Anti-anti imperialism (2)

We find that government today is in reality the executive committee of the trusts and affiliated banks who use diplomacy and armed force if not actually to annex countries, at least to secure markets, excluding competition in their self-allotted spheres of interests. Imperialism aims at the control of all the small nations to exploit them for its own benefit. "Anti-imperialism" is the slogan of local aspiring capitalists who wish to dominate the region in place of the US/UK/EU, a situation which would still leave the mass of the population there exploited and oppressed with the eternal problem of finding enough money to buy the things they need to live.

Lenin wrote a pamphlet which he entitled Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In it he argued that, through a process which had been completed by the turn of the century, capitalism had changed its character. Industrial capital and bank capital had merged into finance capital, and competitive capitalism had given way to monopoly capitalism in which trusts, cartels and other monopolistic arrangements had come to dominate production. Faced with falling profits from investments at home, these monopolies were under economic pressure to export capital and invest it in the economically backward parts of the world where higher than normal profits could be made. Hence, Lenin went on, the struggle by the most advanced industrial countries to secure colonies where such "super-profits" could be made. When, after 1917, Lenin became the head of the Bolshevik regime in Russia the theory was expanded to argue that the imperialist countries were exploiting the whole population of the backward areas they controlled and that even a section of the working class in the imperialist countries benefited from the super—profits made from the imperialist exploitation of these countries in the form of social reforms and higher wages, Lenin argued that imperialism was in part a conscious strategy to buy off the working classes in the imperialist countries. His evidence consists of one quote from arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes , and one from Engels to the effect that the workers of England "merrily share the feast" of its colonies.

Firstly his analysis is out of date when applied to the current situation. Perhaps more importantly Lenin's theory of imperialism Lenin's theory of imperialism pitted the working class of undeveloped countries against that of the developed ones. It led to upholding national interest against class interest. Lenin's position was not a mistake. The Labour Aristocracy theory had the political purpose of enabling the Bolsheviks to argue for the workers in the colonies to form united fronts with their local ruling classes against Imperialism. This in turn had the aim of dividing the working class internationally, and turning it into cannon fodder for capitalist war. Lenin's expanded theory made the struggle in the world not one between an international working class and an international capitalist class, but between imperialist and anti—imperialist states. The international class struggle which socialism preached was replaced by a doctrine which preached an international struggle between states.

The whole thrust of Marx's own analysis of capitalism was that the workers movement would first triumph in the economically advanced parts of the world, not in a relatively backward economic area like Russia. Lenin explained away this contradiction by arguing that Marx had been describing the situation in the pre—imperialist stage of capitalism whereas, in the imperialist stage which had evolved after his death, the capitalist state had become so strong that the breakthrough would not take place in an advanced capitalist country but in the weakest imperialist state. Tsarist Russia had been the weakest link in the chain of imperialist countries and this explained why it was there that the first "workers revolution" had taken place. This was tantamount to saying that the Russian revolution was the first "anti—imperialist" revolution, and in a sense it was. Russia was the first country to escape from the domination of the Western capitalist countries and to follow a path of economic development that depended on using the state to accumulate capital internally instead of relying on the export of capital from other countries.

In the early days of the Bolshevik regime, when Russia was faced with a civil war and outside intervention by the Western capitalist powers, Lenin realised that this was a card he could play to try to save his regime. Playing the anti -imperialist card meant appealing to the "toiling masses" of Asia not to establish socialism but to carry out their own anti-imperialist revolutions. The 'super-exploited" countries were to be encouraged to seek independence as this would weaken the imperialist states, who were putting pressure on Bolshevik Russia. This strategy was presented to the workers movement in the West as a way of provoking the socialist revolution in their countries. Deprived of their super— profits, the ruling class in the imperialist countries would no longer be able to bribe their workers with social reforms and higher wages; the workers would therefore turn away from reformism and embrace revolution.

After Lenin's death in 1924, this strategy of building up an "anti-imperialist" front against the West was continued by his successors. Because it taught that all the people of a colonial or a dominated country had a common interest in obtaining independence, i.e. a state of their own, it was very attractive to nationalist ideologists and politicians in these countries. They called on all the inhabitants of the country they sought to rule to unite behind them in a common struggle to achieve independence. As a result, in these countries "socialism" became associated with militant nationalism rather than with the working-class internationalism it had originally been. The political struggle there came to be seen as a struggle, not between the working class and the capitalist class, hut as a struggle of all patriotic elements— workers, peasants and capitalists together—against a handful of traitorous, unpatriotic elements who would have sold out to foreign imperialists. They called on all the inhabitants of the country they sought to rule to unite behind them in a common struggle to achieve independence. As a result, in these countries "socialism" became associated with militant nationalism rather than with the working—class internationalism it had originally been. The political struggle there came to be seen as a struggle, not between the working class and the capitalist class, hut as a struggle of all patriotic elements— workers, peasants and capitalists together—against a handful of traitorous, unpatriotic elements who would have sold out to foreign imperialists.

Marx and Engels had little to say on the subject of imperialism. Their remarks on colonialism and foreign trade, particularly the section on counter-tendencies to the tendency of the Falling Rate of Profit, have been used to give authority to other theories and blown up out of proportion (Capital Volume 3 ) These three pages were used to justify anti-imperialism, but all they basically say is that a national capital tries to avoid the crisis caused by the Falling Rate of Profit, which in turn is caused by the increase in the ratio of constant to variable capital, of machinery to workers, by investing in foreign countries. Briefly, The Falling Rate of Profit is explained by the fact that capitalists are forced by competition to produce cheaper goods by increasing the ratio of machinery to workers. Because labour is the only source of value, the rate of profit is given by dividing the proportion of living labour in the product by the proportion of dead labour, or machinery. This rate must fall as the proportion of machinery rises. Capital invested "at home", in production for foreign trade, can also yield a higher rate of profit

"because it competes with commodities produced by other countries with less developed production facilities, so that the more advanced country sells its goods above their value". This enables the more advanced country to dominate the less advanced, by making more profit. Capital invested directly in production in the colonies also produces more profit: "the reason why this can yield higher rates of profit is that the profit rate is generally higher there on account of the lower degree of development, and so too is the exploitation of labour, through the use of slaves and coolies, etc." What this passage means is that a higher rate of profit is obtainable in countries where exploitation is less developed, where more variable capital (labour) is required to turn out a given quantum of value from a given unit of constant capital (machinery).

Marx doesn't make too much of this counter-tendency to the Falling Rate of Profit. He adds that though the more advanced country "receives more labour in exchange for less", it is all "pocketed by a particular class, just as in the exchange between labour and capital in general". Both foreign trade and capital export are just particular examples of capitalism in general. They are not qualitatively different from what capital does within its "home" country. The "super-profits" of anti-Imperialist theory are, in other words, simply larger quantities of ordinary profits. Taking over competitors with less developed production facilities by destroying them by selling cheaper goods, and taking advantage of these less developed facilities to make more profit, is part of capital's daily life. Moralistic protest about the unfairness of imperialism, as opposed to ordinary capitalism, is an attempt to confuse us about the nature of the beast. (The enslavement of Africans was qualitatively worse than the forced deportations of the English, Scots and Irish poor, but if a capitalist power is more savage and parasitic abroad than it is at home, that is only because the class struggle at home has restrained it. If "First World" workers have been "bribed", that is because they have forced the bosses to bribe them.)

Marxian economics does not measure the level of exploitation by how high or low wages are but by reference to the amount of surplus value produced as compared with the amount of wages paid, whether high or low. By this measure the workers of the advanced countries were more exploited than those of the colonies, despite their higher wages, because they produced more profits per worker. Lenin failed to understand why different rates of wages prevail in different countries. According to him, wages are higher in imperialist countries because the capitalists there bribe their workers out of the superprofits which they earn from exploiting the subjugated countries. Marx's explanation as to why wages were higher in these countries. Both productivity and the rate of exploitation (ratio of paid to unpaid labour) were higher there:

"The more productive one country is relative to another in the world market, the higher will be its wages compared with the other. In England, not only nominal wages but (also) real wages are higher than on the continent. The worker eats more meat, he satisfies more needs. This, however, only applies to the industrial worker and not the agricultural labourer. But in proportion to the productivity of the English workers their wages are not higher (than the wages paid in other countries)" (Theories of Surplus Value).

A lower rate of wages does not make any one country any less capitalist than another: The ruling class in all countries pay workers as much as they think they have to, calculated from:

a) the need for workers to stay alive and, to a greater or lesser degree, healthy,

b) the shortage or otherwise of workers capable of doing the job, and

c) the class struggle

(Where does a wage rise gained by struggle end and a bribe begin? Lenin's position implies that British workers should deduce what proportion of their pay checks are the proceeds of the exploitation of the colonies, and hand that proportion back to their employers, declaring their refusal to be bribed.)

"The different states of the different civilised countries, in spite of their motley diversity of form, all have this in common, they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed" (Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875).

A country may be highly industrialised or a developed agricultural one or the chief supplier of raw materials for industry or whatever. This happens due to the division of labour amongst the various capitalist countries.

Yes, Marx and Engels did support certain nationalist movements and some wars - TO BRING CAPITALISM TO FEUDAL STATES, to usher the capitalist class into political power so they could create the pre-requisites of socialism; an actual working class within an industrialised society. Prussia against the Slavs. Britain and France against Tsarist Russia. Even Prussia against France so as to strengthen unification of Germany . But can anyone seriously think that such a policy is required in to-days world where capitalism is now the predominant system and its the working class thats the decisive class not the capitalists . What may have been right in the 19thCentury for Marx and Engels , may not now be the right choice in the 20th Century under changed circumstances . What was perhaps provident for backward Russia in the eyes of Lenin or Trotsky need not be applicable or advisable for the rest of us .

Almost every country is more powerful than another, and tries to dominate it, (apparently ignorant of Marx's advice that a nation which oppresses another can never itself be free.) Even the smallest countries harbour designs on bits of their neighbours' territory. The tendency of nations to dominate others leads to the view that they are all imperialist, which renders the term anti-imperialism meaningless. Advocating the political independence of the working class is very different from promoting national independence.

The logic of such movements is to subordinate the interests of workers to those of the bourgeois leadership and that such movements can tie their movement to presently supportive states that may well be prepared to use it as a bargaining chip in their pursuit of their own geopolitical interests. Different regimes that may now present themselves as anti-imperialist have a history of collaborating with imperialism. It is of the essence of bourgeois nationalists that, when imperialism prevents them for building their own independent capitalist state, they may lead struggles against it, but they are striving to carve out a place for themselves within the existing system, not to overthrow it. This means that, sooner or later, they will come to terms with imperialism. Successful anti-imperialism becomes imperialism. This is well illustrated by the example of Germany. The Communist International actually offered some support to the Nazis in the early twenties on the grounds that they were a national liberation struggle. Germany was an oppressed nation, occupied and looted by French and British imperialism. The Nazis fought the occupying troops, so the Comintern supported the former, militarily and politically. A decade later, this anti-imperialist movement had become German Imperialism. Israel was founded in a national struggle against the British Empire and resulted in the forced removal of Palestinians and the occupation of the Palestine. Indonesia does not remotely correspond to any precolonial domain, and possesses an enormous variety of peoples, cultures, languages and religions.The people at one end have far more in common with their neighbours across the national frontier than with their fellow "Indonesians", its shape was determined by the last Dutch conquests. We witnessed the result in East Timor. The bourgeoisie is a global class. Nations mostly emerged after capitalism. Consciously or not, and there are numerous examples of conscious strategy, capitalism created nations. A key feature of global capitalism is that the world is organized into a system of states in which a few – the imperialist powers – dominate the rest economically, politically, and militarily." and this poses the question "...what stance Marxists should take when states fight each other ? "

Our Jacobite Ruler – King Francis

Further to the previously posted Culloden video, this factoid may interest people if Charlie had prevailed Franz, Duke of Bavaria (Franz Bonaventura Adalbert Maria Herzog von Bayern; born 14 July 1933), head of the House of Wittelsbach, the former ruling family of the Kingdom of Bavaria would be our monarch and known as Francis the 2nd.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz,_Duke_of_Bavaria

http://www.jacobite.ca/kings/francis2.htm

Billions And Beggars

Recently published statistics about the extremely rich illustrate what an insane society in which we live. In the city of London, especially around the railway stations it is common to be approached by beggars, but no such plight awaits Amancia Ortega who is "worth" £35 billion at the last count. 'The rags to riches billionaire behind the fashion chain Zara has overtaken the Duke of Westminster to become Britain's richest property developer. ....... The reclusive 78-year-old Spaniard sank his wealth huge wealth into brick and mortar and now has £4 billion global property empire including a large chunk of Mayfair and office blocks in the city.' (Daily Mail, 5 December) RD

Best Time Of Your Life?

The mass media likes to project the idea that youthfulness is carefree, that it is the best time of your life, but recent research would deny such an idyllic period. 'Depression and anxiety are affecting more young people than ever before. According to a study published today by the Office for National Statistics, one in five 16- to 24-year-olds are suffering psychological problems, which is almost the rate at which these are seen in early middle age, the life-stage usually most associated with mental health issues.' (Guardian, 4 November) Capitalism is an anxious society for most workers but with rising youth unemployment there are additional problems.RD

Troubles Ahead

Despite the picture the government is trying to draw about how they are coping with the economic crisis, some economic institutions are drawing  vastly different conclusions. 'The plans set out by George Osborne in the Autumn Statement on Wednesday will require government spending cuts "on a colossal scale" after the election, an independent forecaster has warned. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said just £35bn of cuts had already happened, with £55bn yet to come. The detail of reductions had not yet been spelled out, IFS director Paul Johnson said.' (BBC News, 4 December) The reason for the vagueness about future welfare cuts is of course the approaching election. RD

Anti-anti-imperialism (1)

The Left have just not been interested any criticism of what has become a dogma in their circles: that socialists are duty-bound to support struggles for "national liberation". The "revolutionary" Left simply "trot" out the old anti-imperialism position of supporting the weaker country against imperialist aggression which refuses any real class analysis of war. “Imperialism” is a slippery word as all states seek to channel as much of world profits their way as they can. It is just that some states are stronger – some, much, much stronger – than others and so are better at doing this. In which case “imperialist” would just be another way of describing the successful states. But this does not mean that currently weaker states are not striving to do the same. Imperialism is not something separate from capitalism. All capitalist countries, not just those normally labelled “imperialist”, are prepared to use force to further the vital economic interests of their capitalist class. Every up-and-coming capitalist power finds the world already carved up by the established powers. If it is to expand its influence it must clash with these powers, as Germany, Japan, Italy and Russia have found and as China is now finding. All of them, in their time, have beaten the "anti-imperialist" drum, that is, have opposed the domination of the world by Britain and France and later America. Mussolini talked of Italy as a "proletarian nation" in a class war against the "bourgeois nations". Nazi Germany stirred up Arab and Latin American nationalism. Japan advanced the slogan of "Asia for the Asians". Russia, too, and now China, like Germany before, vociferously denounce Anglo-French-American imperialism. Anti-imperialism is the doctrine long used by capitalists in relatively weak countries to try and pursue their ends.

Anti-imperialist nationalism is the ideology of an actual or aspirant capitalist class that seeks the way to its own independent state blocked by imperialism and therefore must mobilize the masses to help break down this obstacle. The logic of such movements is to subordinate the interests of workers and other exploited classes to those of the bourgeois leadership and that such movements can tie their movement to presently supportive states that may well be prepared to use it as a bargaining chip in their pursuit of their own geopolitical interests. Different Islamist tendencies and regimes that may now present themselves as anti-imperialist have a history of collaborating with imperialism. It is of the essence of bourgeois nationalists that, when imperialism prevents them for building their own independent capitalist state, they may lead struggles against it, but they are striving to carve out a place for themselves within the existing system, not to overthrow it. This means that, sooner or later, they will come to terms with imperialism.

In ‘Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism’ Lenin sought to demonstrate that capitalism was not only in decline, but exhausted its progressive role in history, it had become, in its imperialist phase, positively retrogressive, also missed the mark.  Lenin’s article on imperialism was written at a time where members of the Second International were busy voting for war credits while the working class was being slaughtered by the millions so Lenin was not interested in writing a “theory” of imperialism for all time but a polemic during WW1, an inter-imperialist conflict. The main branch of support for this was that it was German militarism which supposedly caused the war. Lenin made the point of showing how all the allied powers were probably far worse imperialists and militarists than Germany. Having identified the "age of imperialism" as "capitalism's last stage of development" and as "the eve of the proletarian revolution," Lenin saw the WW1 as the beginning of an international revolution and consistently called not for the restoration of the capitalist peace but for turning the imperialist war into civil war.

Lenin's conception possessed a fairly run-of-the-mill analysis of imperialism and colonialism as put forward by Social Democrats of the time. It was heavily based on a work of the Austrian Social Democrat Rudolf Hilferding. Due to the higher profits to be made in the colonies and less developed countries than at home. Lenin and Hilferding gave detailed accounts of the supposedly unstoppable growth of monopoly in industry and banking but carried it much further, crediting the banks with dominating industry and the cartels with fixing prices and dividing up world markets among themselves. Lenin wrote: "Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole economic life. Capitalism has been transformed into imperialism." Hilferding wrote: "An ever-increasing proportion of the capital used in industry is finance capital, capital at the disposition of the banks which is used by the industrialists". Lenin quoted and endorsed this. Hilferding said that it was only necessary to take over six large Berlin banks to take possession of ". . . the most important spheres of large-scale industry". It is worth noticing that in the depression of the 1930s most of the big German banks collapsed, or almost did so, along with the industrial companies in which the banks' money was tied up. Among other forecasts forecasts made by Lenin was that because of the dominance of finance capital "there was a decrease in the importance of the Stock Exchange". Kautsky, thought that the end result would be "a single world monopoly . . . a universal trust", followed by socialism. Hilferding thought that this single world monopoly was "thinkable economically, although socially and politically such a state appears unrealisable, for the antagonism of interests . . . would necessarily bring about its collapse". But Hilferding thought that world cartels would result in "longer . . . periods of prosperity" and shorter depressions. The long depression of the 1930s and others since belie this. How far this process will go remains to be seen, but the belief of Hilferding and Lenin that competition was dead, has been disproved. Hilferding, Lenin and all failed to allow for the sectional divisions of interest in the capitalist class. Hilferding treated the monopolist industries as representing a united capitalist class. Lenin made a valid point in his Imperialism about some annexationist wars. He wrote that sometimes the powers try to annexe regions "not so much for their own direct advantage as to weaken an adversary and undermine its hegemony". Lenin and Hilferding both saw the growth of monopoly and its resulting wars as a prelude to socialism, and insisted that socialism was the only answer. But Hilferding found himself acting as Finance Minister in a German coalition government, trying vainly to solve the problems of German capitalism. And Lenin's "socialism" has resulted in Russia becoming a capitalist super-power.

It was only in 1920, in a preface to the French and German editions of his ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’ that Lenin introduced the idea that a section of the working class in the imperialist countries shared in the booty extracted from capitalists, the so-called “aristocracy of labour” of skilled workers – shares in the proceeds of the exploitation of colonial and now ‘Third World’ countries, workers and peasants in the rest of the world. Basically, he argued that as profits were greater in the undeveloped parts of the world capitalists were eager to invest there; this brought the capitalist states into continual conflict over the division of the world. Part of the "super-profits" of this imperialist exploitation were used to pay higher wages and provide social reforms for sections of the workers at home. They were thus led away from revolutionary socialism towards opportunism. His anti-imperialism was to try to secure the support of anti-colonial movements for his beleaguered regime in Russia. If they succeeded, he believed, they would deprive the imperialist state concerned of its super-profits and so also of its ability to buy off its workers. Deprived of their share the workers' standard of living would drop and they would once again become revolutionary, affording a chance for a Bolshevik-type vanguard to seize power. It was a political manoeuvre – “workers and colonial peoples unite” – that went against the basic principle of Marxian economics that wages represent the value of the labour-power a worker sells and contain no element of surplus value. Wages paid to skilled workers here reflect the higher quality – due to more education, training and skill – of the labour power they have to sell. Marx had a quite different explanation as to why wages were higher in these countries. Both productivity and the rate of exploitation (ratio of paid to unpaid labour) were higher there:

"The more productive one country is relative to another in the world market, the higher will be its wages compared with the other. In England, not only nominal wages but (also) real wages are higher than on the continent. The worker eats more meat, he satisfies more needs. This, however, only applies to the industrial worker and not the agricultural labourer. But in proportion to the productivity of the English workers their wages are not higher (than the wages paid in other countries)" (Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part Two, pages 16-17).

A lower rate of wages does not make any one country any less capitalist than another: "The different states of the different civilised countries, in spite of their motley diversity of form, all have this in common, they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed" ( Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875).

Many on the Left assert that socialists should support any movement, even if it is not socialist, that weakens "American imperialism" which they say is the main threat to social revolution throughout the world, just as Marx supported moves against Tsarist Russia. Second, and this comes from Lenin, the Vietcong and workers in the West are fighting the same enemy—imperialism—and so we should support each other. It is true that in the middle of the nineteenth century Marx saw Tsarist Russia, the "gendarme of Europe", as a great threat to the further social progress of mankind. He felt that if Russia overran western Europe it would crush the democratic movement and put the social revolution back for years. Therefore, he was ready to support any moves that might weaken the power of Tsarist Russia. He supported Britain, France and Turkey in the Crimean war. He stood for an independent Polish state, to be a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe. He did all he could to expose the pro- Russia policies and intrigues of Lord Palmerston. These may seem odd activities for a socialist—and, indeed, we have criticised Marx for them. Marx argued that before Socialism is possible society must pass through the capitalist stage. But this is no automatic process; it depends on the outcome of human struggles. Russia was "reactionary" in the proper sense of the word in that it was a threat to the development even of capitalism. Marx opposed Tsarist Russia, not because it was the strongest capitalist power, but because it was the strongest anti-capitalist power. Looking back now we can see that Marx was over-optimistic as to the prospects of a socialist revolution in Europe. In time the capitalist states of western Europe grew stronger and the Tsarist Empire weaker, finally to be destroyed along with Austro- Hungary and Imperial Germany in the first world war. Before that even, Russia in a bid to keep its armed forces up to date had become indebted to the capitalists of France and Belgium. Well before the turn of the century we can say that conditions had changed since Marx's day. Capitalism was firmly established as the new world order. Russia was no longer a threat. Anti-imperialism is not the same as anti-capitalism. The task of socialists is clear - to oppose all wars and nationalist movements and to work to build up a world-wide workers' movement with socialism as its aim. This has always been the policy of the Socialist Party. Anti-imperialist struggles are class struggles under an ideological smokescreen, but not of the working class. They are either struggles by an aspiring capitalist class to establish themselves as a new national ruling class or struggles by an established but weak national ruling class to gather a bigger share of world profits for themselves. There is no reason why socialists should support them. Socialists do not allow themselves to be used as tools of some capitalist state. Socialists are opposed to world capitalism and to governments everywhere. If we are to eliminate wars, waged to obtain markets for the surplus wealth the workers produce, we must realise that our position in society is to transform the private ownership of the means of production and distribution into social ownership, producing for use instead of for profit. The function of the World Socialist Movement is to educate the workers to this end.

Capitalism Distorts Everything

The old notion as depicted in most dictionaries is that sport is a "pleasurable activity", but capitalism has changed all that. 'As many as 99% of Russian athletes are guilty of doping, a German TV documentary has alleged. The programme claims that Russian officials systematically accepted payment from athletes to supply banned substances and cover up tests. The documentary, shown by Das Erste, also implicates the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in covering up the abuse.' (BBC News, 4 December) The BBC has not independently verified any of the allegations in the documentary, but in the programme, broadcast on Wednesday, former Russia discus thrower Evgenia Pecherina claimed that "most, the majority, 99%" of Russian athletes use banned substances. Liliya Shobukhova, who won the London Marathon in 2010, is also interviewed in the programme and admits paying the Russian Athletics Federation 450,000 euros (£350,000) to cover up a positive doping test. RD

OOPS, There Goes Another £90 Billion

The Chancellor George Osborne recently revealed a load of financial re-organisations and gave the impression that somehow or other he was in charge of the crisis. 'The Chancellor is expected to draw on figures showing better-than-forecast growth, rapidly falling unemployment and record numbers of start-ups to argue that his economic prescription is working. Weaker-than-expect tax receipts are likely, however to force the chancellor to admit that a deficit he had once promised to clear by the end of parliament will instead be close to £90 billion.' (Times, 3 December) A £90 billion deficit - once again capitalism makes a fool of the politicians. RD

The socialist imagination

As the world economy plunges further into its worst crisis since the Great Depression, political discourse has been dominated by a discussion of socialist revolution. The word "socialism" designates one of the the noisiest topic of current debate. Everyone is using it. Everyone thinks it means something different. Into this universal catchword everyone injects whatever he or she loves or hates, fears or desires. Socialism has always abounded in visions of a life free from the pressure of capitalist market forces, whether in self-sufficient local communities or in democratically planned economies. But as Frederick Engels argued back in the 1870s, state ownership is not the same as socialism and is, in fact, quite compatible with support for capitalism. Commenting on events in Germany at the time, Engels noted:

“Since Bismarck went in for state-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism.”

Socialism means more than state ownership or state intervention in a mixed economy. Previous show-cases for what should be called state-capitalism have been exposed.  Russia’s command economy collapsed. China has a system of market exploitation. Europe’s social democrats have long ago transformed themselves from defenders of the welfare state to advocates of privatisation and deregulation. It is becoming obvious to millions around the world that we cannot solve our economic and environmental crises without replacing capitalism. Yet the left have little to offer because they no longer know what socialism means.  It is true socialism has been a contested term ever since it was first coined in the early nineteenth century. Engels noted that in the 1840s “socialism” was associated with “the most multifarious social quacks who, by all manner of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances,” and who had no connection with the workers’ movement. Little then seems to have changed with today. Reformers still argue that now is not the time to advance a case for full socialism and offer up instead a fare of half-measures and a list of palliatives. Socialists certainly need to be realistic, and nobody will object to fighting for social justice, but the problem with the gradualist approach emerge as soon as we looks at the concrete proposals they offer up. The bottom line is that many proposed reforms are so cautious that they fail to make any serious challenge to the status quo. Instead, they are little more than a recipe for propping up capitalism. They are “realistic” only if our goal is to preserve the existing system for as long as possible, not if we hope to create a movement to replace it and the real fantasy is the idea of a market-based solution to the environmental crisis. Political action inspired by the goal of ending all forms of oppression, exploitation and degradation is similarly necessary but insufficient. An understanding of the economic causes of these phenomena and how they impact on people globally is vital. Economic categories of explanation with universal instantiation such as labour, commodity, value, and capital are required for a global perspective on the task of liberation. Explanations of that have a partial understanding of its nature will produce partial programmes for liberation. Partial forms of anti-capitalism will be utopian. An exclusive focus on reforms makes the goal of social revolution unrealisable. As long as the commodity form dominates the labour process in the spheres of production and consumption then market forces would destroy such experiments as cooperatives. The only practicable way of abolishing money, wage slavery and the law of value, Marx argued, would be to remove all aspects of the mode of production from its global form as commodity and value, including labour power itself. The only means to achieving this end could be the global movement of workers towards the collective appropriation of the means of production including machinery, raw materials and labour. Workers, as a class, liberate their labour power at the same time as liberating the products of labour from their value form as money, wages and capital. Thus today, Marxists tend to argue that movements for women, black, gay or national liberation are de facto utopian if they promote partial solutions to their oppression and ignore the connection with the global struggle for freedom from economic oppression and for a classless society.

Unlike the utopian socialists, who drew up intricate blueprints of post-capitalist society (which they sometimes attempted to put into practice on a small scale), Marx and Engels never publically speculated on the detailed organisation of a future socialist society. The key task for them was building a movement to overthrow capitalism. If and when that movement won power, it would be up to the members of the new society to decide democratically how it was to be organised, in the concrete historical circumstances in which they found themselves. Marx and Engels were the first to bring socialism down from the clouds and put it on a real-world, scientific basis. Their starting point was not ideals, but reality:

“The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, but those which they find existing and those produced by their activity.”

Utopians before Marx dreamed of an egalitarian society, and drew up elaborate plans for them--rigorously detailed blueprints for industry, education and social life. The utopians hoped that if these plans were presented to rich and powerful people, they would be convinced by the rationality of socialism and that change would be the product of enlightened, courageous minorities working on behalf of the grateful masses. Marx and Engels were the first to see socialism as the logical end result of the class struggle that was already in progress. "All previous historical movements," they wrote in the Communist Manifesto "were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority." This movement of the "immense majority" is not a utopian dream. It is a part of the real world, a struggle already in progress. As Marx wrote in a letter:

“We do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world's own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for... explaining to it the meaning of its own actions.”

We don't have to draw up elaborately detailed plans for a socialist future, but we can imagine the broad outlines of would be possible if we, the working people, ran society: We could house everyone with free housing? We could feed everyone with free food. We could give people real leisure time, to spend with their friends and families, travel, pursue other interests by reducing the time spent at work. There has been a tradition within socialism that blueprints, or anything that could even resemble them must be shunned. Not all would agree: a detailed sketch of the future society is desirable, if not essential. We are required to draw up our vision of future society. Critics of capitalism have got to think through and explain to others how we propose to do things differently, and why outcomes will be significantly better. Even though people are receptive to our criticisms about capitalism, we have little credibility when it comes to replacing capitalism with a wholly different economic system. In the light of the unfortunate history of socialism and its frequent misrepresentation, people have every reason to be sceptical that the Socialist Party knows how to create a superior economic system. We have to give concrete answers to serious questions.  The first question is, “What do we want?” What, in general, and even not so general terms, is the form of the socialist society that we seek? The second question is, “Why do we want it?” What exactly is wrong with capitalism, and why is socialism a improvement? And the third question is, “How can we achieve it?”

We clearly need to speculate on the nature of a non-market classless society and the possibility of realising this in the present. Speculation involves the exercise of the imagination. Speculation is involved in the creation of theory. It is an activity that generates ideas of where current tendencies and trends might lead. Setting imaginative goals and creating blueprints to guide action are not only a necessary feature of democratic planning but an essential aspect of understanding history. Marx and Engels used their speculative imaginations to describe the non-market society of the future. They had clear conceptions of the socialist project both as viable goal and means. For Marx, the goal of the socialist project is the emergence of free individuality and the recovery of human sociality from the effects of exploitation and oppression. Marx argued that the socialist project needs certain objective conditions, one being the formation of a global non-market classless society.

Peter Watkin's 1964 Culloden

A mock documentary on the Battle of Culloden showing the slaughter. Well worth a watch

Polluting Regardless Of Its Effets

An article in the Toronto Star of September 15 focused on the Norwegian government's efforts to produce oil without endangering the environment. Norway is one of only five countries making sufficient progress towards their target cuts in greenhouse gas emissions under the 1997 Kyoto protocol, the only legally binding international agreement to combat climate change. This means little when the US, Canada, and China, who have not signed the agreement carry on polluting regardless of its effect on the environment. But even Norway has its problems – the state-owned Statoil injects steam underground to thin the bitumen and then pumps it to the surface. After diluting the bitumen with lighter hydrocarbons, it is sent to the refinery as in situ drilling. The process burns up a lot of energy to produce a single barrel of crude oil. It also produces two or three more times the greenhouse gas emissions per barrel than open pit mining in the Alberta oilsands that has received so much criticism. The point is that under capitalism profit is the determinant and no well meaning government can get around that fact. Only a system of common ownership where production would use common sense will alter it. John Ayers.

Going In Circles

Oh the loyalty of capital – Dutch multinational, Royal DSM is now locating its plants in the US where there is an abundant supply of cheap natural gas and a 'very lightly regulated labour' market. (New York Times, Oct 5 2014). Apparently China, where the corporation has forty plants, is losing its edge as a source from which to serve the world. Is globalization making a U-turn? The paper asks. Not really, more like going in circles searching for the highest profit possible with no regard to the consequences for workers and their families! John Ayers.

Common Ownership

Consider the basic definition of socialism/communism - common ownership of the means of production and distribution. What does it mean? Private ownership is entirely run for profit. Capitalists don't care about you, they don't care about the environment, they don't care about people, they only care about profit. Just look at the American healthcare system. Instead of their healthcare system being run to help improve people's health and to heal the sick and injured, it is run entirely for the benefit of stock-holders.

Socialism is common ownership. Instead of society being run for the benefit of a minority and production being based on profit, property is owned collectively. It is often argued that such a concept as common ownership is unrealistic and an impractical dream. This is not true. We have it now on the World Wide Web with open-source software. Wikipedia is a superb example of a commons-based institution. Throughout history, land, fisheries and forests have been owned by communities, not just by private individuals. Have we forgotten the village green to be enjoyed by all? Common ownership is a principle according to which the means of production and distribution are held indivisibly rather than in the names of the individual members under private property. It means the wealth produced by society is freely accessible to anyone and everyone.

The Socialist Party hold a vision of a better world, freed from the hardships their families suffered under the system known as "capitalism". And seek common ownership of the means of production and distribution. It is the core concept of socialists that appears to has been purged from the left. Human beings share a common humanity, they are bound together by a sense of comradeship or fraternity (literally meaning 'brotherhood', but broadened in this context to embrace all humans). This encourages socialists to prefer cooperation to competition, and to favour collectivism over individualism. In this view, cooperation enables people to harness their collective energies and strengthens the bonds of community, while competition pits individuals against each other, breeding resentment, conflict and hostility. The classic formulation of this principle is found in Marx's communist principle of distribution: 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need'. This reflects the belief that the satisfaction of basic needs (hunger, thirst, shelter, health, personal security and so on) is a prerequisite for a worthwhile human existence and participation in social life.

Those who call themselves “market socialists” want to keep the same game (profit motive, law of value, competition), but put workers in charge of optimizing each team's strategy. Marxists want to put workers in charge of the game itself, so that we're free to decide what winning actually is rather than just the strategies we use to "win".

For sections of the socialist movement in the past such as some in the 2^nd International the state did play a role its role was not to nationalise industry and create a vast bureaucratic “state-socialist” economy. Put simply, the workers parties were to be elected to national governments, backed by the trade unions, cooperative movement and other popular organizations, and would then expropriate the capitalists. Political power would then be decentralized to local municipal levels and direct democracy introduced. This was the famous “withering away of the state” Engels talked about. The hopes of the 2^nd International didn’t go as planned. The first problem was that the workers parties never got a majority in parliament. So they began to water-down their programme and adopt a lot of reformism until the definition of socialism began to change from one of democratic and social ownership and control to nationalization and state-ownership. Socialism is incompatible with a command economy. Democracy means "rule by the people", if there is common ownership (popular ownership) of the means of production this means that the economy, at least, is democratically run. Both social democracy and socialism contain the word “social”. Generally it is invoked in a loose and ill-defined way and in practice has generally been collapsed into state ownership.

There has been various attempts to put socialism into practice. During the English Civil War, the Diggers, or True Levellers, briefly established a communal society in England. Babeuf was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution and he developed a quite distinctive position which it is entirely legitimate to describe as 'socialist'. Of course the word 'socialist' was not yet in currency. Babeuf usually described his position as the advocacy of 'true equality' or 'common happiness'. But his aim of a society based on economic equality and common ownership of property is clearly recognisable as what later became known as socialism. Robert Owen was the first to use the world Socialist in 1827 in his Cooperative Magazine. There were also the Utopian Socialists, such as Charles Fourier, who set up small scale communal societies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Waste, inefficiency, boredom, and inequality of modern work appalled Fourier. His main interest was in making work pleasant. He found division of labour unacceptable because it broke up work into minute repetitive operations. Unlike Robert Owen, he did not believe in the efficacy of big industry. Work should be concentrated in the countryside and small shops in towns where family life can be lived in communities and where all can know each other. Proudhon was the one who explicitly referred to property as theft and also had a very polemical argument with Marx on the nature of property and poverty. Proudhon shunned the idea of class war for social change. Voluntary agreement of the working people should lead the way towards a classless society. He advocated a nationwide system of decentralised workers cooperatives, which can bargain with one another for mutual exchange of goods and services. Many of these ideas are still around us, in different garbs. The[A1]  socialist idea was greatly deepened by Marx and Engels, but it was not invented by them, and what they meant by socialism is much the same as what many earlier thinkers meant by it. Marx was both appreciative and critical of these writings on socialism. He referred to them as “Utopian” because they had no conception of revolutionary action for actual change. The scientific socialist on the otherhand understood, as Engels pointed out:

“Socialism was no longer an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes — the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.”

The Socialist Party is a Marxist organisation standing in the tradition of Marx and Engels. We believe that the poverty and misery, the oppression and exploitation that marks our society is the result of control of the world’s wealth and productive resources by a tiny class that exploits the vast majority of society. This leads to humanity crippled by the reality and ideology of capitalist society. This reality leads the majority of humanity to premature death and the majority of working people to lives of drudgery and stress in a world over which they have no control. The ideas that support this social system are those of competition and the rat race. Humanity is left both physically and mentally scarred and disfigured while the planet it lives on is ravaged and devastated. The Socialist Party constantly strives for a society in which class divisions are abolished and the state that enforces class rule withers away. A society based on common ownership and control of its resources by each and every one of its citizens, democratically determining the development of its economy and society, will eradicate the divisions of class, race or sex. A democratically planned society has the potential to progressively reduce the burden of work allowing greater and greater participation in the running of society by those that create its wealth through their labour. The world of necessity (work) will give way to the world of freedom. This will lead to humanity actually living the ideas of cooperation and solidarity and see the true development of human personality in all its potential. Such a society, communism, will not create perfection because perfection itself is not a feature of humanity. It will remove the social causes of inhumanity so that everything that is truly human will be free. This emancipation of the working class can only be achieved by the working class itself. Because the capitalist state is a creation of the capitalist class and functions as a weapon of its rule it cannot be taken over by the workers and used to further the abolition of classes and itself. In other words it cannot be reformed. Because society is structured around the ownership of productive resources by a tiny minority and the compulsion of the majority to work, in order to live, to create profit for that minority, society cannot be reformed to abolish exploitation or the periodic economic crises that result from it. Only common ownership and control of the economic and social resources of society can abolish exploitation.

A socialist revolution simply means the vast majority of society under working class leadership carrying out this task. It represents society’s majority becoming truly politically active for the first time. The working class must therefore become the new ruling class of society, but a ruling class that seeks its own disappearance. Socialism cannot be achieved in one country but must embrace every country of the world.

A Wasteful Society

The mad wastefulness of capitalism is staggering. Take the expenditure of the USA in their recent military efforts. 'President Barrack Obama will ask lawmakers on Friday for an additional $3.2 billion to pay for the war against the Islamic State group in Iraq officials said Thursday .... The air war in Syria and Iraq - which commanders say could last years -  has involved thousands of sorties and hundreds of bombing raids, at a daily cost of $ 8.3 million, according to the Pentagon.' (Hindustantimes, 2 December) This immense expenditure represents a lot of human effort and energy. Think what that could mean inside a socialist society producing food, clothing and shelter for all. RD

Flaunting Their Wealth

The owning class are not known for their modesty, but even by their standards this is an outrageous example of their boastfulness.'Billionaire investor Jeff Greene is selling Palazzo die Amore, a 25-acre Beverley Hills compound suited for royalty. With an asking price of $195 million, it's the nation's priciest private residence.' (Yahoo, 6 November) Take that, all you homeless workers! RD 

Arguing Socialism

Popular working class politics is in a state of great confusion. There is uncertainty, disillusion, a prevailing sense of failure and, above all, a lack of clear direction. You've only got to listen to the news on any day and hear the talk about the trade deficit . . . interest rates . . . productivity . . . wage settlements in relation to increased prices  . . . the strength of the currency . . . the level of government spending. Most people don't understand any of it but the professional politicians who run the system are permanently trapped in this economic gibberish which is totally irrelevant to what has to be done in terms of solving the social problems we face. One of the reasons for this political irrationality is because politics has become dissociated from experience. Most people have a deep, but unconscious sense of what it is that holds them back, making life hard, treating them unfairly, oppressing their spirits, threatening their futures and creating real pain - in short, what denies them freedom in so many of the realms of life. They may be very different from each other and there may be dozens of them, but they have to all be named as denials of freedom, because they are. Naming and framing are different. Framing is conceptual, it is about ideas that allow you to understand what you are experiencing. Naming is giving language to those ideas - often ideas you already have, possibly as part of your unconscious brain mechanisms. Naming can make the unconscious conscious. it is a matter of naming a single truth: Corporations govern your life in many, many ways for their benefit, not yours. Name what people already experience and resent for good reason. How do corporations govern your life for their benefit, not yours? Start with all the times you call for customer service, get a robot voice, have to press a bunch of buttons, and then wait on the phone. You are working for the corporation - when you spend your time, the company saves money by not hiring human beings and thus makes more profit. You are contributing to their profit with your precious time holding on, which is part of your life, and hardly a pleasant part. Oil companies are destroying the planet for their short-term profit. Corporations govern your life by putting hidden carcinogens and other poisons in your food, cosmetics, furniture, etc. for their profit, not your health. These are facts. In isolation, one-by-one, they are just a laundry list. Isolated facts don’t help. Together they tell a truth: Corporations govern your life for their profit not yours, in all those ways. Name it. Repeat it. We need revolution at the deepest level.

It is necessary to ground a nurturing politics for the common good and core values in language that appeals - rhetorically and emotionally - to the better selves of voters. Cognitive scientists study how people really think - how brains work, how we get ideas out of neurons, how framing and metaphorical thought work, the link between language and thought, and so on. But political activists have not been using these results. The marketing profession uses knowledge about the mind, the brain, language, imagery, emotions, the framing of experiences and products, personal and social identity, and normal modes of thought that lead to action and that change brains over time. Marketing professors in business schools study results in these areas and teach courses on how to market most effectively. Again, they study normal modes of thought - the way people really reason. It would be strange to call such modes of thought "irrational" since they are the forms of reason that we have evolved to get us through life. In short, marketers take results from cognitive science, the field that does scientific research on real reason, on how people really think. Marketers know very well that most thought is unconscious - the usual estimate is about 98 percent. They use their knowledge of how unconscious thought works. And they know that consumers are not aware of how knowledge of the science of mind is being used to sell them products that often they don’t need or may actually harm them.

What we socialists call "rational arguments" are not normal modes of real reason. We overlook the fact that our brains are structured by hundreds of conceptual metaphors and frames early in life, that we can only understand what our brains allow. Even understanding the meaning of concepts and words may be different. To deal with illegitimate fears about socialism, you don’t wait till you have to respond. You need (1) to build an effective communication system, (2) to communicate the general progressive value system, (3) repeat the truths that reveal what is right about those values, (4) act with courage to promote the sense of courage, confidence and hope that allows the truth to be meaningful and powerful. Within such a context, one can honestly and openly discuss the facts that undermine such fears, so that the illegitimate fears don’t get established in the first place. We require constant repetition of the real situation and genuine conditions. This has to be said by many, many people in all kinds of situations, never defensively. They have to be met by real understanding as they begin to arise, the courage to name them and study them, effective communication and real action. Negating a frame reinforces the frame, makes it stronger. There are implicit negatives, like "I’m the honest candidate in this campaign." When you affirm your own positions and speak positively, you undermine the opposition implicitly. When you go on the offensive, you put them on the defensive. If they have to negate your positions, they will be helping to reinforce yours. We must discuss political differences, but when we do we have to remain just be positive, starting with our values and with how we understand freedom and how it arises from people working together to provide public resources for everyone. Use our language, not theirs. And stay respectful. The rational way to begin an understanding of our problems should be to examine what did happen in the past and to ask important questions about it: What were we hoping to achieve in the past? What action did we think would be effective? What happened as a result of that action? What were the reasons why we failed? What lessons should be learned from that failure?

There are deep truths that are known about how brains work, how our unconscious minds work, and the effect of language on the mind and brain. Those are vital truths, because only by mastering and using them can you avoid the traps of laundry list of truths that don’t add up to the communication of general progressive values. Lists of truths that are not made meaningful by values are destined to be ignored. Make truths matter. Wed truths to values. For workers, the problem is capitalism. We produce all the wealth—in fact we run the useful parts of society from top to bottom—but we don't get all the benefits of our production of goods and our running of services and we don't have direct control of the society we run. Our economic function under capitalism is to produce wealth for an exploiting and parasitical class, the capitalist class. Since the 19^th Century, these basic facts haven't changed. We had capitalism then and we've got capitalism now. Workers were exploited them we're exploited now. The rich had luxury then and they've got it now. Workers had the problems of housing, making ends meet, and economic insecurity then and we've got the same problems now. This is in spite of the fact that we produce every bit of useful wealth that becomes available and run all the useful services that people need.

Capitalism produced for profit then and it produces for profit now. When there was no prospect of profit then, workers became unemployed. It is exactly the same now. At the turn of the century the privileges of the rich were based on their ownership of the means of production and all natural resources and on their control over workers through the state machine. It is exactly the same now.

We live in a world where solidarity and mutual support has been reduced to charity and volunteering and with a victim’s mentality, blaming one another and deferentially pleading with governments and our employers rather than reacting our exploitation and oppressions with strikes and revolutionary demands. We have lost any sense of our real class power. Environmental destruction and climate change has made continuing with capitalism to be a lemming-like act of species suicide. Reformist solutions remain market-oriented where we cannot imagine the world in terms other than of exchange values bound by monetary language and practices. As non-market socialists, the Socialist Party are advocates for a money-free, price-free, wage-free, class-free and state-free society where everyone’s basic needs are met — and power, responsibility and uses of the Earth are shared in just and sustainable ways. We seek a life for all where can do, or do not do, things that is not based according to how much money we do, or do not, have. Fair trade, ethical investments and carbon markets do not lead to equality between countries and environmental sustainability; trade is a see-saw of winners and losers, snakes and ladders. While rejecting monetary values is a necessary condition to break current realities, rituals and the power of private property, it is only a necessary — not a sufficient — condition to establish a world without economic inequality. Clearly, we need to initiate, maintain and support practices that ensure collective sufficiency and environmental sustainability. We must establish a world where people collectively plan and produce, share and care for one another.  It isn't enough just to have a clear understanding of what causes the problems of the working class; we must also have a very clear understanding of how they could be solved. That solution is socialism. This will be a practical and straightforward system of useful work producing useful goods free from the economic constraints of production for profit, without any exchange of any kind and without therefore the use of money.

Production will be humanised in the sense that human beings won't have a price put on either their ability to work or the product of their work. Jobs won't have a price on them, nor will goods, nor will needs. Instead of working for wages people will cooperate, and this will bring work under the control of those who carry it out. It will be the self-determined activity of individuals responding to the needs of the community of which they form a part and who have the responsibility and the real power of decision-making and action. That is the sane system we must establish and it is the only sensible definition of socialism.

Adapted from here

No Class War Here

Political commentators and journalists seemed to be surprised at the SNP leader's recent announcement. 'Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is to insist she is not intent on class war, despite backing land reform and higher taxes on the rich. Addressing company executives, she is expected to say she wants Scotland to be "an attractive, rewarding and value-creating place" to do business. Ms Sturgeon will ask her audience in Glasgow for ideas to help "grow the economy faster and more sustainably.' (BBC News, 1 December) This devotion to the buying and selling system of capitalism is not peculiar to the SNP. It is shared by all the reformist parties. RD

The House Of Lolly

There is widely held view that a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords is the reward of some great civil contribution to society, but recent revelations seem to discredit such a notion. Under the newspaper headline of "Peers gave political parties £14m before becoming lords" we can read the following. 'Eleven peers gave almost £14m to political parties from 2001 to the date they were ennobled, according to a report published by anti-corruption campaigners last night. A total of £39m has been donated to parties by members of the House of Lords, since records began in 2001, according to Transparency International. It said the figures would reinforce a perception that peerages can be bought.' (Sunday Times, 30 November) Needless to say all the Lords contacted denied any connection between donations and peerages.   RD    

Learning from the past

The non-market socialist position needs to be promoted urgently because humans have laid the basis for our extinction using capitalist practices and thinking. The intensity, frequency and scope of natural disasters is linked substantially to climate change. The Socialist Party see non-market socialism as the only way to address the combined crises we face, which are results of a capitalist system based in production for profit, relying on exchange rather than use. This system contorts and confuses the values, relationships and structures that ideally exist between people and between people and nature. Capital is money that begets more money. The modern state is the handmaiden to capital. Today, non-market socialists make the same points about the plethora of half-baked schemes — fair trade, carbon trading, community currencies and so on — that cannot lead to socialism. Money and markets represent capitalist power. Capitalists are defined by money, their power is monetary power, their logic is a market-based logic. Socialism must mean sharing power, the power to decide what is produced, how it is produced and for whom. Socialism must be state-free and class-free because states and classes represent exclusive power and needs to be want-free, sustainable and just as well. The motto “from each according to ability, to each according to need” envisions not some abstract, total equality, but rather a sensible, humane distribution of responsibilities

Many environmental campaigners appeal to the logic of use values rather than exchange values to advocate their position. For instance, they will argue that an old-growth forest has more use values and reproductive and sustainable potential to the communities that rely on it for all their basic needs, such as food, potable water, shelter, clothing and medicines, than its use for making profits for a multinational conglomerate that plans to clear-fell the trees, sell them for timber, let or help the remaining forest ecosystem die, and replace it all with a tree farm. Similarly, anti-nuclear campaigners will argue that the industry is unnecessary to fulfil people’s basic needs and a risk to their wellbeing and livelihoods, while the nuclear industry will argue that it will create ‘clean’ energy to sustain growth, jobs and profits. These examples contrast arguments based in use values and those based on exchange values. Those options that are based on the  logic of use values offer a clear and unequivocal alternative to capitalism. Once we start to try to convince capitalists and the state to be more environmentally and socially sound using arguments based on economic exchange values such as ‘You can make more money this  or  ‘Why not trade in environmental values?’ — we are lost. Marx’s analysis shows the absurdity and risks of efforts to try to set prices, which today focuses on making prices reflect environmental values, as in carbon and water-trading schemes or pricing forests and other environmental ‘assets’. Similarly, it is pointless to calculate and try to institute wages for housework. Marx reveals the absurdity of market values, alludes to the workings of the market as absolutely distinct from meeting basic human needs and the needs of ecological systems. A non-market socialist position distances itself from any intense or central emphasis on worker cooperatives and schemes that compromise with the market or mimic capitalism. Our message is quite simple: no money, no exchange, no capital, no state by abolishing the absurd and deadly system of markets and nations. Money appears as what it is: not the culprit of the misery of our times, but simply an extension of the absurdity that consists in exchange economy.

The vision of  the Socialist Party is very similar to that of anarchists: a stateless society in which central government had "withered away," local, ground-up control of all affairs by strictly democratic processes based at the place of work, abolition of the market system (no money, no buying and selling) and its replacement by a system according to which people would voluntarily work for the common good to the extent they were able under the understanding that they could receive whatever they needed for free ("from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"). National boundaries and governments having been eliminated, war would cease. The most common objection is that this goal impossible because "you can't change human nature." Socialists have shown that not only had "human nature" changed many times in the past: there is no such thing as a static human nature. We are products of our environment, particularly of the economic system in which we live. People living under feudalism are motivated by feudal motives and think them natural and fixed, just as people living under capitalism are motivated by capitalist motives and think those natural and fixed. Occasionally in history people undergo what is now called a "paradigm shift" in values, based on an economic transformation. If people's values have changed radically in the past they are certain to change again radically in the future. Engels spent a good deal of energy studying so-called "primitive communist" societies to show that sharing could be as natural and widespread an attitude toward wealth as acquisition.

When everything is held in common, there can't be monetary system. There is nothing to exchange with nobody. Money is meant to facilitate the exchange of goods so no money would exist. There will be full and universal free access. Is it really as utopian and unachievable as some allege? Then these critics should explain how a vast continent wide society (albeit still class ridden) could exist without money or trade. In The Incas: New Perspectives, Gordon Francis McEwan writes:

“With only a few exceptions found in coastal polities incorporated into the empire, there was no trading class in Inca society, and the development of individual wealth acquired through commerce was not possible . . . A few products deemed essential by the Incas could not be produced locally and had to be imported. In these cases several strategies were employed, such as establishing colonies in specific production zones for particular commodities and permitting long-distance trade. The production, distribution, and use of commodities were centrally controlled by the Inca government. Each citizen of the empire was issued the necessities of life out of the state storehouses, including food, tools, raw materials, and clothing, and needed to purchase nothing. With no shops or markets, there was no need for a standard currency or money, and there was nowhere to spend money or purchase or trade for necessities.”

The Inca Empire was optimized to prevent starvation rather than to foster trade. A group of archeologists took core samples in Cuzco valley in Peru, and found evidence for thousands of years of agriculture in the area, including animal husbandry, most likely of llamas. In a paper summarizing their findings, archaeologist A.J. Chepstow-Lusty and his team suggested that the Incas focused their technological and cultural institutions around food production and land management, rather than market economies.

Conflict And Its Cause

Now that China has become a major economic power, it needs powerful armed forces (to match other super powers) to protect and further its economic interests and ambitions. Recently released statistics show that China spends $188 billion annually on the military, second only to that of the US. This is pushing other Asian countries to increase their 'defense' spending. Viet Nam's budget has increased 83% in the last five years, Japan's $48 billion budget is the biggest ever, expanding its main coast guard fleet from forty-one vessels to three hundred and eighty-nine. Its proximity to China and Russia is driving the spending. The capitalist class in every country needs access to raw materials and markets to gain its share of the profits. Conflict and war are inevitable at some point, as we have seen many times in the past. John Ayers.

Nuclear Weapons Renewal

Thought we were getting safer as the cold war ended and nuclear weapons arsenals would be de-commissioned? Think again – the US for one is ramping up nuclear weapon production to replace the aging stockpile. A sprawling, state-of-the-art plant in Missouri has thousands of employees working on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. This comes under a president who made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy. Capitalism needs to show who is boss when it comes to discussion of treaties. It is an antagonistic system that can never change. John Ayers.

A Crazy Society

Ever wondered how the owning class spend their leisure time? After all they can't spend all their time counting their money. They have teams of accountants, financiers and lawyers for that purpose. 'A 600-year-old silk tapestry from the Ming dynasty has sold for £28 million, a world record for a work of Chinese art and four times its estimate. ..... The artwork was sold at Christie's of Hong Kong in a bidding war that lasted 22 minutes. The hammer fell in favour of Liu Yigian, a billionaire business man.' (Times, 27 November) A pleasant day out bidding at Christie's spending millions of pounds while millions of workers try to survive on $2 a day. Capitalism is crazy! RD

Time to stop sitting on the fence

All around us we see a terrible spectacle of decay, desperation and social squalor. The SPGB is the only party that places the responsibility for this situation where it really belongs -- on the capitalist system. At the root of all the problems of modern society—inequality, poverty, war, disease—is a social and economic system, capitalism, in which everything is subordinated to the interests of a tiny elite. If this system cannot provide the basic needs of the great majority -- and it cannot -- then it has failed and must be replaced. The alternative to capitalism is socialism: the reorganisation of all economic life under the democratic control of the working class, to serve social needs, not profit. Every socialist has surely indulged in speculation about an ideal society from time to time. The realities of our own society certainly encourage such flights of fancy. But they should not be considered entirely fanciful: without imaginative thinking, it is quite impossible to see how the world might be changed for the better.

The idea of socialism is dead as the dodo we are told by our so-called betters. Anyone who imagines a different system of social organisation is an impractical dreamer.  Capitalism is the best economic system possible albeit with a few snags, we are told. But isn't the age of workers' revolutions over, is the chorus.  They tell us all this talk about the working class is old stuff, more appropriate to the nineteenth century than today.  Even many on the left of the political spectrum have come to believe so.  They argue that the hope for liberation from below is a charming but hopeless, even dangerous, dream; or that the working class is bought off and reactionary, if it has not disappeared altogether. Class politics has gone and now it is all about identity politics. As unrepentant socialists, we maintain that capitalism, is going the way of the dodo, not socialism. Our kind of socialism - stayed committed to the cause of the working class, refusing to rely upon leaders for answers or guidance. Some politicians imagine that imposing new taxes and instituting new financial regulations, establishing new welfare reforms will fix the social crisis.  But the cause is much deeper than bad policy or poor decisions, and will not be solved by tinkering around the edges. The paradox of reformism is it's not the way to win reforms, especially in periods of capitalist crisis, when the system's ability to absorb demands is minimal. Any possible social gains can only be won through the collective action of working people and without such pressure from below, the election of well-intentioned politicos is basically meaningless. We don't object to reformism because it advocates reforms, but because it has such a sorry record for obtaining them.  We have no callous desire to "bring the system down" by letting people starve, as is sometimes attributed to revolutionaries.  On the contrary, we aim to show people that by organizing and struggling, they can sometimes win, without relying upon undependable political leaders or union officials.

Many distortions of socialist theory arose from mistaken hopes that socialism could be created in societies of material scarcity, industrial underdevelopment and even in peasant societies where the working class barely existed. Equally futile has been the illusion that socialists could gradually alter the capitalist system through a process of government reforms. Many reservations that people have about socialism are the result of a perfectly healthy revulsion against the monstrosities and absurdities which have masqueraded as "socialism".  Around the world, states ruled by single parties and dictatorial autocrats draped themselves with the trappings of Marxism.  Minuscule left-wing groups announced themselves "the vanguard" of the working class, stifling democratic norms justified as "democratic centralism".  In the absence of revolutionary prospects, a tiny minority on the left have acted out infantile, self-indulgent nihilistic acts of rage while many more have habitually resorted to professional lobbying and other reformist political styles that don't challenge people to act on their own behalf.

The revolutionary potential of the working class has been demonstrated many times. United States history is full of examples of militant workers and radicals in struggle, from the Knights of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World to the 1930s sit-down strikes of the CIO.  World history, too, reveals the revolutionary potential of workers and the oppressed: workers' councils in the aftermath of World War I up to  the May 1968 occupations in France. We could go on citing events.

We have an insane system of contradictions. Wealth is everywhere yet millions find no work and the hungry rummage through dumpsters outside well-stocked supermarkets. A system obsessed with acquisition denies basic sustenance to millions.  An economical system that worships growth rushes leaves the Earth an environmental wasteland. It is hard to believe, but there is a method to this madness: it lies in the basic dynamics of capitalist society, which is organised for profit above all else. At fault is not a calculating conspiracy of greedy bankers or rapacious corporate investors but the very driving force of capitalism: this relentless pursuit of private profit. Capitalism is a generalised regime of commodity production characterized by market exchange, including the purchase and sale of labour power.  Production under capitalism is organized for private profit, which is extracted from workers' labour and realised in the sale of goods at the highest allowable price.  This system of social and property relations works to benefit a ruling class made up of owners, financiers, merchants and executives who control key institutions of production and exchange: banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges, service concerns such as airlines and trucking, extractive industries such as coal and oil, and manufacturers and distributors of commodities like cars, computers and toothpaste.  This ruling class appropriates the surplus of the value created by the working class - the majority of us, whose living comes not from owning capital but from working for those who do. By virtue of its dominant social position the ruling class has a common and basic interest in defending private property and maximizing profit rates.  But it is not a giant conspiracy.  Sometimes real differences emerge in its ranks.  Sectors of capital clash over appropriate measures for the maintenance of profit rates, and they enter into political contest by underwriting different candidates in elections and lobbying for different public policy measures.  Precisely through the open expression of such differences, consensus is established within the dominant class.

Occasionally, capital has also been checked from below by a legacy of popular struggle carried out by working people.  Working class struggles have resulted in historic gains: the eight hour day, workplace safety regulation, legal recognition of unions, public education.  Such reforms are important, but they will always be temporary and precarious, vulnerable to being revoked so long as capital rules.

We seek to replace capitalism - which by its nature produces oppression and exploitation - with a new society, a socialist democracy confident in purpose and open to new ideas, vigorous and self-critical, free and cooperative, humane and ecological. Socialism means genuine social equality, on a world scale. Socialism means the extension of democracy to the foundation of all of society: the economic process. Socialists believe that equality, community and economic democracy can only be achieved by a system of common ownership of the means of production and distribution.

Socialism is not a gift to be given to the working class. It must be fought for and won by the working class itself. Socialists have always spoken of the working class as the key political force. The working class must urgently turn to the building of its own political party. Although to many people the prospect of a revived socialist movement seems but a pipe dream, capitalism is showing its impracticality and obsolescence in a host of ways at this very moment.  A rebirth of socialism is possible, just as periods of calm in the past have been interrupted by resurgences of radicalism.

The Socialist Party upholds fundamental socialist principles. No other political party represents the working class. The Socialist Party uncompromisingly defends the interests of the overwhelming majority of people: the working men and women, whose productive labour creates the wealth of society. Our party will fight for the socialist principle that production should be organised democratically to serve the needs of the working class, not to satisfy the rapacious hunger of the bankers, corporate CEOs and Stock Exchange speculators for profit. No one can pretend to have a sure formula for how to overturn the existing order and build a new one.  But we are confident that the struggle for a different society will have to begin with the rejection of elitist, condescending, top-down varieties of socialism.  It is time for socialism from below. Socialism from below is a vision of a new world, based on one central conviction: that human beings can construct a society without exploitation and oppression through, and only through, the maximum extension of democratic control. Socialism will be won by people on their own, together, in collective and democratic action.  We seek a revolution that is constantly self-renewing, even as a new society is constructed which facilitates and encourages radical democracy. Democratic planning and control of the productive process will be exercised through mass representative institutions, based on the shop-floor and workplace and extending to community organisations as well.

Modern technology have created the potential for sustainable abundance, but only if rationality is the basis for their use rather than private profit and class rule. Conserving and recycling resources, growing food without poisonous additives, clean and efficient mass transportation. The realm for culture and imagination, relaxation and leisure, self-expression and education. The emancipation of humanity from capitalism will only come about when workers act on their own behalf.  It cannot be achieved through any shortcut, though many have been tried. Socialism won't solve your personal problems or bring you eternal peace.  It won't even give you ready-made answers to every political and social question. The main reason to join a socialist organization is to work toward socialism.  The abolition of class rule and establishment of economic democracy will not come about unless there are socialists organised to push for it and to win others to the cause. Through debate and analysis, socialists help one another understand what's happening in the country and the world and how best to face the challenges that working people confront, sharing experiences and drawing inspiration and lessons from each other, generating and spreading ideas. Under capitalism, most of the key institutions, schools, churches, TV, radio, movies - exclude, ignore or caricature revolutionary views.  Only a visible socialist party with resources make the alternative to capitalism known. Membership in a socialist movement complements your practical and does compete with your activism, nor drag you into sectarian irrelevance, or hold you prisoner to rigid schemes inappropriate to the world around you. With all of the pressures put on radicals to conform and to remain focused on our goal, it's a lot easier to remain true to our principles when wehave comrades to turn to for mutual support in morale and introduce fresh thinking.

No Problems For Some

While workers are anxiously trying to keep up with rising costs and low increases in pay, there's no such problem at the other end of the scale. Two former vice presidents of the Pan-Am games committee left after less than four years on the job and managed to win severance payments of over $300,000. John Ayers.