent people of all countries from coming together as a united humanity there is the unspoken voice of a common need which is always present. Whilst the oft shouted slogan of "peace, security and justice" may lack systematic thought and down the years has been empty of any practical means of bringing change, it does express a yearning for a different and better world. So when socialists argue for a world of cooperation organised solely for needs, in which all citizens will stand in equal relation with each other, this does express the universal interests of all people; it is therefore true for all time. These conditions of life are only possible in a socialist society. This means that whilst socialist ideas may seem, on the present face of things, to be estranged from popular politics, they are in harmony with the real hopes of all people. It is when socialist ideas become the conscious political expression of these hopes that socialism will become an irresistible force for change. We live in a time when change brings more disillusion than hope.

Who Owns the North Pole (part 76)

The U.S. will assume leadership of the international Arctic Council this week. The Arctic Council consists of representatives from eight countries—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States—plus permanent participants representing indigenous peoples.  For environmentalists, by opening U.S. Arctic waters to oil drilling leases, the Obama Administration hasn't instilled confidence in its stewardship of the complex and swiftly changing ecosystem. A Clean Air Task Force report, "The Last Climate Frontier" said "For climate change, the Arctic is the lynchpin—the future of the Arctic will determine the future of all coastal communities, from Miami to Norfolk to Shanghai."  Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies," told Environment & Energy. "Climate change and the policies around climate change have different meanings to each of the eight Arctic members."

Russia "is engaging in large-scale militarization of the Arctic, a vast area coveted by itself and its four neighbors: Canada, the United States, Norway and Denmark," the Guardian reported Tuesday. "Such moves may bring back the atmosphere of the cold war, when the region was the focus of US and NATO attention, as they were convinced that it would be a launchpad for nuclear strikes."

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti said  that Russia will complete deployment of military units on its territory along the Arctic circle by the end of 2014.ITAR-TASS, another state news agency, reported that Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said "this is fundamental, large-scale work." According to RIA Novosti “Over the past few years, Russia has been pressing ahead with efforts aimed at the development of its Arctic territories, including hydrocarbon production and development of the Northern Sea Route, which is gaining importance as an alternative to traditional routes from Europe to Asia. A number of political, economic and military measures have been taken to protect Russia’s interests in the Arctic amid NATO’s increased focus on the region. In April, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would build a unified network of military facilities on its Arctic territories to host troops, advanced warships and aircraft as part of a plan to boost protection of the country’s interests and borders in the region.”

Russian officials are especially wary of NATO interests in the area. "We firmly believe that there are no problems in the Arctic which demand NATO participation," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a public lecture.. despite Russia's own military build-up.

Meanwhile, Canada, which laid claim to the North Pole last year, has recently tested unmanned ground vehicles and drones near its facility in Nunavut, the northern-most permanently inhabited place in the world.

Getting to know the SPGB

Our experience is that, when people first hear us saying we stand for socialism, most take us to be standing for "state ownership and rule by a socialist party".  What we mean by "common ownership" doesn't mean state ownership; the state represents only a section of society. At present the ownership of the productive resources by which society lives is divided up among separate individuals and institutions (firms, states, even co-operatives). Common ownership is the opposite of this situation: it means the absence of any such sectional control over access to and use of productive resources. With common ownership, what is produced, as well as the means to produce it, is commonly owned, so that it does not need to be sold. It, too, is simply there, to be distributed to where it is needed, whether this be another workplace for further transformation into a finished product or a distribution centre to which people can come and take what they need. Common ownership means the disappearance of buying and selling and so also money, markets, banks, wages, profits and the rest.

With common ownership, nobody or no institution exercises exclusive ownership rights over resources; it is, in effect a condition of "no ownership". Such resources are simply there at the disposal of all the members of society as a whole, to be used in accordance with their decisions. To make such decisions—i.e., to exercise democratic control—the members of society need to set in place procedures which allow every member of society the chance to have an equal say in the way things are run. Although this can be envisaged as involving "direct democracy" in neighbourhoods and workplaces, for wider decisions it would also have to involve "indirect" democracy via elected delegates. If such procedures for exercising "democratic control" did not exist, then it would not be possible to talk about "common ownership" either, since, in that case, ownership of the means of production would be in the hands of those who did have the power to make the decisions about how to use productive resources.

Democratic control is not an optional extra of socialism. It is its very essence. This being so, socialism cannot be imposed against the will or without the consent and participation of the vast majority. It simply cannot be established for the majority by some vanguard or enlightened minority. That is our case against all forms of Leninism. The socialist revolution can only be democratic, in the sense of both being what the majority of people want and of being carried out by democratic methods of organisation and action. No minority revolution can lead to socialism, not even one that destroys the state (our case against certain anarchists) - and of course socialism will involve the disappearance of the state as a coercive institution serving the interests of a minority. Hence our conclusion that the movement to establish socialism, and the methods it employs, must "prefigure" the democratic nature of socialism. So, for us "common ownership" and "democratic control" of the means of production by all the people are one and the same thing; they are in the end just two ways of describing the same situation.

 The Socialist Party does not advocate violence and thus we are labelled as sterile or 'theoretical' armchair revolutionaries. But we are not Quakers, and do not rule out the need for violence under all circumstances. We simply argue that it is quite possible, and highly desirable, for a large majority to establish socialism without bloodshed. The more violence is involved, the more likely the revolution is to fail outright, or be blown sideways into a new minority dictatorship.

How to further the revolutionary process? We wish we knew. The Socialist Party has consistently struggled to be heard for almost a century, and continues to struggle. Our venerable age however is no cause to be smug. So long as there are revolutionaries out there with the energy to act and the will to think, we want to talk to them. Clause 7 of our principles does commit the SPGB to "there can only be one socialist party" in any country in the sense of only one party aiming at the winning of control of political power by the working class to establish socialism. How could there be more than one socialist party in any country trying to win political power for socialism? It just doesn't make sense. If this situation were to arise then unity and fusion would be the order of the day.

Also in Clause 7 of our Declarations of Principles there is what is called our hostility clause,"to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist" which is certainly unique and even within the Socialist Party it has always been subject to regular debate. Concerning the hostility clause, it is one issue that can justifiably put down to the 19th century social democrat roots of our party since it stems from the early members experience of the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League. William Morris together with Aveling, Eleanor Marx, Belfort Bax and other members of the SDF, resigned and issued a statement giving their reasons, for "a body independent of the Social Democratic Federation". Yet they added : "We have therefore set on foot an independent organisation, the Socialist League, with no intention of acting in hostility to the Social Democratic Federation”which some saw as a weakness and an accommodation with a reformist party. When the Socialist Party was formed, its members made certain that they would make clear their opposition to all other parties (such as the SDF) who advocated palliatives, not socialism. Given the context when it was drawn up that the early members envisaged the party developing fairly rapidly into a mass party, not remaining the small educational group that it has done up to the present, what it says is that when the working class form a socialist party this party is not going to do any election or parliamentary deals with any other political party, either to get elected or to get reforms. Basically, the hostility clause applies to political parties, organisations aiming at winning control of political power. In fact, in the eyes of those who drew it up, it was about the attitude that a mass socialist party (such as along the lines of the German Social Democratic Party was then seen to be albeit with its warts and all ) should take towards other political parties.

Importantly, the hostility clause doesn't mean that we are hostile to everything and everybody outside the party. There are a whole range of non-socialist organisations out there, ranging from trade unions to community associations to which we are not opposed. Clause 7 does not mean that if you are not in the Socialist Party you are automatically anti-socialist". Of course, there are, and always, have been socialists outside the party in the sense of people who want to see established, like us, a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society based on common ownership and democratic control with production solely for use not profit. The party has in fact always recognised this, right from the start, seeing some other groups as socialists with a mistaken view of how to get there. Clearly, such people and such groups are not in the same category as openly pro-capitalist groups. What about some of the anarchists, the original SLP? Of course there are socialists outside our party, and some of them are organised in different groups, some (like us) even calling themselves a "party". That doesn't mean that we are not opposed to the organisations they have formed, but we are not opposed to them because we think they represent some section of the capitalist class. We are opposed to them because we disagree with their proposed method of getting rid of capitalism rather than because of the hostility clause. That opposition doesn't have to go as far as hostility. Our attitude to them is to try to convince them that the tactic they propose to get socialism is mistaken and to join with us in building up a strong socialist party. Of course, if we think that the tactic they advocate (such as minority action or armed uprising or a general strike by non-socialists) is dangerous to the working-class interest then we say so and oppose them. We are opposed to them because we disagree with what they are proposing the working class should do to get socialism -- and, of course, the opposite is the case too, they are opposed to what we propose. We agree to disagree. Comradely disagreements. We cannot see any alternative to the present situation of each of us going our own way, putting forward our respective proposals for working-class action to get socialism and, while criticising each other's proposals, not challenging each other's socialist credentials. In the end, anyway, it's the working class itself who will decide what to do. For the moment, "our sector", "the thin red line", is condemned to remain an amorphous current. At a later stage, when more and more people are coming to want socialism, a mass socialist movement will emerge to dwarf all the small groups and grouplets that exist today. If this situation were to arise then unity and fusion would be the order of the day.

In the meantime, the best thing we can do, is to carry on campaigning for a world community based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth's natural and industrial resources in the interests of all humanity. We in the Socialist Party will continue to propose that this be established by democratic, majority political action. Other groups will no doubt continue to propose your own way to get there. And, in the end, we'll see which proposal the majority working class takes up. When the socialist idea catches on we'll then have our united movement .

Common ownership now

Most people react with disbelief to the idea of a world community where the means of production will be democratically controlled and socially owned. Critics say that socialist society will not work, on the grounds that people are by nature greedy or selfish or lazy. Socialists must be able to demonstrate that socialism is both an efficient and highly practicable alternative to the capitalist method of organising society. We must be able to offer convincing proof from capitalism itself and also from previous social orders that it is quite within man's powers to run a system based on voluntary work and the free distribution of whatever people need and want. A study of history and the social sciences, particularly anthropology, consistently reveals that things are rarely quite as they seem. Workers are never quite as oppressed and docile as the managers and bosses hope. There’s always a hidden undercurrent of resistance.

  The modern age has seen enormous gains in productivity of labour but where are the benefits for the working population? Do factory workers or farm workers or those in building and construction work less hours after having provided for the needs of the community? Of course they don't. Despite the much predicted society of leisure workers still work long hours and productivity means they are exploited more intensely.

We can very conservatively estimate that at least half of all the workers running the capitalist system would be redundant in a sane society where work would be organised economically solely for the needs of the community. This means that, including the present millions who are unemployed, socialism would more than double the numbers of people available to do useful work. Also, these vastly increased numbers would be free to use and further develop the most advanced techniques of production. All this would add up to a huge increase in our powers of production.

At first, to solve problems, production in socialism would have to be expanded. The priority would be to ensure that every person is comfortably housed and supplied with good quality food of their choice. The construction of a safe world energy system would be another urgent project. The present great differences in the world distribution of machinery, plant and up-to-date production methods would need to be evened out. But with an adequate structure of production in place we can anticipate that in socialism, we would soon be in a position to relax in the necessary work of providing for needs.

The idea of producing enough for the community and then relaxing to enjoy many other kinds of activity which may interest people is impossible under a capitalist system. Capitalist production is not primarily about supplying needs it is about making profit and accumulating capital. It can only work with a constant market pressure to renew its capacity for sales. Under capitalism a surplus of commodities, in excess of market capacity means they cannot be sold for a profit. This can bring about recession, workers thrown out of jobs.  In socialism, with the abolition of the market, and acting with voluntary co-operation, people will produce goods and distribute them to stores without any of the barriers of buying and selling.

It  means that for the production of component parts of machinery or household goods, etc, intense production runs using automated systems could supply not just sufficient components for immediate use but also stocks for anticipated future demand. These could be distributed as and when required and this would be an economical use of production facilities which could then be either shut down until when required again or with different tooling used for other production runs. The important point being that in socialism this could happen without any of the problems and chaos that an oversupply of commodities for the market causes under capitalism.

The idea of having enough for needs and then relaxing to enjoy it is perhaps an echo of the best times had by hunters and gatherers. But this way of life was never viable for larger populations who are compelled to produce what they consume. To begin with, during the advent of farming this inevitably required a lot of hard graft, but with the enormous increase in the powers of labour since then, this is no longer necessary. We can learn other lessons from hunter/gatherers. Until recently the aborigines of Australia held the land in common and co-operated to sustain a way of life that was in balance with their environment and had lasted for at least 40,000 years. The modern world has an urgent need to imitate that example. It is not human nature to grab, grab, grab, but it is the nature of capitalism.

Socialism originally meant common ownership and production solely for use. The first group to work out clearly the essential features of the alternative to the competitive, profit-seeking capitalist market economy that rapidly developed around them were the followers of Robert Owen, who were also the first to coin the word "socialist". For them the alternative to capitalism lay in the organisation of the production and distribution of wealth in accordance with the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". They at least realised that the organisation of production and distribution on this basis necessary involved the disappearance-of-private property, buying and selling, money and prices, and the introduction of free access to goods on the basis of self-determined needs as well as the replacement of monetary calculation with calculation purely in physical terms—to match productive capacity and wants. As the Owenite journal The New Moral World, put it in 1835, "our enlarged resources for the creation of wealth" mean that "the necessity for attaching money—value to any production whatever "can be superseded and that "no money price will be known". Towards the end of the century socialist critics of capitalism saw such a system as applying on a society-wide basis, but they retained the understanding that there was no role whatsoever for market mechanisms and monetary calculation in such a socialist society.

As regards the allocation of resources and the matching of supply and demand at an aggregate level, there was, however, a general tendency to move from the idea that economic calculation would proceed in terms of value to the idea that such calculation could be conducted in purely quantitative or physical terms. This was a conviction that was largely rooted in the belief that under socialism production would be for use rather than exchange and that in such circumstances social utility, rather than exchange value, could be a direct guide as to what and how much to produce. Such production for use rather than profit involved a concern with the concrete material characteristics of needs and the means of satisfying them rather than any abstract notion of value. It involved a deliberate matching of goods with wants that did not involve or require their valuation. So-called "market socialism" is an absurd contradiction in terms. Any society which retains market mechanisms just can't be regarded as socialist, at least not without violating the original, historical meaning of the word.

Food For Thought 2 The Proof

And proof of this greed and corruption , if more were needed, comes from Heather Mallick's column in the Toronto Star, September 28. She writes about how banks pay massive fines as part of the price of doing business and then keep on doing whatever they want to. JPMorgan Chase, she writes, is negotiating the fine it will pay US regulators re mortgage -backed securities. The figure is around $11 billion, and comes after a $920 million fine last week for its London Whale loss. In Britain, the PPI (payment protection insurance) scandal has caused banks there to set aside sixteen million pounds (more than the cost of the London Olympics). Yet we are in the middle of austerity measures that seek to strip or modify every benefit the workers have gained for sixty years and health, education, and social programs are starved for money. Time to put this lot to bed! John Ayers.

Food For Thought

It's nearly fifty years since Ralph Nader wrote his sensational book, "Unsafe At Any Speed", his expose of the auto industry and their ignoring of car safety in return for sales – hence profits. Recently, his autobiography, "Told You So", was published and it shows Nader has changed little over the years. To some he may seem uncorrupted (he refused the services of a prostitute hired by General Motors to way(lay) him, he doesn't own a car (too unsafe) or real estate, and lives on $25,000 a year. Nader has campaigned for anti-pollution laws, founded several public interest research groups, made public a forgotten study on the appalling conditions in the meat processing plants, founded a national anti-nuclear umbrella group, put all his income into his advocacy groups, campaigned for health care, attacked corporate crime, attacked NAFTA and the decline of democracy, and the list goes on. It's easy enough to say we need people like him, in fact, we need him as long as we need capitalism, which is not at all. In the final analysis, Mr. Nader is a corrupt man. Like most of us, he was corrupted into believing capitalism was the best of all economic systems. Nader's great failure is in thinking it would be better for all if greed and dishonesty at the highest levels could be eliminated. The plain fact is that capitalism is a profit-oriented system that thrives on, and is based on, greed and dishonesty. It would be much better if Nader were to pour his vast efforts into working for the abolition of such a system. John Ayers.

Doing Away With Money

"Paper coin, that forgery
Of the title-deeds which we
Hold to something of the worth
Of the inheritance of earth."
Shelley 

Do we need money and wages? It sounds like a silly question, doesn’t it? Of course we need money and wages: we need it to pay our rent or mortgage and to buy food and clothes.

No point in the socialist case arouses such controversy as that of the abolition of money and wages. Marx identified money as one of the two main manifestations of human alienation (the other was the state) and looked forward to its abolition in a communist society where human values would apply: where the standard by which something would be considered ‘valuable’ would be human welfare. Marx also fully endorsed the slogan “Abolition of the Wages System!” a system which he regarded as a form of slavery. Money is just a means of saying ‘This is mine, not yours’

Money in various limited forms existed for hundreds of years before the advent of capitalism but because it is an indispensable element in the workings of capitalism its general usage expanded universally with the development of that system. For a start, it is the device whereby capitalism separates the worker from the fruits of his or her labour; an indispensable part of the process whereby a minority class of capitalists ration the consumption of the great majority who as workers of one sort or another produce all the real wealth of society.

Marx saw money as having two basic functions: (1) a medium of exchange or circulation, i.e. the means through which articles produced for sale get bought and sold; and (2) a measure of value, i.e. a common unit in which the value of articles produced for sale can be expressed as a price, and is thus a standard by which they can be compared. Marx also identified two kinds of paper token money: tokens that were convertible on demand into a fixed amount of the money-commodity and tokens which were not. The former created no problem. The latter, however, could create a problem if they were issued in a greater amount than the amount of the money-commodity that would otherwise circulate. In this case, if they circulated alongside gold or silver, the value of the tokens would depreciate, i.e. they would buy less than their face-value. If they were the only currency (as is the case today) this would result in a rise in the general price level, i.e. in a change in the standard of price. An inconvertible paper currency has to be managed by the government or some state institution such as a central bank which, to avoid depreciation or inflation, has to calculate the correct amount to issue. In Marx’s day the case where the only currency was paper token money was a hypothetical one which he only discussed in passing.

Marx in an early essay on the subject said, "That which exists for me through the medium of money, that which I can pay for, i.e. which money can buy, that am I, the possessor of money… If money is the bond that ties me to human life and society to me, which links me to nature and to man, is money not the bond of all bonds?" [his emphasis]

Money is at the core of human activity from the cradle to the grave. It dominates all of our lives. How often do we hear it said, “we do not have the resources”? What is meant by resources is always money. Every day politicians give lack of money as a reason why we cannot provide better health care or safe reliable trains or the many other public services that are in urgent need of improvement. This ignores the fact that productive resources are materials, means of production, transport, energy, communications and networks of infrastructure through which goods and services are produced. And all these depend on one single resource which is labour. These are the real resources on which the lives of communities depend and there is an abundance of labour to provide for needs.  Capitalist politicians  repeat their mantra “We do not have the resources” yet they are unable to see the availability of real resources because their minds are pre-occupied by the illusion that only money resources count. They imagine that real resources can only be brought into use by money, whereas the opposite is the truth. The powers of the community to solve problems can on be fully released with socialism and the abolition of money. Reliance on the imagined powers of money runs through every social problem.

To say that we cannot do without wages and the wages system is to say something which is absurd. Though it is true that wages are the means by which the workers live, it is equally true that wages are the means whereby the workers are robbed. The wage serves no other function than to render possible this robbery. It does not even record the fact that its possessor has performed his share of the world's work, for wages have a fleeting identity, and there is nothing to show how the coins they consist of are come by. Money means rationing. It is only useful when there are shortages to be rationed. No one can buy or sell air: it's free because there is plenty of it around. Food, clothing, shelter and entertainment should be free as air. But the means of rationing scarcity themselves keep the scarcity in existence. The only excuse for money is that there is not enough wealth to go round but it is the money system which makes sure there cannot be enough to go round. By abolishing money we create the conditions where money is unnecessary.

With the abolition of private property, wages, and money, it will be very easy to assure that each person shall perform his or her share of the necessary labour of production, and the "problem" of distribution then would be no problem at all.  Imagine that the world was run differently, that everything was free. Suppose you could go to the supermarket, collect the food you wanted for yourself and your family, and then just leave without having to queue at the checkouts. You’d probably choose the best-quality food without having to worry about its cost. In fact, since nobody would have to buy cheap and nasty food, all the food available would be top quality. There’d be no point in taking more than you needed, because you’d always be able to go back and get more if you ran out, and it’s just wasteful  to take lots of milk and bread, say, if you know you won’t be able to use them. This probably sounds like quite a good idea, but would this same principle work with clothes rather then food? Wouldn’t people just want masses of clothes, and always from the top designers and brand names? Quite probably people will still want to look smart and attractive, but this won’t be by wearing clothes that ‘cost a fortune’. And like food, there would be no point in having lots of clothes lying around in a wardrobe gathering dust: people would just take from the shops or warehouses what they wanted for their personal use, not what would be intended to impress others. Also, since nobody would profit from selling more clothes, there would be no relentless pushing of new fashions each year. So it’s not difficult to imagine a world without money, a world where what people consumed and enjoyed would not be limited by the size of their wage packet, where everyone could gain access to the best of everything.

 But then again, would people work in a world where there was no money and they were not getting paid? Yes, they would. The alternative, after all, would be a life of idleness, which may be great for a two-week holiday period every summer but soon becomes very boring. Work, too, would be made as enjoyable as possible, which means it would be safe, satisfying and fun. People would enjoy working with each other, never doing one kind of work for too long but appreciating the variety that can be provided. Producing useful things is pleasant in itself as evidenced by every hobbyist. In society which can land men on the moon and fire missiles across the face of the earth to within inches of a target, the technology certainly exists to do away with much of the unpleasant labour of society. Instead of research into more and more sophisticated killing machines socialism will devote resources to improving productive efficiency from the point of view of both the wealth producer and the wealth consumer. Work in socialism will be based upon voluntary co-operation and not the coercion of the wages system. The division between work (enforced drudgery) and leisure (when your time is your own) will be ended by socialism.

Are we suggesting that we should do away with money and revert to barter? No, we are not. Both money and barter are forms of exchange. Exchange is only possible when there is private property. In a society in which all wealth is owned in common there will be no property to exchange and there will therefore be no need for money or barter. The world is abundant in resources, yet poverty is the lot of the majority. The buying and selling system, based on production for profit, is economically inefficient from the point of view of those who produce the wealth. Socialism means free access to all wealth and production solely for need. This will mean that in a socialist society bread will be produced simply so that people may eat it, and not for sale on the market with a view to profit. The money and wages system is obsolete and anti-human. We cannot go back to being peasants and we should not want to. Keeping millions of people alive and well  on this planet necessitates technology. Only by intricate organization and large-scale productive techniques can we maintain abundance. Do not be afraid of machines. It is not machines which enslave, but capitalism, in whose service machines are employed. There is similarly a commonly held view that computers and automation is going to solve all our worries, that money will expire automatically as part of a "natural process of evolution". This is quite wrong. This society only new technology to increase profits and for no other reason. Employers even take machines out and put workers back in if they find that labour-power is cheaper.

 The abolition of money and wage will represent the liberation of slaves,  the dispossession of masters, i.e. the employing class and when we do away with money and wages we destroy the basis of the power of our rulers. Actually, socialists don’t just want to “abolish” money. Life without money under capitalism, where most things have to be bought, is pretty austere.What we want is to see established a system of society where money would become redundant, as it would in a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means for producing wealth. In such a society the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” could apply. People would cooperate to produce what was needed to live and enjoy life and then have free access to this. The only way to live without money is to be part of genuine cooperating community where the links between people would be human not commercial,  a society-wide change not an individual lifestyle choice.

Our Sinking Economies?

Economic advisor to the Indian government, Jayati Ghost, recently co-authored a book titled, "Economic Reform Now: A Global Manifesto to Rescue our Sinking Economies." As Ghost points out, " China is suffering from a banking crisis and in India the situation is even more dramatic. Economic growth has almost halved and panicking investors are abandoning the rupee. Is the Asian era over before it has even begun?" – No comment needed. John Ayers.