The Future Will Be Socialist Because Without Socialism There Will Be No Future

Billions around the world don’t have access to basic needs like clean drinking water, housing or education. The values socialists hold dear, such as the creation of a free and classless society and an economy that is environmentally sustainable and democratically-controlled by workers and communities, are those which are shared an overwhelming majority of the world’s population. If you want to know the real extremists, look no further than the supporters of global, corporate capitalism, those financial criminals who helped engineer the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression and were bailed out by the governments they had bought, and now seek further tax cuts, more deregulation and have launched attacks on the rights of working people. These are the minority of pie in the sky, out-of-touch political zealots and fanatics. Socialists condemn capitalism because it has failed the vast mass of humanity in the most decisive way. It promises freedom, democracy and prosperity but defaults on all three. Capitalism's driving principle is the struggle between capitalists for commercial supremacy and competitive survival in the jungle of the misnamed "free market". Human needs are met only in so far as they are backed up by purchasing power. Thus, for instance, suppose you need somewhere to live: if you have money you'll get what you can pay for, otherwise you can die on the streets or throw yourself on charity. Socialism, expropriating the capitalist class and putting society's productive forces under social ownership and democratic control, would put a stop to this madness.

With society in firm control of its economic mechanism, the satisfaction of people's needs — for meaningful work, housing, health, care of children and the aged, education, a quality public transport system, an attractive, livable urban environment and so on — would become the goal and the measure of its success. World socialism could, after an appropriate period of transition, give every single person on the planet a comfortable, decent existence — an overall quality of life such as, for instance, the western “middle classes” might enjoy today (but minus the consumerist trappings of conspicuous consumption). Anything less than this will not do. The basis of the division of society into ruling and oppressed classes — under capitalism no less than slavery and feudalism — is material scarcity. Society's small surplus over its elementary needs is appropriated by the ruling class. Only an abundance of goods and services — understood, of course, in a rational sense: we are not talking about gold toilet bowls — will provide the necessary foundation for a classless society.

Does society have the resources to accomplish such a feat? From the standpoint of meeting human needs, capitalism is massively wasteful. It doesn't take any great imagination to see that a fundamental change in the social and economic system would free vast human and material resources which could be devoted to building a better life for all. For a start, there is militarism, consuming hundreds of billions of dollars each year and, directly and indirectly, engaging the energies of scores, if not hundreds, of millions of people worldwide. The end of capitalism would mean the end of the "military-industrial complex" and the unrelenting sacrifice of human happiness on the altar of "defence". Moreover large sectors of the economy have a purely capitalistic function and wouldn't exist in a rational system: buying and selling personnel, advertising, the banking and financial sphere, the insurance industry, real estate and property development), the gambling businesses, are some examples. You, yourself can no doubt add to a list of redundant. The forces of law and order to protect private property, not just the police but  the private security industry and all the jails and prison staff.

Naturally, unemployment is yet another example of the irrationality and waste of the capitalist system. In a society freed from dependence on the profit motive this would not happen. Everyone could be guaranteed meaningful work and the working week could at the same time be drastically reduced for all. The ending of capitalism worldwide would enable society to overhaul its entire economic apparatus. There would be massive changes in what is produced and how it is produced. Once the profit motive is discarded, the reorganisation of the economy along ecologically sustainable lines could for the first time be seriously tackled. Sustainable energy production could be implemented on a truly massive scale. Wouldn’t all this increased production and development to qualitatively raise the standard of living of the mass of the world's population be ecologically sustainable if rationally planned rather than left to the chaos of the capitalist market.

Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are commonly owned and controlled co-operatively, based upon production for use and the direct allocation of economic inputs to satisfy economic demands and human needs (use value); accounting is based on physical quantities of resources, some physical magnitude, or a direct measure of labour-time.

During the English Civil War of the 1640s, radicals such as the Diggers or “True Levellers,” tried to put communal or communist ideas into practice, calling for every able-bodied person to work and to contribute to the common store of goods, skills, and services. Fearing the spread of such radicalism, the English authorities destroyed their communes and arrested their leading spokesmen. Modern socialism originated from an 18th-century intellectual and working class political movement that criticized the effects of industrialization and private property on society. Utopian socialists such as Robert Owen, tried to found self-sustaining communes by secession from a capitalist society. Henri de Saint Simon, who coined the term socialisme, advocated technocracy and industrial planning. Saint Simon, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx advocated the creation of a society that allows for the widespread application of modern technology to rationalise economic activity by eliminating the anarchy of capitalist production that results in instability and cyclical crises. Marx and Engels believed the consciousness of those who earn a wage or salary (the "working class" in the broadest Marxist sense) would be molded by their "conditions" of "wage-slavery", leading to a tendency to seek their freedom or "emancipation" by throwing off the capitalist ownership of society. For Marx and Engels, conditions determine consciousness and ending the role of the capitalist class leads eventually to a classless society in which the state would wither away. They argued that the material productive forces brought into existence by capitalism predicated a cooperative society since production had become a mass social, collective activity of the working class to create commodities but with private ownership (the relations of production or property relations). This conflict between collective effort in large factories and private ownership would bring about a conscious desire in the working class to establish collective ownership commensurate with the collective efforts their daily experience. First one realizes one needs an improvement over capitalism, then one casts about for a tool for building it. Marxism is a tool, not an end in itself. It is, however, an essential tool. If a tool is broken one can fix it; if it is incomplete add another; if it is useless for its purpose, forge a new one.

Socialism cannot exist without a change in consciousness resulting in a new fraternal attitude toward humanity. Socialists claim that although the viewpoint of working people is partisan, it is better than that of rich people for understanding reality. This is because working people are positioned by capitalism to see more than rich people do: they can grasp the actions of the rich and their own. Capitalism is an evil that calls for immediate destruction.

Simplified, capitalism as a mode of production is for Marx characterized by: 1) Production of value by wage labor. 2) Ownership and control of the means of production by a non-wage owners and managers who personify capital. 3) Distribution of the resulting products, as commodities, by a market. Marx identifies three elements in capitalism: labor, capital, and markets. Unless joined to labor, capital produces no value; and labor, lacking control of the means of production, cannot make what it needs to live. The imbalance, then, is: control of the means of production by non-workers. Lack such control workers must sell their labor power as a commodity to those who have such control, subjecting themselves to the latters' will during the workday. Those controlling the means of production, seeing that they can make more from workers' labor than it costs them, grant workers the temporary access to the means of production they need to reproduce their labor and themselves. A wage for time? It looks like a fair exchange if we overlook the imbalance. Yet this imbalance is signaled by workers' advance of their labor to capitalists before receiving compensation on payday, rather than the reverse. Once put to work, labor power soon fully compensates the capitalist for its cost to him; but it then keeps on adding value to commodities, unpaid, for the remainder of the workday. Workers may have access to the means of production to make what they need, but on condition that, having done so, they continue working, yielding up without compensation the greatest part of the value their labor produces. Marx's name for this unpaid labour done after workers cover their own labor costs is "surplus labor." Its product, "surplus value," is controlled by capitalists. It is from surplus value that profit and capital itself derives. Workers' own savings will never match the accumulation of capital, which they create, but which the system awards to capitalists, along with huge social power. Individual workers may become capitalists, but the system's imbalance keeps the working class in subservience.

But at the heart of the so-called "free" labour contract is a theft effected under a life-threatening extortion. Coerced into this contract by their need, itself due to their separation from the means of production, workers get paid a mere portion of the value they produce in order to reproduce their labor power, hence their lives. They are paid this portion only if they work unpaid for a larger part of the workday. Should they decline surplus labour they will not be allowed enough access to the means of production to do even the labor needed to live. Trade unions may negotiate compensation only for this latter amount of labor. Surplus value is off limits. Marxists call the ratio of what labor costs capitalists to what it produces for them as surplus value, the rate of exploitation. It is often euphemistically called the rate of productivity. Surplus labor is extracted involuntarily since workers would not willingly hand over control of their earnings to others were they not compelled to do so by their separation from the means of production. This imbalance in capital's reproduction thus allows control of the lion's share of the extorted value to be controlled by the representatives of capital. Under cover of equal exchange, this is an exploitation of humans by other humans that is not made more just by being pervasive and normal in the process of capital accumulation. Chattel slavery was once normal.

It will not do to say capitalists are entitled to profit because of their unique productive contributions. Contributions usually named -- entrepreneurial insight, managerial skill, innovation, risk-taking, etc. -- are not unique to capitalists. Persons with these abilities may extract profit from others' labor only if they also own or control the means of production. Many so endowed who lack such control are excluded from profits. Ownership (or control) not skill is the key. Under capitalism all one needs for full entitlement to luxury is enough ownership of the means of production. Nor is providing capital itself a contribution that merits profits. Phoning one's broker is not a productive activity or contribution. "Providing capital" is indeed widely accepted as a productive contribution, but this assumes such entitlement is just, and provides no proof. Part of the illusion that capital contributes arises from the fact that capital is not physical things (equipment and materials) or money, but rather, as Marx said, "a social relation." He was referring not just to our mystified attribution of agency to an abstraction we've collectively produced, but to the gradations of power that must permeate human communities which defer to such inhuman agency. This hierarchy is geographically displayed in the fine class gradations visible in residential neighborhoods of first world countries. In the end it matters little if capital's representatives lack justification for exercising power in its name. They control it (and it them); they give orders in its behalf; the police and courts back them up in a power structure with capital at the top. That is the way it is.

The Co-op solution?

Take producer cooperatives. These unite capital and labor in a non-antagonistic manner. In a true cooperative the same group of workers both produces value and owns the means of production. A coop's active workforce hires managers and capital (by jointly taking out loans) instead of being hired by them, a major reversal. A broad cooperative movement, by starting cooperatives and buying out existing enterprises, can dismantle capitalism, one firm at a time, in the following three ways:

First, by abolishing capitalist exploitation. Selling one's labor power always means subjecting oneself to another's domination. This might be acceptable were the subservient labor fully paid. Instead, it leads to capital accumulation and profit for managers and owners. By contrast, coops return all value to those who produce it, who then decide how much to pay managers, reinvest, and share as profits. Since the current workforce democratically decides on any work beyond that needed for living costs, such a workforce cannot be said to exploit itself. Second, by abolishing the market in labor. By joining a coop workers pool their labor with equals and do not sell it. This has two effects: it shatters the illusion that capital is active since workers themselves unite the factors of production and profit therefrom; and, more crucially, it stops capital accumulation by non-workers, jamming the mechanism that maintains capitalism's imbalance and feeds finance capital. And thirdly, by blocking capitalism's creation of class divisions within and between nations. This is due to the much smaller income spreads in coops than in capitalist firms. Since class divisions outside of workplaces tend to reflect those inside, cooperativisation will narrow capitalism's class divisions and the resultant unjust distribution of life-chances.

Cooperativisation, then, the theory argues, could displace capitalism. However, if the goal of socialism is a self-determining humanity, then even a fully cooperativised global economy will not be self-determining because of its subjection to market forces. Democratic planning is indeed needed for socialism. Marx entertained cooperativisation as a strategy. He admitted coops demonstrate that workers don't need capitalists in order to run firms. But he believed cooperativisation could not bring socialism so long as capitalists control state power, which they had exercised so brutally in 1848. Marx envisioned a world free of domination both by capital and the state, a world of direct self-determination by "the associated producers" in which states will have "withered away." But to defeat and expropriate capitalists, workers must meanwhile exercise state power in a "dictatorship of the proletariat" (a misnomer in many ways, since Marx envisioned an extension of democracy by democratic means). Forming parties to take power thus became for Marx the priority of the workers' movement.

Competitive Consequences

The Toronto Star revealed in an article about the Pope urging the EU to boost aid in Italy's migrant crisis, that since the start of 2014, almost 200,000 people have been rescued at sea. For those who do make it to Europe safely, there is not much joy waiting for them. They routinely face destitution, violence and racism. One group trekking into Europe on a 'safe' trail along railway lines were hit by a night train killing fourteen people in Macedonia. All this is another direct consequence of a competitive and divided world. John Ayers

Co-operative Commonwealth not Corporate Capitalism

A socialist revolution first must take place in the heads of the workers, then will follow the conquest of political power, the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of socialism. Certain characteristics distinguish the socialist revolution from all previous revolutions. For the first time has a social revolution become possible and necessary in the interests of the great bulk of the population, the working class. The lack of socialists is all that stands in the way of socialism. The revolution cannot be rammed down the throats of the workers against their understanding or desire. In the name of building up a socialist movement among the masses, some have emasculated and compromised socialist principles.

 The only factor in all the material conditions of today that I can see standing in the way of socialism is the political ignorance of the workers. Socialism is possible, necessary and practical today the moment the great majority become conscious of their interests. The notion that the workers are dumb is plain hogwash but often confused, especially by the “friends” of socialism, speaking in the name of socialism.

The lure and fascinations of protest demonstrations and making demands is very attractive. It indicates how deep-rooted discontent with capitalism really is, and it demonstrates the latent strength of socialism once the masses wake up to the need for changing the system instead of adjusting to it. The bond that makes us as one and inspires us is the recognition that capitalism can no longer be reformed or administered in the interest of the working class or of society, and the understanding that conditions are now ripe for socialism, which is the solution for society’s problems. All that is lacking is a socialist majority. This says it all! This is the essence of our principles. The socialist movement is not only heart, but is a combination of heart and head. Socialism is not the result of blind faith, followers, or, by the same token, vanguards and leaders. Nothing is more repugnant to socialism than clever strategy and conspiratorial tactics.

Socialism is not possible without socialists. What makes socialist work stirring and inspiring is not that there are short cuts, but that there is nothing else worth a tinker’s damn. The seeming failures, the disappointments and discouragements, the slow growth, only indicate that socialist work is not an easy task. There is no short cut to socialism, short of socialist determination. Our latent strength lies in the fact that science, truth, and above all, necessity, is on the side of the scientific, revolutionary socialist movement.

But the alternative facing us is either socialism or chaos.

All over the world, wastelands or arable lands or resource-rich lands, where resource-poor populations live in tenuous relationships with the environment, are grabbed by the state and corporate giants for the accumulation of capital. We live in a world where conflicts erupt over natural resources. We don’t look to a different government to solve problems, nor make ‘demands’ on government like left groups. We were committed to working without leaders in a non-hierarchical way. Our goals are conceived in terms of achieving a socialist transformation of our global society along democratic and emancipatory lines.

The steady state economy is a genuine alternative to a capitalist economy and it is feasible. Capitalist economics is an erratic process of booms and slumps, and an unpleasant process of competition, where those who win necessarily do so at the expense of those who lose. The socialist vision of a steady-state economy is where goods and services are provided locally as much as possible and at a sustainable level. This would have the positive side-effect of prioritizing the well-being of the planet and all its people over the profit-making of the few who dominate the present economy. Capitalist growth cannot be stopped, or even slowed and the market is driving us toward ecological collapse.

For many people socialism is an economic concept synonymous with government ownership of the means of production and centralized planning of economic activity. Capitalism is leading humanity to disaster. This profit-driven system is using natural resources at a faster rate than they are being replenished. Our atmosphere, land and water are being filled with poisons that are choking the lifeblood out of the planet and its peoples. Socialists aim to raise the living standards of the poorest workers in the world. That does not mean rampant growth that pays no attention to environmental and other considerations. Nor is it is true that people would always clamour for more. We want a decent, stimulating life for ourselves and the generations after us. Consumption would tend to stabilise once a certain level had been reached.

 The same is true for population growth. It is poverty which promotes large families to overcome high infant mortality rates.  Reducing growth can only be accomplished by the transformation of capitalism, which is based on private property, to a democratic, socialist system based on common ownership. From the local to regional and global levels, democratic and accountable bodies would discuss and plan production. Advanced production techniques and aspects of planning already employed by multi-national corporations, market research and internet communication would all help develop a modern socialist society. Production would respond to the needs of society and resources would be allocated accordingly. Sustainable development would be a top priority.

Socialist society can only exist globally. Just as capitalist society is global. Workers will not be tricked into the fight for socialism. Certainly the propaganda of Socialism must start from the simplest daily needs of life of men, women and children, and the failure of capitalism to meet those needs. But at the same time it must be shown that no short cut can find the way out, no magic panaceas of pretended reforms, money-control or other trickeries, but only the conquest of the means of production by the working class, and, therefore, as the necessary condition of this, the overthrow of capitalist class power and conquest of power by the working class; and it must be shown that this class struggle will involve heavy fighting and sacrifice, demanding the strongest discipline and solidarity of the working class.

The clamor is always money, money, and more money but money won’t fill our stomachs.

No Answer In Capitalism

In late March and early April plenty of press coverage was devoted to The Canadian Bar Association's opposition to the proposed Federal bill C-51 that they felt would curtail civil liberties. The group represents 36,000 lawyers and paralegals, and they argue that the law, that would transform the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) into an agency that would disrupt terrorist plots, would also disrupt legitimate activity including environmental and aboriginal protests and intimidate democratic expression. They fear that CSIS would search private citizens' computers and mobile devices without warrants. This has already happened in the US where, under the guise of fighting terrorism, many private individuals have had their civic freedoms trampled on. Once again, there is no answer in capitalism to this on going problem, but a society without terrorism and governments as we know them, with a democratic administration of society wouldn't have such a situation. John Ayers.

Open Borders or Closed Minds

Capitalism's 'use-by' date is way overdue. We can enjoy a much higher standard of living because we're far more productive than ever before. When we argue for the abolition of private property, what we are referring to is the common ownership of the means of production (all the stuff such as machinery and raw materials) so that people have a better means to generate wealth, and thus diminish inequality. Socialists have no desire to take the clothes off your back, commandeer your car or squat in your house.

More people cross borders today than ever before. Historians, archaeologists, biologists, and the tales that people tell all point to the fact that around the world human beings have always moved and that they have done so for reasons not dissimilar to the reasons people move today. To be human is to be mobile.  For us, to be alive is to move.  We are not plants, rooted to a single place from which we grow and expand in more or less constrained or restricted ways.  Our defining capacity as a species to creatively and purposefully transform our surroundings and productively and consciously modify our circumstances -- our existential vocation for labor, if you will -- is inseparable from our fundamental freedom of movement.  This likewise means that our inherently social character as a species is also contingent upon our mobility.  Hence, the freedom of movement of the human species is an absolutely basic and non-negotiable aspect of our most general mode of life.  This is not merely a philosophical predilection or a theoretical conceit, much less a dogmatic political position -- it is an indisputable and immutable objective fact.  To be human and alive, under any semblance of natural or normal or healthy circumstances, is to be mobile. Hence, our freedom of movement as a species has ultimately manifested itself as a freedom to move around the entire globe, (and even beyond). The free movement of people around the world therefore would not be utopian; it is already a proven fact. What is utopian is the statist delusion of border policing. The development of capitalism creates the conditions for the solidarity and contact between workers to overcome the national boundaries established by capital. 

Borders are one of the great contradictions in the era of capitalist globalisation. The world has become a much smaller place because of advances in technology and transportation, global production chains and the lightning-fast movement of capital around the planet. In this regard, the globalized economy is borderless to those with billions of dollars or euros or yen to invest. But borders are still there to keep the vast majority of us apart. While borders are permeable to some privileged people, they are impermeable to most others. Migrants who cross national borders without permission are often criminalised and de-humanised, frequently lose their social, economic and political rights and, as a consequence, experience disproportionate exploitation and abuse. Capitalism has always needed workers to migrate across borders. For example, tens of thousands of Irish workers were central to England's Industrial Revolution. Once in England, the Irish got the worst-paid jobs, lived in slums and were caricatured as slothful drunks. Borders are designed to control workers in the interest of capitalist accumulation. The most successful way to defeat low pay and conditions is to unite and organise against exploitative employers. The demand for undocumented migrant workers is greater as long as employers can get a higher return on investment through the exploitation of a cheap labour force. If migrant workers are allowed to flow freely between borders, with the same rights as indigenous workers, they would be entitled to the same pay and conditions. As a result, we could strengthen our organisations and unions, united in our struggle for just and fair conditions in employment and education. It is easier for employers to undercut wages if they have access to a cheap labour force, but equipped with the same rights as the indigenous workforce, a migrant worker would no longer be susceptible to exploitation because of their status. In Istanbul, employers are already taking advantage of an educated Syrian working class, to provide high standards of service in hospitality during the tourist season, whilst paying them less than indigenous workers.

When workers unite for fair pay and conditions, it strengthens the position of all workers.

There are no such matters as ‘national interests’ only the interests of different classes. Borders are never natural, never a product of nature. They are political. Capitalism views workers both as units of production and as a market. Socialism, on the other hand sees us all as human beings. A world without borders, without states, would clearly require a global revolution. Abolition of immigration controls and the opening of present borders even within one country such as the UK would also require a revolution.  The long-standing socialist slogan ‘Workers of the world unite’ means what it says. It does not mean ‘Only workers with the correct immigration status unite.’ Immigration controls are inherently racist as they are premised on the grossest of all nationalisms – the claim that one group of people has a franchise on a particular piece of the world. All immigration controls however they are defined and to whoever they ‘allow’ free movement, inevitably result in the restriction of movement for others. This is why they must be opposed in principle. Every struggle against deportation is at its very basics a denial of the state to determine who can cross borders.

A huge number of the world’s population are on the move and are voting with their feet for no controls. Across the world, national states, especially in the so-called “rich world,” are imposing ever more restrictive immigration policies. Such state efforts are being enacted at precisely the time when migration has become an increasingly important part of people’s strategies for survival. These may be a new livelihood or escape from untenable, even murderous, situations, such as persecution and war, as well as the opportunity to experience new people, places, and situations.

Throughout the world those designated as ‘illegal’ – the unwanted, the undocumented – are literally scaling fences in assertion of their right of freedom of movement. More restrictions will never stop migration--the economic imperative for workers struggling to feed themselves and their families will force them to cross borders, no matter what the risks. But the restrictions can make this much more dangerous and oppressive, by forcing the most vulnerable people in society into relying on smugglers and human traffickers, not to mention the exploitative businesses where they end up working. There can be no question of socialists supporting anything that would make it impossible for Polish, Romanian or any other workers to migrate to and remain in the UK. Nor can we ignore the deployment of security forces, the use of courts and detention centres to enforce immigration policies.

The idea that the acceptance of foreign workers would threaten native workers' jobs is one dimensional. Of course, it can't be denied that even in times of non-recession, the low wages of foreign workers appear to Japanese workers as competitors. However, the position which opposes the acceptance of low wage foreign workers based on the idea that they steal jobs and cause the worsening of working conditions, dazzles the eyes with apparent interests, but cannot understand the essence of things, and spreads xenophobia and divisions among the workers. Capital introduces all sorts of discrimination among the workers: main company and subcontractors, temporary and part time workers, etc. Capital uses "disposable" part time and temporary workers as a control valve for business fluctuations. When the business climate worsens, the first ones to get the sack are these low level workers, and those working for small subcontracting companies. It is the rule of capital that makes the workers' lives unstable. This instability will not end if the rule of capital continues, regardless of whether or not foreign workers are prevented entry.

The same thing is true for the problem of increased crime or the creation of slums or increased competition for social security and welfare. The greatest responsibility for the occurrence of these problems lies with the discriminative low wages and horrible working conditions capital imposes, and is not the fault of foreign workers. The results of research by the French researcher Gaspard clearly show the groundlessness of bourgeois "public opinion" which scapegoats foreign workers by saying that they are a hotbed of crime. According to her research, French people are the ones who commit the vast majority of serious social crimes, whereas the overwhelming number of crimes by foreign workers are petty crimes which come from unavoidable poverty related to their terrible treatment by capital. ("The France of Foreigners"). The xenophobic position deflects attention away from the rule of capital as if the responsibility lies with the foreign workers, is a reactionary stance which propagates prejudice against foreign workers.

Those on the left who call for "orderly” admittance understand that these conditions of establishing presuppose a return to the home country. This position is essentially the same as the capitalist’s  which denies foreign workers the right to permanent stay, and attempts to "use" foreign workers for the convenience of capital, and avoid social problems from the permanent residence of foreign workers. They want to thoroughly squeeze these foreign workers and then send them back to their home country. In other words, they aim to introduce freely disposable "labor power". The left nationalist standpoint is the same as that of the ruling class. This regulated immigration policy reflects the interests of medium and small capital which is suffering from a labour shortage.

One of the things Lenin did get right was when he explained:

"Capitalism creates the particular form of national migration. Countries in which industry is rapidly developing introduce more machinery, drive other countries out of the market, and attract wage workers from foreign countries through their above average wages.

 In this way hundreds of thousands of workers move far away from their hometowns. Against their will they are drawn into the orbit of advanced capitalism. They are drawn out of their remote villages to become participants in the movement of world history, and come face to face with a powerfully united, international industrial class.

 Certainly, only extreme poverty causes people to abandon their homeland, and capitalism exploits migrant workers in a completely shameless way. But only reactionaries can shut their eyes to the progressive meaning of the modern national migration. Emancipation from the heavy pressure of capital cannot occur apart from the increasing development of capitalism, and the class struggles based on this development.

 The bourgeoisie tries to incite the workers of one nation against the workers of another nation, and cause splits between them. Class conscious workers understand that it is inevitable and progressive to knock down all of the capitalist walls between nations, and work in order to help the organization and enlightenment of comrades from other countries." ("Capitalism and the Migration of Workers")

Workers must recognise the progressive meaning of the movement of workers, and strive for solidarity with the workers of other countries from an internationalist standpoint.

The government spreads the anti-migrant ideas that the admission of "unskilled workers" would widen discriminatory consciousness, and lead to the breakdown of the social order. But the evidence is that it is the government and capital who are inciting discrimination and prejudice against foreign workers, with fears that the entrance of unskilled foreign workers will enlarge the slums and increase crime.

Workers support the freedom of foreign workers' employment. The illegal conditions of the employment of foreign workers means that capital can impose horrendous working conditions, brokers are active and in-between exploitation takes place. Of course, as long as the rule of capital continues this would not end even with the legal employment. But the legality of employment would at least ease these conditions somewhat. Furthermore, workers must oppose all discrimination, and demand equality for foreign workers and their rights as workers. Only supporting the legality of employment, is no different from the bourgeois desire for cheap labour. For foreign workers to defend their own lives, they must secure their rights as workers. Workers as workers must oppose discrimination by capital against foreign workers, and struggle in solidarity to support their rights and lives.

However, the international solidarity of workers is not merely limited to supporting the demands for their rights. Above all, workers must develop the class struggle against the system of capital, and overthrow this system. What must be sought is the overthrow of the rule of capital  and the realisation of socialism established on the power of the workers.

THE EARTH FLAG

Our solidarity recognises no borders. We must do everything we can to support the right of workers to live and work where they so wish. Socialists want world where borders have become a relic of the past. The world that the Socialist Party envision is one in which national boundaries no longer exist, in which you can move from one country to another with the same ease in which we can move from Newcastle to Newquay, a world without passports or visas or immigration quotas. True globalisation in the human sense, in which we recognise that the world is one and that human beings everywhere are the same. It would be a world in which the boundaries of race and religion and nation would not become causes for antagonism. Even though there would still be cultural differences and still be language differences, there would not be causes for violent action of one against the other. In a world like that you could not make war because it is your family. It would be a world in which the riches of the planet would be according to human need. True community can only be established with the abolition of classes and the state. If we are to fight world capitalism, then we cannot resort to nationalism. The only way forward for working people is the struggle for class solidarity and world socialism.  Class unity is about solidarity, which recognises no borders. The workers' cause and the Revolution knows no borders.

Nothing Matters But Capital

The Toronto Catholic School Board responded to the news of a $34.3 million shortfall in funding by announcing that it would lay off fourteen principals, eight vice-principals, twelve high school special education teachers, thirty education assistants and four elementary guidance counsellors. The Board of Trustees have been forced to cut their annual salary of $18,000 by five per cent. Furthermore, a few small schools will be closed. All religious belief in the world won't make any difference to capital in the time of a slump. The owners' stash of cash must be protected above all else in a profit system, even at the expense of educating our children. John Ayers

Ingrained For Some

Ten years ago, the British government banned fox hunting but it still continues because no steps were taken to enforce the ban. 45,000 people hunt foxes regularly in almost two hundred registered groups. It is as if the law was never passed. It's one thing to kill foxes if they are a menace to farmers but another to hunt them down and be ripped apart by dogs. Glorification of killing defenceless animals is an ingrained part of life for the upper crust that will surely die along with capitalism. John Ayers.

The Greatest Robbery in History

Emblem of the SLP of America

This leaflet was distributed in the 1960s by the Socialist Labor Party of America which is worth re-posting despite certain flaws in the text. 

The Exploitation of Wage-Labor

This is the story of a robbery so colossal that it defies measurement. Compared with it the prizes, loot and spoils taken by all the pirates, buccaneers and freebooters of history are a mere bagatelle. The robbery is confined neither by time nor space. It is continuous, unremitting. It proceeds wherever society is divided into classes, wherever one class owns the instruments of production to which another class, owning no tools of its own, must have access in order to live.

There is nothing illegal about this robbery. Under the capitalist system, it is considered the normal "way of life." But it is robbery nonetheless. For the capitalist class uses its ownership and control of the factories, land, railroads, etc., in the same way that a highwayman uses his gun -- to extract a tribute from its victims.

CAPITALIST ECONOMIC ILLUSIONS

It is an insidious form of robbery, this capitalist exploitation. It abounds in illusions. For example, there is the illusion that conceals the real source of wages and makes the capitalist exploiter appear to be a sort of benign philanthropist. The worker goes into the factory on Monday morning empty handed, but, when he comes out on pay day, lo and behold, he has a pay check in his hands! If he meets a Socialist and hears the Socialist attack the capitalist system, he might say:

"Don't attack my boss. I'm getting little enough as it is. I wouldn't get anything if he were put out of business."

You see, this worker labors under the illusion that the capitalist supports him, whereas, as we shall demonstrate, he supports the capitalist. In this respect he is like the farmer who has not yet learned that you can raise potatoes without potato bugs.

CAPITALIST EXPLOITATION SUBTLE

Why is the worker the victim of this illusion? What goes on inside the factory that conceals from him the true state of affairs? What goes on is simply this: In the first hour or two that he is on the job the worker produces in the form of new values as much as he is paid in wages for the entire working day!

Of course the worker has no way of knowing this. When the serf of feudal times was forced to yield part of what he produced to the feudal lord, he knew he was being robbed. But capitalist robbery ia more subtle. The worker may perform but one minute operation in the production of a commodity requiring thousands of operations. Nevertheless, his labor has created new value equal to his day's wages in the first hour or two on the job and this new value -- together with the value added by his fellow workers -- is embodied in the finished product.

UNPAID LABOR

Karl Marx, the great champion of the working class, gave a name to the part of the working day in which the worker reproduces his wages. He called it necessary labor time. During the rest of the working day the worker produces values for which he is not paid, or -- let us call a spade a spade -- values of which he is robbed! This part of the working day Marx called surplus labor time.

For purposes of simplification, take the case of a worker who sells his labor power -- to be expended in eight hours -- for the price of $15. The first two hours of his working day are necessary labor time. In these two hours he produces as much as the boss pays him for eight hours of labor.

During the remaining six hours -- surplus labor time -- he produces three times as much, or $45 worth of new values. In the science of political economy we call the wealth that the worker produces, but of which he is robbed, surplus value.

EXPLOITATION AND WAGES

What in the degree of robbery, or exploitation? It varies as conditions vary in the different countries. In a countrv where more advanced techniques and methods of production are applied (such as the United States), the degree of exploitation is greater than it is in less advanced countries. At first blush this may seem contradictory. Why, you may ask, should workers who are more productive receive less proportionately of what they produce than workers who are not so productive?

The answer is simply that wages are not determined by what the worker produces. Leaving aside their temporary rise and fall due to fluctuations of supply and demand in the labor market, wages are determined by what it costs the worker to live and raise a new crop of wage slaves to take his place when he dies or is thrown on the scrap heap.

Everyone is familiar with the expression a "living wage." Our grandfathers got a "living wage"; our fathers got a "living wage": and. normally, we get a "living wage." Thus, in terms of food, clothing, shelter, etc., we receive substantially what our grandfathers did. Yet we produce vastly more than our grandfathers and considerably more than our fathers. Why, then, haven't we advanced beyond the "living wage" concept? The answer is that we cannot advance beyond this concept, no matter how much our productivity increases, as long as capitalism lasts. And the reason is that, under capitalism, labor power is a commodity, an article of merchandise, whose price is governed by the same economic laws that govern the price of any other commodity.

COMMODITY STATUS OF LABOR

Price may fluctuate according to the supply of a commodity and the demand for it in the market. Just as a pendulum swings back and forth, but is always drawn toward the center by gravitation, price may go up or down -- but always it oscillates around its value in accord with the economic law of value.

In other words, price, in the long run, coincides with value. And the value of any commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time required to produce it. In the case of the commodity labor power this means that its value is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time required to produce the food, clothing, shelter, etc., needed to keep the worker in working condition. He gets a 'living wage."

THE TREND: INTENSIFIED EXPLOITATION

But, note this: The more highly developed a nation is industrially, the less labor time is required to produce the workers' necessities. Hence, instead of the workers' share of their product increasing proportionately as their productivity rises, it is the other way around. As new methods and techniques -- such as automation -- are introduced, the articles workers consume are cheapened and wages fall accordingly. Thus the workers' relative wages (what they receive in relation to what they produce) tend to fall as productivity rises. In other words, as labor productivity rises, the necessary labor time grows shorter, thus lengthening that part of the working day when the worker produces surplus value.

How the Capitalists Divide the Loot For purposes of simplification we have used a single worker as an example. Actually, as Daniel De Leon, the great American Marxist, pointed out, exploitation "is not the act of any individual capitalist, or set of capitalists, perpetrated upon any individual workingman or set of workingmen. Exploitation is a class act -- the act of the whole capitalist class-perpetrated upon a class -- the whole working class."

Apologists for capitalism sometimes try to refute Socialist charges of high-degree exploitation in America by pointing to the net profits of corporations. But Socialists have never contended that the corporations pocket all the surplus value their workers produce. On the contrary, Socialists point out that before a capitalist can count his net profits he must pay off the landlord, tax collector, banker, advertising capitalist, insurance company, and all the other parasites on parasites. By the time taxes, interest, rent, etc., are deducted, net profits of the immediate capitalist exploiter may be only a fraction of the surplus value of which workers are robbed. But this in no way disputes the fact that the working class is robbed by the capitalist class of wealth so vast that it defies measurement.

CAPITALIST HEADACHE: DISPOSING OF THE LOOT

Now, let us examine this thievery from another angle. We measure surplus value in dollars. But the workers do not produce dollars, they produce commodities -- and a commodity, Marx tells us, is an article that will satisfy some human want and that is produced for sale. Hence, before the capitalists can enjov their plunder, they must first find buyers for it. If they don't get rid of their commodity loot, it accumulates hi the warehouses and production stagnates.

In wartime the solution is simple. In wartime the surplus steel goes into tanks, ships and guns. the surplus textiles into uniforms, tents and bandages, the surplus lumber into training camps, barracks and caskets, and so on down the line of commodities.

But between capitalist wars -- in the intervening periods of "peace" -- the capitalists do not have this ready outlet for their wares. In peacetime they must find other means of disposing of their loot. How do they do it?

First of all, it is self-evident that the workers do not consume more than they can buy with their wages. And, as we have shown, this is just a fraction of what they produce. What happens to the remainder of labor's vast product?

A part is consumed by the capitalists in prodigal living. Some capitalists -- the plutocracy -- live in opulence surpassing that of kings, and often maintain not one palace, but many. In every city the capitalists form a community of super-consumers. They are the patrons of the night clubs, the purchasers of costly luxuries, the members of expensive clubs. Yet despite their prodigality, the capitalists can use up in personal consumption only a fraction of the immense wealth created by labor and appropriated by their exploiters.

Another part of this wealth -- a much larger part -- is used up in running a huge, bureaucratic, capitalist political State. The cost of running the political State -- including city, county, state and federal governments -- was somewhat more than $20 billion in 1939. Today the cost of running the federal government alone runs to more than $65 billion.

Still another part of labor's surplus product goes into expansion of industry. But while this tends temporarily to relieve the glut, its ultimate effect is to increase the capacity to produce commodities, hence to produce surpluses.

CAPITALISM NEEDS WASTE

Waste is another outlet for the wealth labor produces but cannot buy back. Some of the waste is incidental to the operation of capitalism. Take real estate transactions, for example. From the standpoint of economy these are pure waste. So is insurance. And advertising. None of these activities creates a penny's worth of value. Then there is the wanton destruction of surplus crops, and the fantastic waste involved in building hydrogen bombs and other weapons. And the waste of economic anarchy and duplication of effort.

Indeed, capitalism thrives best when waste is greatest. Floods, tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes and other natural disasters may ruin individual capitalists, but they are a veritable tonic to the capitalist system, for they help to use up surpluses.

COMPETITION FOR WORLD TRADE

However, such is the tremendous productivity of the modern working class that, despite prodigious consumption and waste, surpluses tend to accumulate, glutting the home market. The only outlet for this surplus is -- the world market.

Foreign markets are to capitalism what a safety valve is to a steam boiler. Continue to pump steam into a steam boiler that has no safety valve to release the excess pressure and, sooner or later, something will break. Similarly with capitalist production. Under a system of production for sale and profit, the foreign markets must drain off the surplus or it will pile up, cause economic stagnation at home, and, ultimately result in capitalist collapse.

All industrial countries, Communist as well as capitalist, are competing for a world market that, instead of growing larger, tends to shrink as economically backward countries industrialize and establish their own systems of exploitation. Inevitably the rivals in this economic war encroach upon each other's markets and sources of raw materials, creating international friction and hatred. For a time the weapons of trade -- tariffs, barter deals, import quotas, etc. -- are invoked. But ultimately such weapons are inadequate. The struggle that begins in commerce ends in -- WAR!

SOCIALIST SANITY

Capitalist rulers have no ears for the voice of Socialist sanity. For Socialism -- not the phony "Socialism" of Soviet Russia, which is really a system of bureaucratic despotism, but real Socialism -- would not only put an end to the periodic wars for capitalist survival -- it would also put an end to capitalist robbery of the working class.    By raising the worker out of his commodity status to that of a free human being with a voice and vote in the administration of industry, by guaranteeing to every producer the full social value of the product, in abort, by replacing capitalist anarchy and exploitation with Socialist cooperation and harmony, the world could be made into a veritable paradise of peace and plenty.

But capitalist rulers, blinded by their class and material interests, reject this. Whatever betides, they choose capitalism with its inevitable struggle for world trade and raw material sources, with its inevitable war. Not even the hydrogen bomb with its threat of human annihilation can prevent this ultimate outcome if capitalism is allowed to remain the ruling principle of society.

What the capitalist rulers and Communist bureaucrats are incapable of learning, the toilers of the world must learn --

There can be no peace without Socialism!

The capitalist system is the first in which a surplus of useful things is looked upon, not as a blessing, but as a curse. Below are depicted the various methods whereby the capitalists dispose of the fantastic volume of commodities the modern wage-slave class produces. It is impossible, of course, to determine accurately the proportion of labor's product used up in waste, or through expensive living by the capitalists, or in other ways, and the drawing is intended to convey this only in general terms. It should also be noted that the workers are many, the capitalists few,, and, though the working class may consume more in living, its per capita consumption is but a fraction of that of its exploiters than one and one-half per cent of all families had incomes of $15,000 and over. More than 8,300,000 families received under $2,000. Another 5,000,000 got from $2,000 to $3,000. At least half the U.S. population is near the ragged edge.

The capitalist class, as a class, robs the working class, as a class. The individual capitalist exploiter does not pocket the whole loot taken from the workers. Out of the wealth the workers produce come rent, interest, fees for insurance, advertising, etc., taxes and the "pay-off" for corrupt politicians, criminals and other hangers-on of capitalism who in one way or another serve capitalist interests. When workers read of the net profits of corporations, small or large, they should always bear in mind that these represent only a fraction of the total plunder. The "pie" above is suggestive and does not pretend to convey the real proportions in which labor's product is divided.

What we need is socialism

We live in an era in which socialism has largely lost its meaning. Social-democratic, Leninist, Stalinist, and Maoist governments over the past century which have failed to carry out their supposedly socialist objectives has dealt a serious blow to the integrity of the very concept of socialism.

 “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves” is a socialist principle. Self-emancipation requires that the working class gain power in society. This means the working class needs mass organisations it controls in order to secure its liberation and which looks out to the interests of the working class as a whole; that remains independent of the capitalist political parties and their professional politicians thus rejecting any “partnership” with the employing class. Part of the role of the Socialist Party is to help people see through the illusions of capitalism, to understand that we are faced with this stark choice of socialism or barbarism, and to encourage a vision of self-emancipation as the only means of creating socialism and the essence of what socialism would be. Revolutions are a dynamic process, not a single event or series of discrete events. Marx said that revolution is absolutely necessary not only because the old ruling classes cannot be disposed of in any other way, but because the class overthrowing it can only rid itself of all of the old “shite” (sheisse) and be fit to rule and found society anew only through the process of revolution. And it’s only through struggle that this revolutionary consciousness develops.

The present form of society rests on private ownership of the land and the machinery of production and distribution. The owners of the land and the machinery of production constitute what is known as the capital class. Yet it is the working class produces all the wealth that sustains society and it is held in complete economic and industrial subjection to the capitalist class, which lives on the wealth produced by the working class. The working class must wage class war and be fully conscious of the wrongs inflicted upon it by the capitalist class. The deaths by starvation, the millions of unemployed, the excessive toil for bare subsistence, the poverty, crime, and consequent misery, are all the direct outcome of domination by the ruling class. That class must go. Capitalist class relations perpetuate problems of human suffering that can be eradicated. Capitalism generates morally intolerable levels of inequality of material conditions of people. Capitalism thwarts democracy by placing the basic economic resources and conditions of investment in the hands of private individuals. Capitalism robs most people of meaningful control over much of their work lives because they are pawns in other people’s projects. Capitalism does not merely generate inequality and poverty through exploitation, it generates alienation as well. Capitalist competition and conflict destroys a sense of solidarity among people and built into capitalism economics is greed and fear.

Workers must organise to voice the wrongs. Then it will be prepared for political action to overthrow the usurping class and to abolish classes for ever. The people have to be organised so that they know what they were doing. Socialists need to educate them first. Socialism requires the re-organisation of the economy to serve working people’s needs. Its precondition is therefore the organisation of the working class. The workers must be taught to unite and vote together as a class in support of the socialist party, the party that represents them as a class, and when they do this the government will pass into their hands and capitalism will fall to rise no more; private ownership will give way to social ownership, and production for profit to production for use; the wages-system will disappear, and with it the ignorance and poverty; misery and crime that wage-slavery breeds; the working class will stand forth triumphant and free, and a new era will dawn in human progress of mankind. The Socialist Party demands common ownership of all agencies of wealth production by the people themselves and the control of all industrial affairs on the basis of social equality. There is no escape from the thraldom of capitalism short of its complete overthrow, and this can only be achieved by the class-conscious political strength of the working class. The Socialist Party, therefore, calls upon all workers to forthwith to work unceasingly for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system, and for the emancipation of their class from wage slavery.

Socialists do not provide blueprints for how we should do things differently. Socialism does not depend on some miraculous change in human nature. Instead, the Socialist Party poses this question as the guiding rule of conduct: Will the proposal advance the interests of the working class and aid the workers in their class struggle against capitalism? If it will, the Socialist Party is for it; if it will not, the Socialist Party is absolutely opposed to it. The advocacy of political reforms obscures the working class objective of emancipation from wage slavery, and thus causes the workers to expend time and effort to little purpose.  Whereas the so-called palliatives when adopted by governments they have rarely proved efficacious, and have usually created the need for further legislation restrictions, and therefore kept working class action circular instead of straight. Reforms even if desirable are best obtained by educating and organising for basic ends, inasmuch as sops have ever been conceded when something more fundamental is the demand. The Socialist Party declares against reformism and a programme of palliatives, and urges the workers to concentrate their energies upon abolishing capitalism. Even if palliatives were granted, the capitalists would just take something away somewhere else. Palliatives means just going round and round in circles.

Socialism has gone in cycles. There have been periods when it has gone down and periods when it has risen. It will rise again. Re-establishing the belief in socialism as the viable alternative to capitalism is the critical task of the Socialist Party.  We have to admit that the system has no answers to its crises and there is no light at the end of the tunnel of capitalism. The working class remains “a class in itself”, with interests that are diametrically opposed to the interests of the ruling class. Whether it can became a “class for itself”, realising its power and moving consciously towards overturning the system that exploits and oppresses us all, will only be resolved through the struggle. Those who create the wealth in society need to take back the world. And that is exactly what we will do. We have a world to win.

Machines Continue To Take Over Jobs

The business section of the Toronto Star of May 9 had the lurid headline, "Canada loses 19,700 jobs in April." Further down the page we saw "Rise of the Retail Machines." The thrust of the article being that buying from deluxe vending machines is how people will shop in the future. Such products as cufflinks, health and beauty products, dresses, books, and much more are already stocked in the machines. Soon grocery stores could sell cooked chicken, meatballs, sandwiches and salads from machines. In other words, like the first headline, more unemployment for workers. Perhaps soon those who like to shop in a store will have two choices – on line or at the machine. Machines taking over jobs has been going on since the beginning of the industrial revolution and always at the expense of workers somewhere. It's time to put an end to insecurity of gaining a living! John Ayers.

Comic Book Capitalism

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard I don't know about you, but no matter the publication, I always read the letters page first. In Debbie a girls' magazine I recently came across a letter that struck a chord. It went on brightly about Blue Peter, show jumping — and then came the gem. "I don't get home from school until 5.30 and then I miss half the (TV) programme. And, knowing my luck, the part I miss is the best part." Like I said, that strikes a chord. If you are addicted to Debbie with its "Secret of Fear Island", "Up to Date Kate", "Little Miss Featherfeet" and so on, real life is "I miss the best part". As a past victim of "Cannonball Kid", "Trained to Bust-up a Baldy's Team", "The Tough of the Track", I feel that "I miss the best part." Let's fact it; The Hotspur, Wizard, Girls Crystal and the Rover have done us all a disservice. Having learned about the world from them — we always miss the best part. These comic books taught us that life was worthwhile; that it was exciting and dramatic. We were thrown out of school unprepared for that harsh series of cliches that capitalism really offers the young worker. "You will enjoy it here  . . . This job carries a good pension . . . There are excellent prospects of promotion . . . With this bonus scheme it is really up to you . . . Of course you must believe in the product . . ." Don't know about you, mate; I was unprepared for it. In the last frame of a Cannonball Kid story our hero is depicted on top of an open-decker bus being driven through cheering crowds. He then reflects — by means of a bubble coming out of his ear —"Ah well scored a hat-trick at Wembley and bust up a Nazi spy ring at school—I wonder what next year will bring." Unfortunately we are not thirteen years of age for ever. Too soon we are twenty or there abouts. So we start reading the Melody Maker or the New Musical Express. It's the same set-up though. Life is still worthwhile, exciting and dramatic. The only difference is that our villains are a little different. They are not cruel step-mothers who want to stop the ballet lessons (Debbie) or guys with big green heads from another planet (Eagle). Now the villains are the intriguing, mindless, unmusic-loving older generation. Perhaps after the Beano, Bunty, or Melody Maker you regressed to the Socialist Worker or the Socialist Challenge. The villains there are hard-faced businessmen, multi-national companies or 'right wing' trade union leaders. The heroes are Lenin, Trotsky or some other "working class heroes" who are going to do something for you. In actual fact, of course, life is not as simplistic as all that comic book nonsense would have us believe. George Orwell in an essay on Boys' Papers once speculated whether it would be possible to change the "right wing" bias of these young working class entertainments to  a more "left wing" bias. No doubt that excited some Maoist to bizarre notions of re-writing "I flew with Braddock" to "I marched with Mao" or some Socialist Worker zealot to contemplate the propaganda value of changing "Trained to Bust-up Baldy's Team" to "Trained to Bust-up Callaghan's Team". Such notions are best left in the nursery along with all the other junk of childhood. The real villain of the piece is the way that society is organised. Everything that is produced to-day is produced for sale; the whole purpose of production on modern society is to realise profits. Every worker — "Boring old fart" or "way-out revolutionary" included — is a victim of this vicious buying and selling system. The important thing is not to climb Mount Everest in your bare feet (as Wilson of the Wizard did) but to survive in the commercial jungle of capitalism. A man or woman is not judged by how fast he or she can run (I believe Wilson once ran the mile in 3 minutes) but how much he or she owns. The majority of the population own little or nothing but their ability to work, and have got to sell that ability for a wage or salary. No wonder they feel "they have missed the best part". The "best part" is reserved for the owners of the factories, workshops and commercial undertakings. The Socialist Party of Great Britain wants a new society;  a world where everything is produced solely for use; where the purpose of production is to satisfy human needs; a world without wages, prices or profits. This means a complete revolution in the economic basis of society. It means the whole world's resources are owned in common by the world's population. Such a gigantic transformation can only come about by the conscious act of a majority of the working class. A first step in that process is to leave behind the ideas of "heroes and villains" as portrayed in the comic books of our youth or the political comic books of the "right" or "left" wing. I started off by saying that I always read the letters page first. Well, here's one I came across in the New Musical Express. The publication was encouraging its readers to send in what they term "smart ass one-lines"; these are usually distinguished by being more than one line and not particularly smart. One of them struck me though as being rather less silly than most; it stated:- "Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat." On Breadless Ones, ponder such wisdom. Dick Donnelly Glasgow Branch

Make socialism work

Socialism is based on the very simple idea that we should use the vast resources of society to meet people’s needs. It seems obvious that society should guarantee every person enough to eat, a roof over their heads, an education system and a health service accessible to all. In fact why shouldn’t everything be available for free, we have the capability of producing abundance and provide for all. Since Marx’s day critics have written libraries full of books about why socialism cannot work.

A socialist society will carefully plans its way of life and technology to be a harmonious part of our natural environment. This planning needs to take place on regional, national, and international levels and covers the production of energy, the use of scarce resources, land-use planning, the prevention of pollution and the preservation of wildlife. The clean-up of the contaminated world will be among the first tasks of a socialist society. It is fashionable in some quarters to locate the cause of the environmental crisis in the insatiable lust for “progress but before we condemn progress or growth, we must recognize that more is at stake in rejecting progress or growth than thwarting the undeniable rampant consumerism in the America and Europe.  Billions of the world's population lack even the basics of sustainable life, barely surviving in the midst of poverty, disease with inadequate shelter, food and water. Until the material means to rectify the sorry, inhuman plight of billions is available, progress and growth must continue. To deny them a future and make them pay the price for Western privileged waste and excess would be callous. Equality of sacrifice in the face of vast economic inequities cannot be the solution to environmental degradation.

Many environmentalists see the failure of either market-based or regulatory measures as a failure of political will. They believe that politicians have yet to recognize the dire consequences we face by ignoring the environmental crisis. While this may be true, it fails to recognize the acute limitations of market-based and regulatory solutions and the impossibility of their effectiveness in a global capitalist economy.  The political will is not absent because of ignorance, but because the political system is owned and controlled by the capitalists. Moreover, the global capitalist economy is fueled by profits and profits alone. And profits are sustained and expanded by turning everything material or immaterial into a commodity. As a commodity, nature's resources hold no value other than what can be attached to the pursuit of profit. It is the exploitation of human and natural resources-- labor and nature's bounty-- that is the grist for profit's mill. And capitalism puts profits ahead of nature as well as ahead of people. Both history and the logic of capitalist accumulation and expansion demonstrate the inevitability of waste and destruction. Only when environmental degradation impedes the process of accumulation and profit expansion will the capitalist system respond to the crisis; environmental scientists tell us that will be too late. We will have already reached the tipping point where runaway catastrophe will be irreversible.

Only a system that will replace the logic of profit-before-all with the broad interests of humanity possesses the answer. Only a system that can substitute common ownership for the short-term self-interest of private property can cope with the ecological crisis. Only a system that erases the artificial borders and boundaries of nation-states can meet our needs. The answer is quite simply: socialism. Environmental activists must embrace the socialist option. For socialists, the “ecological crisis” is not a crisis of ecology. It is not nature which is in crisis but society, and this crisis of society engenders a crisis of relations between humanity and the rest of nature. In our view, this crisis is not due to the human species as such. It is not due in particular to the fact that our species socially produces its existence by labour, which allows it to develop and gives substance to the notion of progress. It is due to the capitalist mode of development, to the capitalist mode of production (which includes a capitalist mode of consumption) and to the productivist and consumerist ideology of “always more” that flows from this. Capitalism does not produce use values for the satisfaction of human needs but exchange values for the maximisation of profit. This profit is monopolized by a minority fraction of the population: the owners of the means of production. They exploit the labour power of the social majority in exchange for a wage which is lower than the value of the labour supplied. The sole conceivable alternative to capitalism is a system which does not produce exchange values for the maximisation of the profit of capitalists but use values for the satisfaction of real human needs (that is, uncorrupted by commodification), democratically determined. A system in which collaboration replaces competition, solidarity replaces individualism and emancipation eliminates alienation. Indeed, such a new civilisation - corresponds to the definition of a socialist society.

Stop the Deportations

Students and politicians mounted a last-ditch bid to stop the deportation of a Pakistani student, who says his brother, uncle and cousin have been killed or “disappeared” in his home country for their political activity.

NUS Scotland, along with a number of SNP MPs, have called for the Home Office to urgently look again at the case of City of Glasgow College student Majid Ali, who is due to be deported imminently.

Language student Ali claimed asylum in 2011, telling the Home Office that officials in his home province of Balochistan enforced the “disappearance” of his brother. Ali claimed his family home was raided and his uncle and cousin killed two months ago. Ali himself was a student activist in the troubled region, before leaving for Scotland and his legal team have claimed he believes his life could be in danger if he were to return.

NUS Scotland president-elect Vonnie Sandlan said that Ali’s detention had happened very suddenly, immediately after he went to the local Home Office to sign some papers on Friday. “He never had a chance to pick up his belongings. He had his phone taken away and, after four years of building a life here, he never even got a chance to say goodbye to his friends and loved ones,” she said. “We are extremely concerned for his well-being, and very distressed that he is being deported regardless.”

Sanjay Lago, president of the City of Glasgow college students’ union, explained  “We won’t stop the campaign here, this has really opened the eyes of so many people about how this kind of deportation can happen to someone they know, and we’re going to fight to stop this happening again”.

Why we Struggle

RAISE THE RED BANNER OF SOCIALISM

Austerity has been criticised as an irrational policy, which further exacerbates the economic crisis by creating falling effective demand. However, this criticisms scarcely explains why such a policy persists, despite its ‘failure’. In reality, economic crises express themselves above all in a reduction of profitability of the capitalist class. Austerity constitutes a strategy for raising capital’s profit rate.

Austerity constitutes a strategy of reducing business costs. Austerity reduces the price of labour, increases profit per labour-unit cost and thus boosts the profit rate. It is complemented by institutional changes that, on the one hand, enhance capital mobility and competition and, on the other, strengthen the power of managers in the enterprise and share and bondholders in society. As regards fiscal consolidation, austerity gives priority to budget cuts over public revenue, reducing taxes on capital and high incomes, and downsizing the welfare state. However, what is cost for the capitalist class is the living standard of the working majority of society. This applies also to the welfare state, whose services can be perceived as a form of ‘social wage’. It is clear, therefore, that austerity is primarily a class policy. It constantly promotes the interests of capital against those of the workers, pensioners, unemployed and economically vulnerable groups. In the long run, it aims at creating a model of labour with fewer rights and less social protection, with low and flexible wages and the absence of any substantial bargaining power for wage earners.

Recession puts pressure on every capitalist to reduce all forms of costs, to more intensively follow the path of ‘absolute surplus-value’, i.e. to try to consolidate profit margins through wage cuts, intensification of the labour process, infringement of labour regulations and workers’ rights, massive redundancies, etc. From the perspective of big capital’s interests, recession gives thus birth to a ‘process of creative destruction’. There is a redistribution of income and power to the benefit of capital, and concentration of wealth in fewer hands as small and medium enterprises, especially in retail trade, are being ‘cleared up’ by big enterprises and shopping malls.

This strategy has its own rationality It perceives the crisis as an opportunity for a shift in the correlations of forces to the benefit of the capitalist power, subjecting societies to the conditions of the unfettered functioning of financial markets, attempting to place all consequences of the systemic capitalist crisis on the shoulders of the working people. This is the reason why, in a situation of such an intensification of social antagonisms like today, a government that wants to side with labour and the social majority cannot even imagine to succumb to pressures to continue implementing austerity policies.

The financial sphere is not simply the reign of speculation, it is not a casino, it is much more an overseeing mechanism. In his analysis in Volume 3 of Capital, Karl Marx illustrates that social capital is being occupied by two ‘subjects’: a money capitalist and a functioning capitalist. In the course of a lending process, the money capitalist becomes the recipient and proprietor of a security, that is to say a written promise of payment from the functioning capitalist, the manager. In Marx’s own words: “In the production process, the functioning capitalist represents capital against the wage-labourers as the property of others, and the money capitalist participates in the exploitation of labour as represented by the functioning capitalist.” Secondary contradictions between the managers and the big financial investors certainly do exist, but they are minor in comparison to the capital-labour class contradiction.

Every enterprise is Janus-faced, comprising on the one hand the production apparatus per se and, on the other, its financial existence, its shares and bonds, which are being traded on the global financial markets. The production of surplus value constitutes a battlefield situation where resistance is being encountered, meaning that the final outcome can never be taken for granted. Techniques of risk management, organized within the very mode of functioning of the ‘deregulated’ money market, are a critical point in the management of resistance from labour, and thus for promoting and stabilizing austerity. Financial markets generate a structure for overseeing the effectiveness of individual capitals, that is to say a type of supervision of capital movement. The demand for high financial value puts pressure on individual capitals (enterprises) for more intensive and more effective exploitation of labour, for greater profitability. This pressure is transmitted through a variety of different channels.

When a big company is dependent on financial markets for its funding, every suspicion of inadequate valorization increases the cost of funding, reduces the capability that funding will be available and depresses share and bond prices. Confronted with such a climate, the forces of labour within the politicized environment of the enterprise face the dilemma of deciding whether to accept the employers’ unfavourable terms, implying loss of their own bargaining position, or face the possibility to lose their job: accept the “laws of capital” or live with insecurity and unemployment. This pressure affects the whole organization of the production process. It therefore presupposes not only increasing “despotism” of managers over workers but also flexibility in the labour market and high unemployment. Hence, “market discipline” must be conceived as synonymous with “capital discipline.”

The working majority in practically every capitalist country will always be opposed to shrinking wages and precarious employment, to degeneration and cut-back of public services, raising the cost of education and healthcare, weakening of democratic institutions, strengthening of repression. They will always conceive the ‘crisis of labour’ (i.e. unemployment, precarious and underpaid work etc.) as a social illness that should be tackled by itself, not as a side effect of the recovery of profits. The continuation of austerity is therefore a matter of the social relation of forces. As Karl Marx commented on the limits of the working-day: “The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible … On the other hand… the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here therefore an antinomy, of right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchange. Between equal rights force decides.”

Under capitalism, the economic power of society is only used to produce goods which can be sold at a profit; if this cannot be done then nothing will be produced. The owners of the means of production would rather allow their businesses to sit idle than to produce at a loss, even if the things that could be produced are desperately needed. The capitalist economy is governed by profit not need, and for this reason is highly inefficient in terms of meetings society’s needs, despite what all the apologists of capitalism claim. We are frequently told that capitalism is the most efficient of all economic systems – yet if this were the case, why would factories and offices lie idle and empty, despite being able to produce an abundance of goods and services that society needs? If profit were removed from the equation there would be no barrier to using all the means of production at our disposal to their fullest extent.

For many, it is clear what we are fighting against but it can be harder to picture exactly what we are fighting for. Socialists are not crystal-ball gazers. We cannot predict the future with absolute certainty and so we cannot say exactly what socialism will look like. Society is not shaped by the speculation of past generations, but by the decisions and actions of the present. Nonetheless it is still possible to make some deductions about what socialism will look like by applying a materialist analysis to the development of history and society. In other words, we can make hypotheses about the future, based on the evidence from the present and the past. This is not a precise science that can predict exactly when a revolution will break out or the specific form that it will take but by looking at capitalist society we can see potentially what a socialist society will look like. This idea of an economy that isn’t run for profit gives us the first glimpse of what socialism will look like. Socialism means the end of a society in which human beings are oppressed and exploited by other human beings. It means an end to private property and an end to profit and the anarchy of the market. A socialist society would be able to plan in the interests of the needs of the many, instead of the profits of a few. This is the foundation of a society of abundance, in which all the forces of economic production are rationally and democratically planned in the interests of the majority. Instead of alienating us from our work, socialism will gives us a real stake in the economy and in society, by giving us collective ownership over it. The work itself will therefore have a more direct purpose and be clearly for our own benefit and the benefit of others around us, instead of paying dividends for far away investors.

For people to be able to genuinely participate in the democratic running of society they must have the time to do so. Under capitalism, the length of the working week and the pressure of day-to-day life mean that the vast majority are completely divorced from political activity. For someone working long hours or two jobs, the last thing they are capable of or willing to do with their evenings and weekends is attend meetings on proposed. In a socialist society, where the efficiency of technology and automation has greatly reduced the hours of the working day, people will finally have the free time necessary to participate fully in how society is run. By placing the economy under genuine democratic control of the working class, people will also have the motivation to participate thanks to the knowledge that their thoughts and actions can make a tangible difference. At the heart of socialist democracy, therefore, is the ability for society to actually be able to implement the decisions it makes.

 Socialism does not mean an immediate end to all of the world’s problems and the creation of a paradise in which everyone lives happily ever after. It does promise a system where humans can stop destroying themselves and their planet, and instead begin to take conscious control of their own lives. From a capitalist’s point of view, destroying the planet is an acceptable price to pay for higher profits, not least because it is the world’s poorest people who will be the ones who bear the brunt of extreme climate change. When it comes to climate change socialism is the only thing that can save us from destroying the planet by reducing emissions to mitigate climate change which would contribute to solving the most serious problem facing all life on earth today. The technology already exists to harness the energy from wind, waves and sun, which could be used to power the entire planet. This is not done because it would be an unprofitable exercise for those capitalists who have built and invested in enormous fossil fuel companies. Capitalism is incapable of planning for the future, interested as it is only in short term gain.