The Anarchist Commune

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There is no better way to explore the weaknesses in one’s own views than to discuss a political opponent to find out any difficulties in our opinions. By considering the points they raise we hope to improve on our own ideas

The article is taken from the Libcom website

Mendel Dainov’s Ideas

Mendel Dainov’s name is almost forgotten today. Meanwhile, he stood at the origins of the Russian anarchist movement of the early 20th century. Information about Dainov can be found in the encyclopedia "Revolutionary Thought in Russia of XIX - beginning of XX Century" (article by D. Rublev). Dainov is interesting by his original thoughts, including those on the ideal of the future non-authoritarian socialist society.

In the late 19th century French workers who belonged to different factories and different unions began holding meetings (such gatherings were called "bourses") in order to share useful information about job offers and the situation of workers at various enterprises, as well as for preparing strikes together without the permission of union tops. This activity was attended by active supporters of anti-authoritarian socialism (anarchism, stateless self-governing society) like Fernand Pelloutier. Moreover, it was supported by radical leftist intellectuals such as Georges Sorel. The result was the formation of revolutionary syndicates – voluntary autonomous associations of workers’ bourses and other workers' organizations which considered direct action as the main method of struggle for better life. In other words, their strikes were not coordinated with the authorities (whether moderate trade unions bosses or factory bosses) nor with the current legislation which did not allow workers to achieve all their goals. Decisions about the course of the strikes and their demands were taken by assemblys of workers, not leaders. Direct action is direct democracy. Revolutionary syndicalists were aimed at the general strike, the abolition of capitalism and the seizure of all existing industry in the hands of the workers' unions through a general occupation strike. (As can be seen, the activity of the revolutionary syndicalists had nothing to do with the work of any modern union. All modern trade unions support the deal with the business, comply with government legislation, complain to the state court.)

Almost all the leaders of Russian anarchists: Dainov, Karelin, Novomirskii, Volin, Grossman-Roschin (from a certain moment) fell under the influence of revolutionary syndicalism. Its ideas and practices, according to Dainov, prepare the economic foundation of the future of society.

Economy of local communities (communes) will be organized on the basis of industrial "productive groups" created, in turn, by the revolutionary unions (syndicates). Moreover, thanks to the syndicates, in the course of their daily economic struggle, which begins still in capitalist conditions, workers prepare themselves for self-government. Arranging the strike for salary, people learn the collective interaction. On the other hand, using direct action, workers are destroying the state and, at the same time, overcoming their own fears of state power and respect for state laws. In the end, having united the majority of workers, syndicates capture and manage the industry.

But the work of production groups is not enough for the community. In addition to the production of goods, there are many other issues: education, housing, defense, local law. All these questions will be administered by local communities (communes), their assemblies and councils of delegates. Professional associations (industrial groups) within the community will be engaged exclusively in economies. In other words, Dainov proposed to organize society, combining two principles: territorial principle and production principle.

There are also economic and social issues that can not be solved at the level of a local community. For example, transport, railways, big ports and factories cannot be built and kept in working condition by the efforts of a local commune. So an important aspect of the new society will be the system of federal agreements between communes. For this people need federal congresses of the delegates.
Dainov believed that these congresses can have only temporary meetings. He feared for the concentration of power in the hands of centralized structures. During the Russian Revolution of 1917-1921 representatives of other libertarian Socialist movement, the SRs Maximalists, promoted the idea of permanent Congress of delegates (1, 2). Members of the Congress must be in constant communication with their local communities.

Dainov believed that at the very beginning of the revolution, a society organized into a coherent whole state, inevitably breaks up into separate regions. This is a very accurate observation. That's how events unfolded in a series of the revolutions known to us.

Internal unity of the separated regions is provided by their geographical location, local customs and traditions, economic interests and common historic past. Then, in the case of successful development, regions will be transformed into self-managed communes. At the next step they will unite into large federations, and then into the international federation. It is clear, however, that if the workers do not have the experience of self-organization, such a development will be impossible.

Very interesting, in our opinion, is Mendel Dainov's critique of state socialism. In those days, many politicians and theorists on both the left and the right, for some reason, were convinced of the benefits of the economic system totally controlled by the centralized state (such ideas were associated with Marxism, but not only with it). Dainov, on the contrary, spoke about the inefficiency of the statist sector. He believed that the basis for the functioning of the statist economy will be two interconnected phenomena: corruption and inefficiency. This criticism was close to truth, anticipating the difficulties of the USSR economy.

"The total failure of the bureaucracy to seriously organize any industry and all disadvantage, all ruinousness of the centralized production are strikingly clear. Costs of starting the business are usually too large, the production is not regulated, the products are disgusting and their quality is much worse than that of the same products made by private producers. But whereas, under these circumstances, private enterprises usually stop working, state-run ones, very often in spite of everything, still continue to exist because this or that persona of the bureaucratic world is interested in it... "

"To take away all social wealth and all instruments of production from the ruling class and pass them to a collectivist administration: it is to actually provide it with all the might of the expropriated bourgeoisie ... It will be able to abuse its power because in its hands will be all, all the threads of the economic, and thus political life of the society, all the forces of the menacing, centralized state mechanism. [...] And it will abuse its power because its very position will push it for this. "

1) SRs Maximalists https://libcom.org/forums/history/socialist-revolutionaries-maximalists-srs-maximalists-24092014

2) Also here you can read materials on the practical experience of creating a libertarian socialist society in the Russian city of Kronstadt by the maximalist and anarchists. https://libcom.org/forums/history/practice-anti-authoritarian-socialism-kronstadt-republic-1918-02102014

Sharing our wave-length

Our ideas are shared by others even though we may not agree on every detail this article shows the overlap that exists.

The Economy of Freedom

The collapse of the state-capitalist dictatorships in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union proved that any attempts to combine a just social ideal with preservation of the state and commodity-money (market) relations are doomed to failure. Communist anarchism has always predicted that Marxist utopias would come to precisely such an end. It has not been discredited in the least by the experience of social democracy and party-state “communism”, and there is therefore no need to “supplement” it with borrowings from these doctrines, which have suffered complete collapse.

One such borrowing is the idea of “market socialism”. It was born in the heads of social-democratic theorists and taken on board by reformers in the ruling parties, who however did not save the “socialist camp” but hastened economic disaster. Nevertheless, many leftists, including some anarchists, have taken up the idea of combining socialism and the market, viewing it as an alternative to centralized “planning”.

However, attempts by anti-state, anti-authoritarian socialists to combine a just social order with market relations have always failed. They have led either to a sort of “collective capitalism” (as happened, according to the descriptions of Gaston Leval and D. Abad de Santillan, to certain collectivized enterprises during the Spanish revolution: they preserved money and the wages system and continued to conduct business egoistically, on their own responsibility) or to restricted self-management with expanded powers for managers (for the sake of faster and more “efficient” decision-making in the market, as has occurred in the kibbutzim).

Even the “freest” of market relations are completely incompatible with solidarity, ethics, and freedom itself. The French philosopher and ecologist André Gorz demonstrated in his book Critique of Economic Reason that under both the centralized bureaucratic and the market system man’s will is fettered and his activity and the entire life of society slip from under his conscious control. Thus, when people are subordinated to the impersonal laws of the market, which do not depend on them and cannot be controlled, the results of individuals’ uncoordinated activity do not correspond to their will and desire. These results are a matter of chance, as in thermodynamics. However, freedom is the possibility of conscious control over one’s own life (self-management).

The social psychologist Erich Fromm (To Have Or To Be) gave a brilliant analysis of the so-called “market character”, showing how market relations corrupt and deform the human personality: it turns into an object of commerce, a commodity that strives to sell itself to greater advantage and develops within itself only those qualities which can be “purchased”. All relations among people are subordinated to the egoistic, utilitarian principles of profitability, all activity becomes prostitution, and mutual aid and solidarity are replaced by a war of “all against all” waged by embittered and mutually envious individuals.

Market relations cannot exist in a truly free society based on solidarity. They will inevitably destroy such a society.

Some people propose retaining the market (“market socialist”) model only for a “transitional” period before anarcho-communism is established, with payment “according to the quantity and quality of work done”. They repeat Marxist arguments about the difference between “socialism” and “communism”, how the former will “grow over” into the latter, and the conditions under which this will take place, such as a higher productivity of labour, abundance and a higher level of consciousness.

These purely productivist arguments might still have been seriously discussed thirty years ago, before the onset of the ecological crisis. Today it is absolutely clear that a just society can be built only on the basis of ecological harmony. If humanity wishes to survive, then there can be no question of increasing – or in some sectors even of maintaining – the level of labour productivity of developed capitalism. And those who connect communism with “abundance” in the traditional sense of the word are at risk of missing the boat altogether: unlimited economic growth within the limited system of Planet Earth is impossible.

It is also hard to agree with the idea that “payment according to the quantity and quality of work done” is the most effective and acceptable way to avoid an unmotivated and passive workforce. People become indifferent toward their own work when they are unable to control its course and results and when they have no sense of its social significance or of the meaning and purpose of the labour process as a whole. This is natural given the alienation and detailed (“Taylorist”) division of labour of contemporary industrial production, and no “material incentives” can make the least difference to the situation. And yet in the agrarian communes of revolutionary Spain and in kibbutzim with a communist system of distribution people understood why and for whom they were working, and their work was no worse or less effective than in capitalist firms.

The idea of payment according to the quantity and quality of work done can be taken seriously only by those who follow the Marxists in supposing that the quantity and quality of work done can be measured. In reality this is impossible. All socially necessary work is of equal value: there is no way, for instance, to determine how much work by an engineer is equivalent to a certain amount of work by a farmer or a bus driver. The productivity of work may be influenced by chance or depend on numerous factors that cannot be taken into account. Finally, any manufactured product contains the work of many thousands of people, even of several generations. And who, indeed, is going to calculate this “quantity and quality of work”? A new state authority?

Attempts to establish a new social hierarchy on the basis of “work done” will undermine equality and solidarity and lead to the rise of an empowered and privileged elite of the most “highly skilled” and “successful” workers. And to defend the power and privileges of the new “Stakhanovites” a state will again be needed.

Of course, in a free anarcho-communist society there will at first still be individual household enterprises that do not exploit the labour of others – small farmers and people engaged in various crafts. They will not be forcibly expropriated, but will gradually form cooperatives of their own free will. But it would be a very grave error to build relations in the already socialized sector of the economy on the same basis as in the individual sector. If this is done, the individual sector will inevitably gain control over the economy as a whole. Until complete socialization is achieved, we shall be dealing with two quite different (though interacting) systems of production. In the larger, socialized sector, communist principles of distribution must be established from the very start – free access to those things which are available in abundance and social distribution of everything else in proportion to individual needs (Kropotkin): from each according to individual ability, to each according to individual need (the principle of the kibbutz).

Relations with individual household enterprises may be built on the basis of direct exchange of products, with access of these enterprises to socialized goods and services (transport, etc.) regulated by agreement. Cooperatives should be given preferential treatment in this respect.

From the very start, relations within the socialized (communist) sector will be not market relations but oriented toward the needs of real people. The economy of the free society will be planned in the true meaning of the word. “Planning” under the state-capitalist dictatorship was a sham, inasmuch as it was carried out not from below, “from the consumer”, but from above, by the Centre. In the free society of the future, by contrast, the associated producers and consumers, acting together in a spirit of solidarity, will be able to determine what, where and how to produce and consume and ensure – on the basis of free agreement “from the bottom up” – coordination between needs and production capacities.

The methods of such “planning from below” are suggested by the practical experience of really existing communes and consumer cooperatives. Consumers will aggregate their needs at regular general assemblies of local associations and then coordinate these decisions with production capacities in economic bodies of the communes or at their general meetings with delegates from the associated producers. The communes, united in regional and interregional federations, and the self-managing producers and consumers, aggregating and coordinating needs and capacities with the aid of statistics, acting through delegates at congresses of communes and in economic councils at various levels, will be able to develop larger-scale production facilities that will serve all or a number of communes.

“Planning” of the economy of an anarchist society must not be centralized. By no means everything needs to be coordinated at the regional, continental or planetary level. A different principle is appropriate here. A region must not assume responsibility for matters that a single commune can handle by itself without affecting the interests of others. Likewise, a region can resolve most of its problems for itself. The economy of anarchism will therefore be oriented toward the greatest possible (although, of course, not complete) self-provision. Among other things, this will mitigate ecological, raw-material and transport problems and bring production near to the consumer. Many of the economic and ecological problems of contemporary society arise because what is produced is not what is really needed by specific consumers but what dispersed producers think they might need. That is, no one knows in advance whether people need this or that product; this is determined after the fact by the market or by a bureaucrat.

In a free ecological society everything must be otherwise. In a free society, the economy begins with the consumer. Consumer and residents’ associations, together with the syndicates of the staff of distribution centres in urban districts and rural areas, assess the current and future needs of residents (something like the system of commercial orders) and transmit statistical data to the economic council of the commune, which together with delegates from the syndicates and from consumer associations and relying on statistics determine which of its necessities the commune can produce by its own efforts, which will require external inputs or participation, and what goods or services the commune can provide to the residents of other communes.

What the commune is able to do for itself by its own efforts is done at the local level and does not require coordination with others. Everything else is coordinated with other communes at the necessary level. Coordination is established with the aid of statistics at economic congresses of delegates from communes and then ratified by the communes themselves. (No one can compel a reluctant commune to participate in one or another joint project, but in that case no one can compel other communes to continue dealing with that commune.)

Thus, what is produced must be precisely what is really needed by specific people or groups of people. Distribution will be carried out through the same distribution centres that collect consumer information, without charge but upon the consumer presenting an individual card indicating that he or she has contributed the working time agreed by members of the commune, or a child’s card, or a pensioner’s card (for the sick and others unable to work).

As the new social relations develop, it will become possible to break up huge cities, ecologize social and individual life, and redistribute work within society (including between the sexes) so that gradually the rigid specialization of work will recede into the past and work will turn into creative and pleasurable play.

The economic system of the new society can only be an economy of universal self-management, an economy of freedom. Production should be regulated not by professional managers, bureaucrats or directors, but by working people themselves. General economic decisions will be taken by the whole population – at the general assemblies of consumer associations and communes or (through delegates with an imperative mandate) at their congresses, while the direct management of production will be concentrated in the hands of self-managing work collectives and technical councils and syndicates created by them, united in a dual (sectoral and territorial) federation.

These, of course, are only general and fundamental points. There are numerous details that cannot be anticipated, let alone discussed in a short article. Answers will arise out of the practice of a free society. For now it is important to recognize one thing: people who wish to survive under decent conditions will have to renounce dominion over nature and over their fellow humans. But this means a radical change in the methods and processes for taking social and economic decisions, the replacement of external regulation (by a bureaucracy or the spontaneous laws of the market) by self-management and “planning” from below on the basis of federative agreements.

In other words, an anarchist society will be a society without bureaucracy, without money and without the market – or it will not be at all.

VADIM DAMIER

(Translation Comrade Stephen Shenfield)

End capitalism before it ends you

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Socialists are told that capitalism is an efficient system of production and rational allocation of resources but is it really true? These facts from UNESCO web-site may have many doubting it.

Some 20% of the world's children go without basic immunization, most of whom live in remote and often impoverished areas where infection is more likely to lead to death.

Over 9 million children die each year from preventable causes, most of them from dehydration, routine infections, or one of several major diseases for which vaccines are available.

Some 500,000 women die in childbirth each year while over 3 million infants die from dehydrating diseases that could be eliminated through breast feeding or Oral Rehydration Therapy, a simple and cheap mixture of clean water, sugar and salts.

Over 17 million people die each year from curable infectious and parasitic diseases such as diarrhea, malaria and tuberculosis.

Over 500 million people are infected with tropical diseases such as malaria, sleeping sickness, river blindness, and schistomiasis, all of which are now preventable.

Over 18 million people are infected with the AIDS virus.

More than a billion people lack access to any health-care.

There are 1.75 billion people without adequate drinking water.

A billion people are without adequate housing, and 100 million are homeless.

Nearly a billion people, mostly women, are illiterate, and about 130 million children at primary school age and 275 million at secondary level are not enrolled in school.

There are over 53 million uprooted people or refugees in the world, 80% of which are women and children.

There are over 110 million landmines scattered in 64 countries killing and maiming over 9,000 children, women and civilians of all ages each year, and over one million since 1975.

On top of these outrageous conditions are layered the alarming environmental problems confronting the world:

Around the planet, 26 billion tons of topsoil are being eroded per year from the world's farmland. That's 3 million tons per hour.

Deserts advance at a rate of nearly 15 million acres per year.

10 million acres of rain forest are destroyed annually.

Over 200 million tons of waste are added to the atmosphere each year.

Over six billion tons of carbon from fossil fuel burning were added to the atmosphere last year.

There is a 6 million square mile hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, and a 4.5 to 5% loss of ozone over the Northern Hemisphere.

The planet has warmed at least 1° C in the last century, and given the annual carbon, CO2, CFC, and methane transmissions into the atmosphere, it will rise another 2.5° to 5.5° in the coming century.

There are over 31,000 hazardous waste sites in the US alone, while in Europe, Estonia, and Lithuania acid rain has damaged over 122.6 million acres of forest.

There are over 130,000 tons of known nuclear waste in the world, some of which will remain poisonous to the planet for another 100,000 years.

Not So Merry

At a time of the year when many workers are driven frantic looking for some family Xmas presents here is a pointer, although some might call it holiday shopping for the one percent. Retail giant Neiman Marcus unveiled its 2014 Christmas Book--a unique collection of some very luxurious and one-of-a-kind gifts and experiences. This type of holiday cheer does not come cheap, however; the ten gifts on the list range from $25,000 to $475,000. 'Ginger Reeder, Neiman Marcus Vice President for Corporate Communications, highlights some of the more unique possibilities available to a few lucky recipients this holiday season. Reeder says this year's list includes more "experiences" than ever before. As opposed to simply purchasing a single item, many options are complete packages, including travel and five-star accommodations, along with a totally unique experience.For instance, for a mere $425,000, there's the chance to attend the legendary Vanity Fair Academy.' (Yahoo Finance, 15 October) For most workers it will be cheap catalogues and hire purchase again this year. RD

Statistics And Damn Lies

David Cameron has been accused of getting his sums wrong, after appearing to suggest the government had already made most of its proposed spending cuts. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said not even half of the austerity measures would be implemented by 2015. 'Cameron wrote in the Times on Thursday: "In this parliament we will have made £100bn of savings while cutting income tax by £10.5bn. In the next parliament we plan to make £25bn of savings while making £7.2bn of income tax cuts." But the IFS said the figures were not comparable. The thinktank said only part of the 2015-2020 period was included and cuts proposed for 2015-16 had been included in the present parliament. It added that the figures relied on different measures that ignored the impact of other pressures.' (Guardian, 31 October) Politicians like to claim that they can control capitalism, whereas it is the other way about. The IFS may be good at exposing politician's errors but they remain mute on the exploiting nature of capitalism. RD

Is socialism green?

The Amazon rain-forest has degraded to the point where it is losing its ability to benignly regulate weather systems and is likely to lead eventually to more extreme weather events, according to a new warning from Antonio Nobre, researcher in the government’s space institute, Earth System Science Centre, one of Brazil’s leading scientists. The Amazon works as a giant pump, channeling moisture inland via aerial rivers and rainclouds that form over the forest more dramatically than over the sea, the author says. It also provides a buffer against extreme weather events, such as tornados and hurricanes. In the past 20 years, the author notes that the Amazon has lost 763,000 sq km, an area the size of two Germanys. In addition another 1.2m sq km has been estimated as degraded by cutting below the canopy and fire. As a result, the deterioration of the rainforest – through logging, fires and land clearance – has resulted in a decrease in forest transpiration and a lengthening of dry seasons. This might be one of the factors of the severe drought affecting south-east Brazil. São Paulo – the biggest city in South America – is facing its worst water shortages in almost a century. October, which is usually the start of the rainy season, was drier than at any time since 1930, leaving the volume of the Cantareira reservoir system down to 5% of capacity. “Amazon deforestation is altering climate. It is no longer about models. It is about observation,” said Nobre. 
Forest clearance has accelerated under Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, after efforts to protect the Amazon were weakened. Last month, satellite data indicated a 190% surge in deforestation in August and September. The influence of the “ruralista” agribusiness lobby in Congress has also grown in recent years, making it harder for the authorities to push through new legislation to demarcate reserves.

 A new United Nations report that has found that the destruction of the environment has left an area of farmland the size of France useless for growing crops. 7.7 square miles of agricultural land being lost every day because it has become too salty. Climate change is making the situation worse because warmer temperatures require more irrigation and increase the speed at which the water evaporates, the report warns. A total of 240,000 square miles of farmland worldwide has now been contaminated. The Indus Valley in Pakistan is one of the worst hit areas, with salinization cutting rice production by 48 per cent in recent years, while wheat is down 32 per cent. Salty soils also cause losses of around £469m annually in the Colorado River basin, an arid region in the south west of the US. In Turkmenistan, more than half of the irrigated land is damaged by salt. Salt damage can also be reversed through measures such as tree planting and crop rotation using salt-tolerant plants, but these measures are extremely expensive.

Eco-socialism should not be mistaken for anti-technology or an anti-civilisation critique that strives to find balance with nature by returning to some kind of pre-industrial tribal society. ‘Primitivism’ can be described as seeking social transformation along these lines.  Eco-socialism  seeks to synthesise what might be regarded as some of the most desirable aspects of more primitive societies, such as their decentralised and ecological means of existing, with some of the most desirable aspects of modern society, such as its science and technology. Green socialism is not some misanthropic back-to-nature utopia.  Our environmental crises have their roots in the social system of production so  the solutions to these ecological problems must be  radical of social relationships. The goal of a future socialist society will be to maximise human potential in order to stimulate a flourishing of humanity achieved through the free association  of producers within society. Human flourishing cannot be achieved, if we are constrained from exercising or capacities. I cannot quench my thirst without water; I cannot nourish my hunger without food; I cannot protect myself from the elements without shelter.

The political-economic system has overridden our genetic and social makeup, the result of that combination determines all our relationships, and it’s also the greatest influences in the way we think, evaluate our life and nature. The many hunter-gatherers the Arctic, the tropical forests of Congo and Amazon, also of the deserts of the Kalahari and of Australia, relate to one another cooperatively and fairly. Their relationship was due to the political-economic system they had, that system also helps to give those people the feeling of being a part of nature. Best of all is, it’s the way of life our genes evolved for hundreds of thousands of years, therefore that political-economic system suits our make-up, and furthermore, it was very successful. That system was what enabled people, with the most elementary tools and material, to live on all continents, except Antarctica. It was efficient; it allowed plenty of time for social and artistic pursuits. Today, with those attributes, we  have the advantage of our technology.

 Agriculture gradually introduced private property. That private property gave an opening to the warrior class to seize properties; it also reduced cooperativeness and increased competitiveness. To deal with competition within our human social needs, a class structure appeared starting with chiefs then proceeding to more complex hierarchies based on hereditary. Fairness for present and future people no longer dominated decisions – they were increasingly based on power of violence and belief. This hierarchal system produced civilisation, that’s centralised control, with objects being more valuable and important than relationships, resulting in continual oppression with periodical slaughters in wars. To hold society together it required both a brutal domination by a hierarchy and a fervent belief in it and in a deity all the more sacred as it was inscribe.

We see life in fragmented segments. Each bit examined in isolation and detail looks easy to manage. But life isn’t like that. It’s highly interconnected, and it’s that inseparability that has produced and maintains our wonderful divers living planet. Competitions in a social setting, is either overt or covert violence, if it’s physical it will also be psychological violence. Its extent of its potential hurt is proportional to its competitive intensity. The exaltation of winning is counter balance by the pain from other people’s loss and at times of many people. This is so between nations, companies, individuals, and sport people in boxing or playing chess. The intensity of the gratification or distress is dependent on the intensity of the competition.  Winners in capitalist societies gain more power due to “their” wealth, which creates the unseen link to power. This gives them a competitive advantage, over the bottom section of the wealth hierarchy of capitalism in a “classless” unpredictable world.

The capitalist system cannot tolerate nor adapt to declining resources and at the same time increasing demands from the effects of global warming and a growing population. To survive we must gradually but quickly change from a growth economy of capitalism to an economy that can manage its shrinkage until we reach a sustainable life. This can only be achieved by progressing from the unfairness of a competitive economy to the fairness of a cooperative one. This would also improve our physical and mental wellbeing.

The competitiveness turns potential friends into enemies and that has detrimental effects on people’s psyche, which is becoming obvious. Those emotional dilemmas are largely caused by the necessary loneliness of competing. Even when one is in a team, the ideology of competition creeps in, so relationships are still chancy. Solitary confinement can have a permanent injurious outcome according to the time of aloneness, but one can feel alone in the midst of a multitude of people that competition creates. Competition is a factor that produces that overwhelming multitude of people, it’s the most serious problem we will have to face when or if we come to our senses. The competition is spurred on by religious, economic, and military needs, of the necessity to have the greatest number to be the strongest.

It’s in everyone’s interest to change course as quickly as one can. The reality is we have a common interest of survival, but we believe we have diverse interest. Therefore we see a need for a competitive advantage over other people, which overrides the knowledge of the planet’s depleting resources and global warming. Namely under capitalist philosophy, we see people as opponents, even enemies instead of potential colleagues and even friends.

We all have to live under a faulty system, we do the best we can. Change the system and people will change to live under it. People are extremely adaptable if given accurate information we will respond to it.

ADAPTED FROM THIS ARTICLE

The Happiest Days Of Your Life?

The counselling service ChildLine had more than 34,000 consultations with children who talked about killing themselves in 2013/14, it has revealed. The number of such consultations has increased by 116% since 2010/2011. 'Statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that suicide rates for 15 to 19-year-olds remained broadly consistent between 2000-2012. ONS figures show that 125 young people within that age range killed themselves in 2012.' (BBC News, 31 October) Capitalism is a cruel competitive world and children feel that alienation just as much as adults, but it is truly scary that children talking about suicide has doubled in one year. RD

The Great War - the Class War

We cannot predict the future. It is not easy to foretell what will bring about a fundamental change in the world situation. But, one thing is sure, we do have good reason to be pessimistic. For every mainstream film that is angry and trying to communicate hope and vision, like Hunger Games or Elysium, there are a hundred that reaffirm that there is no alternative.

A danger exists that we will soon find ourselves living on a planet unable to sustain peoples’ continued existence on it. It has long been the perspective of socialists that the capitalist drive for profit and the narrow framework of the nation-state system are the two greatest barriers to the ability of humans to live efficiently and harmoniously with their natural environment. We argue it is not over-population, a shortage of resources  or economic growth in and of itself that has placed humanity’s existence in jeopardy. It is therefore of the greatest importance that workers in defense of our natural resources from capitalist exploitation and plunder take up the fight for socialism. Capitalism creates the conditions and forces for the socialist movement: the necessary technical basis, science and the working class itself. That is its major contribution to social progress. It also provokes the working class into action and is the involuntary promoter of the class struggle.  The Socialist Party, nevertheless does not accept a fatalist faith that capitalist contradictions will “automatically” create revolutionary consciousness. Capitalism creates the working class and depends upon it, as a parasite depends upon its host. Yet it cannot satisfy the demands or solve the problems of the working force it exploits and oppresses. Even in good times workers display their discontent and protest against insecurity by strikes and similar demonstrations. One of the paramount functions of a socialist party is to educate the working class to its conditions of emancipation.  “to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretic expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.” (Engels: Socialism, Utopian and Scientific). The Socialist Party  teaches that the revolution against capitalism and the socialist reconstruction of the old world can be accomplished only through conscious, collective action by the workers themselves. A political moovement capable of handling such a colossal task cannot arise spontaneously or haphazardly; it has to be continuously, consistently and consciously built. It is impossible to stumble blindly into a successful revolution. It will have to be organised and directed by people  that have at their command all the theory, knowledge, resources, and lessons accumulated by the world working class. Its know-how and organisation in politics and action must  surpass that of our class enemies.

A socialism worthy of its name means a substantial and sustained rise in the living standards of the people up to levels beyond those attained by capitalism. It means the establishment of free and democratic control by the workers themselves. Anti-capitalist revolution has to be viewed and understood in its entirety, not in bits and pieces. Despite its occasional glacier-like motion, its defeats or retreats in this or that area, the revolutionary process unfolds step by step, sometimes leap by leap, according to its own independent rhythm. This world revolution of the working people holds everything in its grip and, directly or indirectly, decisively affects the destinies of every one on this planet. Much confusion and perplexity has been provoked among socialists by the fact that the progress of the anti-capitalist forces has been so erratic and uneven. This may run counter to our personal desires but it conforms to historical precedent. History does not provide any examples of a smooth and harmonious replacement of one universal social structure by another. Quite the contrary. A zigzag path of world revolution will emerge. Nationalism and patriotism turned out to be stronger than internationalism. Yet, here and there, scattered through the world, are stalwart socialists and working-class militants who possess the knowledge and hold conviction enough not to place confidence in the invincibility of capitalism or to undervalue the potential of the working-class. The labour movement draws its inexhaustible strength from the indispensable part it plays as the principal force of production, the creator of all wealth and profit. It enhances that strength by its growing industrial organization, by its political formations, by its cohesiveness and solidarity in struggle, by its developing awareness of itself as a decisive social power. The most significant fact about the ups and downs of the workers’movement has not been its defeats but its  ability to learn from these attacks, to recuperate from their effects, move forward and gain new ground.

What is socialism/communism? look around at the many  useful institutions established by many or by the whole people in common. The RNLI, for instance, to save and shelter shipwrecked persons. In ordinary life everybody cares for oneself, but people also unite for a common, social purpose. Experience teaches that in doing so they do admirably well; every one of them who will reflect a little must confess that his own welfare is greatly advanced by such institutions of common usefulness. What would people be without public roads etc.; that is, such as are built and instituted at the cost of the community for common use? We could mention here a thousand other things to demonstrate these  institutions are examples of socialism/communism, the principle of the common interests of society. In everyday life everybody looks out for his own interest, even at the cost of his fellow-men; here egoism is dominant. What does the usurer care for the victims of his avarice? What do the speculating swindlers care for the fate of the shareholders after their hard-earned savings are gone? A businessman who should show any consideration for the welfare of his fellow-man in his transactions would be become a laughing-stock. Egoism rules supreme. Everybody thinks of his own welfare, and does not care whether by doing so he destroys the welfare of others.  In spite of this prevalence of self-interest, the common interest of mankind is gaining ground. More and more people unite to form more and more associations, the activity of  the community is extending its influence over more and more objects.

The late capitalist experience is one of alienation, from ourselves, our work, those around us. Forced to live in competition with our fellow workers we feel vulnerable, insecure, precarious, unfulfilled by our roles of producer/consumer. There has been a change. Capitalism demands the workers body but is uninterested in their mind or ‘soul’, or their thoughts or  relationships.  21st century work  demands all of the worker leaving her or him without a meaningful life outside of work. There is no chance to find meaning in community, in our unions or social clubs for the modern worker is drained of all energies and goes home to watch TV, and get ready for tomorrow. No wonder mental health problems continue to rise.  Many people know intuitively that they are living in an alienating wasteland decorated with  technological toys and trinkets but have never heard that something else is possible. We need to be organising and communicating, encouraging each other to explore the possibility of living life based on community, co-operation, egalitarianism, so that even if we don’t see the end of capitalism we will have an alternative model for our own lives.

Let Them Drown

The recent report that the Italian navy operation, Mare Nostrum, has saved the lives of 150,000 migrants and refugees so far this year but despite their best efforts more than 3,000 have died. You would imagine the desperate plight of workers crossing the Mediterranean in dangerous boats seeking employment in Europe would meet with world-wide sympathy, but that is not the view of the British government. 'A Home Office minister has urged that emergency rescue operations of drowning migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean "be stopped at the earliest possible opportunity" despite being told his approach amounted to "a barbaric abandonment of British values". The unrepentant immigration minister, James Brokenshire was defending in public for the first time the decision taken by the Home Secretary, Theresa May, to refuse to support future search and rescue of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean in rickety unseaworthy boats.' (Guardian, 30 October) RD

Wow, 50p A Week

The government is considering cutting the value of the main employment and support allowance (ESA) sickness benefit by as much as £30 so that it is effectively worth the same as jobseeker's allowance, internal documents seen by the BBC suggest. 'New claimants, judged to be capable of work with appropriate support, could be given just 50p more per week than people on jobseeker's allowance (JSA). .... George Osborne, the chancellor, has said he is seeking a £12bn cut in the welfare bill, and has so far identified a quarter of these cuts mainly through freezing the value of most benefits for two years.' (Guardian, 30 October) Whenever a government has financial problems its first response is always to cut welfare payments. RD

The SPGB - Educate, Agitate, Organise

If we seek progress in finding the right strategy for the transition to the better world we aspire towards, then it is necessary first to correct any mistakes in our understanding of the present situation and, in general, create clarity about the matters being discussed. If the various trends in the workers’ movement at the end still disagree, then we shall at least know on which points exactly we disagree. That too would be some progress in the discussion. When two or more groups participate in a strategy discussion, then one logical assumption is that they share a common goal for it is nonsensical to search for a common strategy for different goals. No socialist seeks differences. If the differences exist, they are real. If you continue to go down the wrong road, at a certain point something happens.  A revolution from the left statists? A revolution from the right? Is it violence followed by state violence?  Or will it be a sudden decision by a critical mass of people that they are not going to take it anymore? Capitalism is and always has been deeply antagonistic to participatory democracy. Capitalism wants a political order subservient to the needs of the economy.

 The words the Socialist Party uses are very clear so it is actually the contents of our writings, not the way we express ourselves that is the problem because for the 99%, unfortunately, it is still inconceivable that they must abolish capitalism. When faced with this incontrovertible fact what do we do then? Do we  change our goals, give up our convictions? Do we then hide inconvenient facts, saying only acceptable messages, against our conviction, in order to appeal to the majority? Or do we strive to be noncommittal and say vague generalisations and truisms that cannot put anybody off like your typical politician. Do our calls for more radical goals actually harm social and environmental movements? Is the time is not ripe yet for them? Are people not intelligent or mature enough yet to receive our case for revolution?

The Socialist Party thinks everybody in the world should be fully informed about the dire situation humanity and the Earth are in today and thinks all people are capable enough of understanding the basic truths of this situation. Our task as political activists is to present them to the people. The goals some call “too” radical are actually absolute necessities. In the times we are living in, it is necessary to tell the truth, no matter how unpalatable they may be. People are not little children from whom you must hide inconvenient facts. It is necessary, if need be, to become unpopular rather than succumbing to the common ground of accepting the status quo.  It is the Socialist Party’s duty to honestly criticise the majority, even if the political price to be paid for that be high. In practical life, for just living, we are compelled to make many compromises. Let us not make compromises even in our thinking and expressing our thoughts. We may safely say that no ideal path has yet been found that guarantees success in our efforts to achieve our goals. We can also safely say that whatever path we take, it would be full of difficulties and pain. However, it has been seen in the history of mankind that we humans are also capable of being inspired by ideals and values. There are 1001 reasons to be pessimistic. But we are not dead yet. So let us go on trying.

Regarding the possibility of whether and under what circumstances socialism could replace capitalism, Marx wrote of two prerequisites:
(1)  a clear understanding of socialist principles with an unambiguous desire to put them into practice; and
(2)  an advanced industrial economy so that free access is technically possible.
As far as (2) is concerned, there's a broad consensus that there's no problem that couldn't be dealt with now, once we've collectively reached (1). The political ignorance of many of the working class has to be the major challenge.

More and more people are recognising that the capitalist monetary solution is not viable for a sustainable world and it is here that we can see the schisms in society becoming deeper. People take so much and then, as they reach the final straw, they are compelled one way or another to seek to get their voices heard. We have to have a vision to see beyond the intellectual paucity that drives current day society. Ending poverty, hunger and enabling all to have adequate living conditions these goals are all part of what is to be achieved in the period of social reorganisation and will be planned for in full consultation with local communities. Once decided democratically that we are heading for a socialist world it becomes a much simpler matter. Quite how this will happen is open to conjecture. As expressed on numerous occasions, we have no blueprint. Depriving the capitalist class of the state and its functionaries is the first objective. Once the decision is made, then it becomes a matter of organisation. Suffice it to say there will have been a period of planning and co-ordination by mass organisations in work places, in neighbourhoods, in educational establishments, in organisations with international links and in civic organisations, which will culminate in the collective and proactive decision of the people to take control over the direction of their lives immediately and for the future. With ever-increasing numbers, discussion and debate will have begun to determine the direction of the path to be taken. Democracy and majority decision-making must be the basic principle of both the movement to establish socialism and of socialist society itself.

 There is of course a perpetual tension between theory and practice that no political organisation, whether liberal, Marxist or anarchist, gets right all the time. Anyone who thinks that socialists are intellectuals, academics or armchair philosophers would be pleasantly surprised at the disdain with which these ideas – far removed from anything actually to do with working class experience - are viewed overall.

As far back as 1792 the London Corresponding Society argued for the alternative to a system where they were completely cast out from an influence upon political power and one of the objectives of the London Corresponding Society expressed at the trial of one of its members was:
"To enlighten the people; to show the people the reason, the ground of all their complaints and sufferings, when a man works hard for thirteen or fourteen hours a day the week through and is not able to maintain his family. That is what I understand of it: to show the people the ground of this: why they are not able."

Five decades later Julian Harney, editor of The Red Republican, wrote in 1850:
"It is not any amelioration of the conditions of the most miserable that will satisfy us; it is justice to all that we demand. It is not the mere improvement of the social life of our class that we seek; but the abolition of classes and the destruction of those wicked distinctions which have divided the human race into princes and paupers, landlords and labourers, masters and slaves. It is not any patching and cobbling of the present system we aspire to accomplish; but the annihilation of the system and the substitution, in its stead, of an order of things in which all shall labour and all shall enjoy, and the happiness of each guarantee the welfare of the entire community."

 In his Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth, William Thompson who had never read Marx; never heard of Marx - wrote:
"The idle possessor of the inanimate instruments of production not only secures to himself by their possession as much enjoyment as the most diligent and skilful of the real efficient producers but in proportion to the amount of his accumulation, by whatever means acquired, he procures ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times as much of the articles of wealth, the products of labour, the means of enjoyment as the utmost labour of such efficient producers can procure for them."

What is important is that those words in many respects sum up what the Socialist Party today stands for and their ideas  lives on in the thinking of the Socialist Party. We see the socialist revolution as changing away from divide and rule, fear and hate, to connecting to each other, see ourselves as basically sharing and reaching for the same goals such as peace and harmony with nature - it is a revolution of attitude that will lead to political  change.

Justice In Action

Capitalism is a thoroughly disgusting social system. It produces wars, world hunger and crime, but surely this is one of most disgusting crimes of all. 'Child sexual exploitation has become a "social norm" within some areas of Greater Manchester, according to the author of a report ordered after the Rochdale grooming case. It said girls in uniform were regularly stopped by men outside schools. Inquiry chairwoman Ann Coffey MP said the "prevailing public attitude" blamed children, leading to 1,000 convictions from 13,000 cases over six years.' (BBC News, 30 October) So much for capitalism's super duper police and law courts! RD

A Strange Sort Of Democracy

It used to be that leaders from the two major US political parties, Republican and Democratic, controlled the money and devised the electoral strategy, but thanks to legislation and Supreme Court decisions over the past 12 years, this has changed entirely. The power of political parties ebbed, while outside groups and individuals have been given new freedom to buy seats at the game. This is particularly true of marginal contests. 'As a result, money has flooded into the Tarheel State. At this point more than $106m has been spent on the race, easily breaking the record of $77.3m for the 2012 Massachusetts Senate race. Outside groups have poured in the lion's share, with more than $76m (also a record). That dwarfs the amount raised by Ms Hagen ($22m) and Mr Tillis ($9.1m).' (BBC News, 30 October) So much for US claims about being a democracy - not only do the owning class own the means of production and distribution they heavily influence the voting system. RD

The Goal is Revolution, Not Reform

New studies about the warming of the planet and the risk of massive release of methane from the Arctic are worse than originally thought.

The warmongers of the Wall Street tell us there is not enough money for social services , for adequate health care or a decent education system. They tell us we must cut back. Yet there is plenty of money for their wars, and plenty of profits for the rich. The military-industrial complex garners extraordinary rates of profit. According to a study by financial advisory firm Morgan Stanley, shares in the major US arms manufacturers have risen 27,699% over the past fifty years versus 6,777% for the broader market. In the past three years alone, arms corporation Lockheed Martin has returned 149% to their investors, Raytheon 124% and Grumman 114%.

Most people are clearly aware that the main cause of climate change, which is destroying the planet, is profit motivated. Yet many environmental organizations and activists ignore the wars that kill people while they pollute the planet. They are naturally joined given that the main cause of these miseries is the same: Profit, power and greed; and the consequences are the same: death and suffering for humanity all other species. Bolivian President Evo Morales says about the causes in his “10 Commandments to Save the Planet, Humankind and Life”:

“There is no worse aggression against Mother Earth and her children than war. War destroys life. Nothing and nobody can escape war. Those who fight suffer as much as those who remain without food just to feed the war. Land and biodiversity suffer. Thus, the environment will never be the same after a war. Wars are the greatest waste of life and natural resources...We know that in order to cure Mother Earth it is necessary to be conscientious that this disease has a name: the global capitalist system...It is the logic of the capitalist system that is destroying the planet…the endless logic of consumption, of using war as an instrument to obtain markets and appropriate markets and natural resources...”

A study made by Oil Change International, written by Nikki Reisch and Steve Kretzmannfocuses on the damage to Iraq in the first five years of war (2003-08).
1) Projected total US spending on the Iraq war could cover all of the global investments in renewable power generation that are needed between now and 2030 in order to halt current warming trends.
2) The war is responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) since March 2003. To put this in perspective: CO2 released by the war to date equals the emissions from putting 25 million more cars on the road in the US this year. If the war was ranked as a country in terms of emissions, it would emit more CO2 each year than 139 of the world’s nations do annually. The CIA reported in its 2006 Factbook that only 35 countries consume more oil per day than does the Pentagon.

As Chomsky always says, if you want the real information, read the financial pages. Business MUST have accurate, true information or they will lose money.

President Erdogan of Turkey questioned the motives of the anti-Isis allies and accused them of meddling in the region's affairs for the past century. "Do you think they come for peace, with their planes and their missiles?" he asked an audience at Marmara University, Istambul. "No," he said. "They do it to get the petrol wells under their control." (Times, 14 October)

The Carter Doctrine as espoused by Zbigniew Brzezinski
"Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault  on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an  assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military
force."

Chomsky’s summary of all this is:
“Maintaining a hold on political power and enhancing US control of the world’s primary energy sources are major steps toward the twin goals that have been declared with considerable clarity: to institutionalize a radical restructuring of domestic society that will roll back the progressive reforms of a century, and to establish an imperial grand strategy of world domination.”

In Kuwait, Syria, Iraq and Libya, of course, it is oil and also natural gas that underlay and still underlies the conflicts. In the Ukraine natural gas supplies lurk in the background.  The Russians who hold one of the largest reserves of natural gas in the world and much concern is about its pipeline routes to Europe.. The  confrontation in the South China Sea between China and its neighbors, Vietnam and the Philippines, is a dispute over actual ownership of energy resources.

 According to information from China’s Ministry of Trade, by March 2011, when the Libyan  military operation began, there were 75 major Chinese companies operating in  the countryand they had concluded $18 billion in contracts. All that investment disappeared with Gadhaffi’s overthrow.

The ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq have seized oil refineries to advance their cause. They and every fighting force in the world understands that oil is power - political power, that is.  Oil-smuggling operations involving millions of barrels have recently been uncovered.
The oil comes from wells and refineries that ISIS has taken over inside northern Iraq and northern Syria, and until very recently it was easy to smuggle it into this quiet part of southern Turkey. One reason is that cheap, smuggled oil is a much-prized commodity in Turkey, where oil is so expensive that it almost doesn't matter who is selling it, even if it's your enemy. ISIS' oil sales probably makes between $1 million and $2 million per day.

About one-third of the more than 1000 organizations involved in the climate actions  around the world Among the better known groups are: La Via Campesina, ATTAC (France), and Global Justice Alliance (US)  agreed to a declaration on the causes and solutions “Climate change is the result of an unjust economic system and to deal with the crisis, we must address the root causes and change the system. There will be no going back from the climate chaos if we do not fight for real solutions and do nothing to confront and challenge the inaction of our governments’ policy-making being hijacked by polluting corporations. It is crucial for us to unify and strengthen our economic, social and environmental struggles and focus our energies on changing the capitalist system.”

Let us in the Socialist Party be very clear about this. It is not a matter of changing capitalism to a better version of itself but changing the whole edifice of capitalism to a completely different economic system - socialism. Reforms that tinker with capitalism, prolonging it and  it is time now to push for a genuine revolution.

Adapted from this article

Capitalism In Action

Such is the nature of capitalism in the UK today that the 5.2 million workers in low-paid jobs may be envied by this group of bank workers. 'Lloyds Banking Group has confirmed 9,000 job losses and the net closure of 150 branches over the next three years. The latest job losses - representing about 10% of its workforce - come on top of 43,000 cuts made since 2008.' (BBC News, 28 October) Don't talk to these workers about economic recovery!   RD

A Recovery For Some

The UK government is very fond at the moment of boasting how they have solved the economic crisis. They claim that the economic deficit has been reduced and that unemployment figures have improved. However there is one aspect of the so-called recovery that they keep quiet about. 'The number of people working in low-paid jobs has hit a record of 5.2 million, according to a report by the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, which found that the number of people earning less than two thirds of the median hourly rate of £7.69 had risen by 250,000 last year.' (Times, 27 October) So while members of the owning class reap in the profits many workers find themselves worse off.  RD 

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.