Obituary: John Higgins (1980)

Obituary from the February 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard With the death of Johnny Higgins on the 4 December 1979 there passed into history an important contributor to the socialist movement in Scotland. Johnny founded the Glasgow Branch in 1924 and for many years was an indefatigable lecturer, debater and tutor on Marxism. That apart, he worked hard for the formation of branches and groups in Edinburgh, Hamilton and Bo'ness, and in his job as a commercial traveller—he continued working into his late 70s—made contacts for the party from Dumfries to Wick. He was 81 when he died. In the summer of 1929, when I had just reached 18 years of age, full of juvenile naivete with a smattering of Tressell, Jack London, Wells, Shaw and Russell, I went to Jail Square in Glasgow Green to listen to all the so-called intellectuals. There was a man with a bowler hat and umbrella who was knocking hell out of all and sundry. His language, logic and erudition entranced and overwhelmed me. That was my first encounter with Johnny Higgins. I bought my first Socialist Standard a week later and, thinking that all members had to be of the calibre of Johnny, delayed my joining the party for six years. In all my early years in the party he was my tutor, guide and exemplar. Johnny was absolutely fearless. In late 1935 Moses Baritz, in his usual overpowering manner, addressed Collet's Club (exclusively members and sympathisers of the Communist Party) on Opera and the Materialist Conception of History. A month later John Strachey was speaking at the same venue, peddling the nonsense of a "socialist" Russia. Johnny challenged him to debate, to the manifest fury of the audience. Johnny his back on the platform and informed the hecklers that he was addressing the organ grinder, not his monkeys!  Johnny, like me and many other members was born in one of the worst quarters of Glasgow, Plantation, and he I went to the same Catholic school, full of statues and vermin. For 25 years until my illness and his age prevented it, he traversed from North Glasgow to the south side to see me. He was cremated in Maryhill. The Internationale and The Red Flag were played by an obliging organist and I gave a valedictory address on behalf of the party. His departure has left a gap in all our lives. Our condolences to his daughter, Mamie, and his son, Jack, who is overseas. For my part I can hardly envisage my few remaining years without him. T A Mulheron

When we say "we" and not "I", there will be plenty for all

You can’t be a socialist

No matter how you try

Unless you think in terms of “we”

Instead in terms of “I”

There is plenty for all in this world of ours – plenty of everything that goes to make a healthy and happy life. The technological capacity to produce more and more wealth with a less and less expenditure of labour, is growing every day. Every improvement in machinery means that all mankind could gain greater wealth and greater leisure. Yet the workers alone do not benefit by this. What they produce escapes from their hands into the grasp of others; they are forced to compete against one another for a bare subsistence wage; the new technology they make and use if not employed at a profit are not put to use. All of us – could enjoy a standard of comfort and a wholesome, happy, leisurely, yet active life, such as has never been known on the planet. Yet we are told it is utopian and visionary to urge that the workers should turn the machinery which they make and operate, the land which they till, the goods they produce, to the advantage of the whole community. Socialism cannot be introduced piecemeal. All the experiences of socialists have proved this. The real job today is to spread the ideas of socialism, organize the workers in their own political party, and establish a workers’ government that will wipe out capitalism with its waste and be able to plan production and PLENTY FOR ALL.

In previous societies the master sought the slave, but now with capitalism the slave seeks the master. He or she stands in line, offering to work for less food than his or her fellow worker. Occasionally in once a great while he or she rebels – all for a chance to slave. Today the slave struggles for a chance to work, for employment. Before the slave would revolt to flee drudgery and toil; then soldiers were called to keep the slaves at work. Then, stringent laws providing for terrible punishments like crucifixion, hanging, quartering, mutilating and flogging were meted out to any slave or serf fleeing his work. Now police beat the protestors calling for the right to work, demanding jobs.

There are two sorts of unemployment, the unemployment of the blue-bloods, the parasites, those leeches who while unemployed waste millions in ostentatious luxury. Then there is the unemployment of the wage-slave – a terrible nightmare that haunts the mind of the worker. As he or she sees the jobless-line lengthen, however worn-out and sped-up he or she may be, there will be an extra burst of energy so that he or she may not be the next one told that his or her  “services are no longer required”. Capitalism uses much more efficient method than the lash to make us work harder. That is hunger. We are told that we are free and the bosses are free. He is free to offer us terms of any kind – we are free to starve unless we accept these terms. As we work, we create profits, such huge profits that even in their wildest extravagances the bosses cannot spend them. So there proves to be no more market for that commodity we are hired to produce; no more profits can be gotten so the free boss lays off the free worker to freely starve in the midst of a land of full warehouses which the worker filled. Capitalism, greedily demanding more and more profits, puts faster machines into the shops which produce goods and profits at a faster and faster rate. More workers are thrown on the streets.

During periods of unemployment, there is an increase of prostitution, murders and theft. Our politicians rail at the morals of the people and point at the mounting crime wave, but of course do not dare to examine the economic cause or the capitalist system. During periods of unemployment, disease, death rate and suicides increase. Among workers these are always high, but during hard times they rise to terrible levels. Fed on adulterated foods, shoddy clothed, poorly housed, the workers become more vulnerable than ever to disease. During periods of unemployment the wages of those at work are slashed by the boss. The answer to any resistance is: “there are plenty outside who want your job.” These are but a few of the effects of unemployment upon the workers. Every worker must ask himself: What is to blame?

The skilled worker says it is the machine that reduces the need for the qualified trained artisan; older workers accuse the younger worker and vice versa; men and women vy for jobs; whites compete with the blacks: the native born resents the foreign immigrant; Tory voters say it is the Labour government and likewise Labour voters say the Tory government is at fault.  None of these are true. The youth, the women, the black, the foreigner, whatever party is in office. While one group blames another, the bosses have a hearty laugh as they see us divided and thereby powerless, workers quarreling among themselves.

Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism will unemployment be done away with. The society of socialism alone can eliminate the terror of unemployment. Capitalism will be replaced plenty for all. Our task in the Socialist Party is not to traffic on the ignorance and backwardness of our fellow workers, not to attempt to win them unawares and by stealth, but on the contrary, to enlighten them and to show them the necessary steps to take along the road to socialism. We do not compete with the populist demagogy of fake “promises”. Far from granting more concessions, the ruling class are actually wiping out all the previous “sops” granted to the workers. Socialist says that progress consists not in smashing the corporations, these giants of industry – which cannot be done, anyway – but in making them the property of the whole people, those who produce all the wealth of the world. Owned by the toiling people, by the workers, the poor agricultural labourers, the dispossessed and all the poor, these giant industries could produce plenty for all. That is the road to socialism, to a world system, of peace, security and freedom.

The Facts of Life under Capitalism

Under capitalist ownership, the capitalists make profits by keeping as much as they can, and paying out as little in wages as they must. They pay the workers the smallest wage they can bargain them down to. On the average, that amounts to a wage which is just enough to get along on, the smallest amount a worker can afford to work for. Even, for a large part of the workers, it amounts to “not enough … to raise healthy children or maintain their own vigor.” And this is the case even in the most prosperous capitalist country. It is the very system of capitalist ownership and wage labor which sets this ceiling on the standard of living. This same system prevents production of abundance. To force the workers to work for low wages the capitalists need a permanent group of unemployed workers as a threat. Every worker must know that there is a man out of a job that the boss can put in his place if he demands higher wages. This ever-existent unemployed group under capitalism Marx named the industrial reserve army.

The fact is that the capitalists not only want profits, but are in a bitter struggle with other capitalists for profits, a struggle in which the loser is destroyed. If there is any surplus the capitalist must spend it on merchandising and advertising to swell the sales of his product. The system doesn’t give the capitalist freedom to pay extra wages to the workers, even if he wanted to. Capitalism will not tolerate even a gesture to lessen the workers’ fear of unemployment which is part of the essential mechanism of the system. They know they have to keep the reserve army of unemployed, the low standard of living for all employed workers that goes with it, and the low level of production and the chronic crisis that follows from it. Capitalist employers are in business and must be, to make money for themselves, and not to make goods for society. They can afford to start production only when they can sell their goods and end up richer than they started. If production will not increase their wealth they don’t permit any production. It is better to close down and keep what they have, rather than spend money producing what they cannot sell. For sales to increase their wealth they need a market; but they can’t get richer by passing out their own money to make the market for their own goods. They wouldn’t be ahead a penny. Therefore, they have nothing to gain by paying any wages above the least that they can bargain the workers down to. The more they have to pay the workers, the less is left for profits. As long as capitalism remains capitalism, surplus capital will never be used for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses, for this would mean a decrease in profits for the capitalists.

If the capitalists merely hoarded their profits, the system would run into a crisis at once because all this vast buying power would be withdrawn from the market. To keep the system running the capitalists must be able to keep their profits and spend them too. They do that by spending their increased money-capital for capital equipment, additional machines and factories. Thus their accumulation of wealth can really grow, and only such growth can avoid a crisis for the system. Yet capital investments through the building of new factories is possible only as new markets are found for the increased output. The growth of the home market is soon used up; and the capitalists must look abroad as areas for growth. Once there is no profitable use for capital at home, it will be used to increase profits by exporting the capital.

 Rickets is a disease of poverty, preventable by proper food – of which there is plenty in the world and of which, under a socialist system, there could be even more. The reason for that is that under socialism food would be produced for use, for the good of all humanity. Under capitalism, food is produced primarily for profit; needs are completely secondary. Today in this modern world the return of rickets is a testimonial of social injustice. For today there could be plenty for all the world. Mankind has learned the secrets of the air, the sea, the surface and the bowels of the earth. Mankind knows its way around atoms and electrons. We has fashioned machines which are miracles of production. The world is teeming with millions of able hands willing to build and operate those machines for production of abundance. Wonderful means of transportation by air, sea and land are here for the people and for their mutual benefit to share according to their needs.

The profit-grubbing obstructionism by the capitalist class must be ended. The working people will finally to oust the capitalists and establish a socialist world. Only the working peoples of the world can cure the problems of the world. For the peoples of the world to arrive at the longed-for destiny of humanity to produce the things of life in abundance, we must rid ourselves of the motives of capitalist profits. Humanity needs a socialist world!

Black Lives Matter even in Scotland

One of the policemen involved in the restraint of a black man who died in custody has a history of violence and racism, it has been alleged. Sheku Bayoh, originally from Sierra Leone, died after being arrested in Kirkcaldy.

The BBC has obtained statements alleging that PC Alan Paton carried out a sustained attack on his own parents at their home in 2005, while he was on duty. The attack was said to have left his mother, Ann Paton, now 61, unconscious, and his father, John Paton, 65, severely bruised and battered. Paton's parents elected not to pursue a complaint, after being assured by senior officers the matter would be dealt with internally.

Barry Swan, Paton's brother in law, told the BBC he had witnessed the aftermath of the alleged attack, and wanted to let the Bayoh family know about the police officer's past said: "What kind of person can actually do that to their own parents?... A frail old man who'd basically been put through something he should never have been put through, he was literally black down one side. You knew instantly it wasn't one hit, he'd bee kicked, he'd been stamped on. He'd had a major kicking.”

Swan also alleged that the Paton had admitted to being racist in the weeks since Mr Bayoh's death saying "He out and out admitted that he was a racist, that he hates them, as he puts it - all the blacks. It's not right he's a police officer."

CCTV evidence shows Mr Bayoh approaching the police at about 07:20. pictures show that he did not have a knife. At least two officers, including PC Paton, who until now has only been known as officer A, said that they believed they could be facing a terrorist incident.

At least four and up to six officers, including PC Paton, were immediately involved in the encounter. CS spray and police batons were used and within about 30 seconds, Mr Bayoh was brought to the ground, face down. Handcuffs and leg restraints were applied. PC Paton and a colleague known as officer B, who were two of the first on the scene, were understood to have a combined weight of about 43 stones. Eyewitness reports suggested that officers were kneeling and lying on Mr Bayoh in order to restrain him. Less than five minutes after the encounter began, Mr Bayoh was noticed to be unconscious and one officer radioed for an ambulance. A further five minutes later, the ambulance still had not arrived, and an officer reported to base that Mr Bayoh was no longer breathing. A post-mortem examination revealed a series of injuries over his body, face and head, including a deep gash across his forehead.

Tiny blood spots, or petechial haemorrhages were discovered in his eyes - a sign of potential asphyxia. The post mortem examination declared he had died after taking the drug MDMA, while being restrained. But a report by a renowned pathologist is expected to say the cause of death was positional asphyxia - effectively being suffocated as a result of the position his body was in. Positional asphyxia is a common cause of death in police custody where restraint is involved.

The Bayoh family lawyer, Aamer Anwar said that there had been a smear campaign against Mr Bayoh in the days after his death. He said: "The attempt to criminalise Sheku Bayoh in his death - the dead can't answer back but his family have answered for him.

"He wasn't 6ft plus, he was 5ft 10in. He wasn't super-sized, he was 12 stone 10 pounds. He wasn't brandishing a knife at a police officer. He didn't stab a police officer. In fact he wasn't carrying a knife when the police officers attended. He didn't attempt to stab anyone, and he wasn't found with a knife on him. Those are the actual facts."

Crime Is So Rampant In Parts Of The US

Thirty-five American cities have reported increases in murders, violent crimes, or both this year. In one city alone, St. Louis, there has been a sixty per cent increase in murders so far this year. Crime is so rampant in parts of the US (and not only there) that the police cannot cope. Though socialists do not condone crime, we understand its causes, the major ones being private property and poverty that forces people to commit crimes often to survive. In a system of free access to all, crime will be virtually eliminated. John Ayers

False hope in reforms

You shouldn’t take much stock in a news story that shows no proof of their “claim”. After all, without proof, they are just “claims.” Don’t buy into it. Don’t assume they are true because you saw it on the news. News is scripted these days, literally. Scripts are sent around that most major channels report. They get photo-genic people to tell you what they want you to be told. They “spoon-feed” you information but it doesn’t make it truth. Workers don’t need a crystal ball to see their future. The capitalists and their state, in their never-ending grasp for higher profits, are willing to inflict misery upon the majority of working people. The problem is that people accept capitalism and its logic and therefore see no alternative to the current misleaders who defend that system at all costs. The media provides workers with blinkers to see only what their masters wish them to see.

The capitalist owner of industry has only one reason to run his factory – profit. Under capitalism, the needs of the people for various goods are not the PRIMARY purpose of production. All he asks is: “Which will pay more?” The fact that the millions of people depend upon industry for food, clothing, housing, furniture, transportation, communications and amusement is of interest to the capitalist only as the “market” in which he can realise a profit. He runs his factory as he pleases. If there is profit in production he hires and offers overtime. If profit falls off, he throws his workers into the street. He operates without social purpose. His only gods are the Almighty Dollar and Dividends. Capitalism kills and cripples millions in its wars, in class strife and civil war, in hunger and freezing, in industrial accidents and disease, in malnutrition and child labor, in poverty and crime. It destroys the wealth of society and wastes the labour potential of millions. That is why capitalism is more destructive than all the earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, cloudbursts, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions ever visited upon earth from the beginning of time.

Capitalism created a class of owners pitted against a class of workers – at war with each other – engaged in a CLASS STRUGGLE with each other. It is the system of COMPETITION – It is the system of dog eat dog, the law of the jungle. Capitalism pits worker against worker in bidding for a job. It pits capitalist against capitalist in the fight for profits. It pits workers against capitalist in class struggle for a share in what is produced. It pits capitalist nation against capitalist nation in war. It pits manufacturers against consumer, landlord against tenant, farmer against city dweller, white against black, Gentile against Jew. Jew against Muslim. All in the mad race for a crust of bread, for survival, for security. In an age when plenty is possible for all! Ask yourself WHY?

Socialism is a call for sharing and caring. Socialists do not rape the planet and do not worship efficiency at the expense of people and nature. All socialists work for humanity’s fulfillment. By "Revolution", we mean the establishment of world socialism and a humanity freed from the bondage of capitalism. Producers in spite of being the most necessary element of society, are robbed by their exploiters of the fruits of their labour and deprived of their elementary rights. A radical change, therefore, is necessary and it is the duty of those who realise it to reorganise society on the socialist basis. Unless this thing is done and the exploitation of man by man and of nations by nations is brought to an end, sufferings and carnage with which humanity is threatened today cannot be prevented. All talk of ending war and ushering in an era of universal peace is undisguised hypocrisy.

The answer to is not reforms but a new society which will have real solutions for all based on human needs, not profits, by expropriating the capitalist class and thereby using all the resources of society for the benefit of all, it would ensure an advancing standard of living for all the people. Many workers believe that the government can deliver concessions for them. We point out that under capitalism such a hope is unrealisable. Capitalism cannot sustain a renewed welfare state and its attacks will inevitably increase if we allow the system to continue. The reformists display little sense of the realities of capitalism with many believing that the growth of the welfare state will turn into socialism as time goes on. Faith that capitalism can be reformed is prevalent yet only presents an acceptance of austerity, cloaked in the illusions of a false promise of future prosperity.

Choking in Corstorphine

Latest statistics show the concentration of nitrogen dioxide in the air in St John's Road in Edinburgh has the worse air quality in Scotland due to traffic congestion and  is now almost double the legal limit.

Average nitrogen dioxide levels for the first half of 2015 rose from an average 59 micrograms per cubic metre to 72, compared with the legal limit of 40. NO2 levels have exceeded 200 micrograms on 35 occasions this year. The "safety standard" allows the N02 levels to go over the limit only 16 times a year.

Friends of the Earth said the figures were "appalling" and they reinforced the case for refusing plans for a new supermarket in the street. 

Thousands of Scottish people are dying prematurely because of poor air quality.

Shrinking Lakes And Temperature Increases

On July 31, 2015, the temperature in Bandar Mahshahr, Iran reached 72 degrees on the humidity index that combines moisture and the temperature to state what it really feels like. Actual temperature was 'only' 46 degrees Celsius. In Iraq, a government was sacked over its inability to deliver air conditioning. The first decision by Iran's new government under president Hassan Rouhani was not about the nuclear power deal but to deal with the country's shrinking lakes. Lake Oroumieh, once home of the biggest salt water lake on earth has shrunk eighty per cent in the last decade. In Pakistan, more people have died from the heat this year than from terrorism. (All from The New York Times, Aug 30) Climate change and how to deal with it is appearing on the political agenda of those countries who are feeling the effects. It will be interesting to see how capitalism will deal with this, or not. John Ayers.

Understanding Capitalism

Today the whole world is in the grip of capitalism. Millions of workers are unemployed and reduced to near subsistence standards of living. It is an astonishing that in a world where science and technology have developed to an advanced stage there could be plenty for all, there is a growing poverty and hunger. Not only are untold millions unnecessarily materially deprived but the human species has even developed an antagonistic relationship towards its environment by poisoning the atmosphere, polluting the oceans and ravaging the land so that now nature has turned against us. At the root of all these problems is the exploitation of some people by other people - the capitalist class exploiting the working class. All of the deprivation and conflict are brought about by a society divided into oppressors and oppressed. No lasting solution to any of these problems will be found while capitalism is allowed to survive in the world. For the working class the only way forward is to struggle to bring about a class revolution and begin the struggle to eventually build a socialist society where exploitative class divisions and all the evils that go with them are abolished. Either we achieve a socialist transformation of society or our civilization will eventually be destroyed. There is nothing inevitable about the further advancement of the humanity. The only real, lasting way forward is socialism but whether or not this road is taken is a matter of decision for people themselves to make. In the world today only the working class has sufficient objective interest in the overthrow of capitalism and the strength to carry out this revolutionary task if it chooses to do so. The working class has it within its power to overthrow capitalist society and in so doing to pave the way for the liberation of the whole of humankind. The Socialist Party is dedicated to the cause of socialist revolution in Britain as part of the world-wide struggle against capitalism. We do everything within our power to stimulate the working class to overthrow its capitalist masters. If we do not move forward then we will move backwards. The choice before us is “Socialism or Barbarism”.

The future of the working class in Britain is unavoidably bound up with the development of the world as a whole. Only if we conduct our struggle against capitalism on the basis of being just one contingent of the international working class will we achieve ultimate victory. The capitalist classes of the different countries are in rivalry with each other in their struggles to dominate the world. The very character of capitalism drives the capitalists to continually search abroad for new sources of cheap raw materials, cheap labour and new markets and this eventual gives rise to wars.  

The working class has no interest in making peace with its own rulers so as to weather the storm of any economic depression. On the contrary we have every interest in stepping up and intensifying the class war to overthrow this oppressive and exploitative capitalist system. Taking the road of tightening our belts to help our masters through the recessions of this rotten system simply perpetuates a class-divided and oppressive society.

Central to the capitalist economic system is the exploitation of workers by capitalists, the chief means of production – raw materials, machinery, buildings, transport, etc. are owned and controlled by a small minority of capitalists. This determines that the great mass of people, the working class, have no choice except to work for capitalist employers so as to earn a money wage to buy the goods and services, the commodities, necessary for them to survive. On the face of things this relationship between capitalist and worker seems to be a fair and equal one: the worker agrees to do so many hours work for the capitalist and in return the capitalist agrees to pay a certain amount of money in wages. In reality this relationship is an unequal and exploitative one because the wages paid to the worker are less than the value of what he or she produces. The difference between the value of what workers produce and what they receive in wages constitutes the profits of the capitalist employer. Massive exploitation of the working class is an integral part of the capitalist economic system and will persist for as long as does capitalism.

Not only do capitalist exploit workers but the system operates in such a way that capitalists constantly have to try to exploit workers even more. Different capitalists producing the same kind of commodity are competing with one another in the market to sell their products. Failure to sell the commodities produced by his firm means bankruptcy and ruin for a capitalist and the main way of ensuring steady sales is to offer given commodities on the market at a price below that charged by other capitalists. If a capitalist is to reduce his prices without reducing his profits then one way is to increase the hours of work of his employees without paying them any more wages. Sometimes employers get away with this move (for example, in the car industry paid, time for tea breaks and cleaning up have been abolished), but in many countries where many workers are organised in trade unions, it is not easy for capitalists to force workers to accept such an increase in the degree to which they are exploited. Another ploy is to speed up the rate of work, increase its intensity, and thus reduce the cost per item by forcing the workforce to produce more commodities in the same time as before. In the car industry this generally takes the form of speeding up the rate at which the production assembly line moves. Again, this does happen but in a given type of production there is usually a very definite limit to which the pace of work can be increased and anyway workers are likely to resist such a move.

Another way, in fact the most important way in which capitalists try to gain an advantage over each other is by introducing new and more efficient means of production, technological innovation. The capitalist employer in a given field of production may be able to reduce his costs of production by introducing new production processes which enable output per worker to rise and thus cost per unit to fall. This allows the employer to sell his commodities at a price lower than that of his competitors while at the same time increasing his rate of profit on the capital he has invested. This advantage does not last long because the other employers will also quickly adopt the new production processes so as to be able to compete and stay in business. As the new production processes become introduced throughout an industry the proportion of total capital which is spent on raw materials, machinery, etc. rises while the proportion spent on employing labour power, on paying wages, falls. The consequence of this change is that since capitalists can only extract surplus value from those workers they employ directly and the number of these is falling, their rate of return on their capital falls as well. Paradoxically the greater efficiency in production brought about by developments in technology means a falling rate of profit for capitalists and redundancy for workers. Such is the inbuilt unavoidable absurdity of the capitalist system of production: its enormous productive power brings it grinding to a halt. The only way in which the working class can permanently rid itself of these cycles of boom and slump is to get rid of capitalism and replace it with socialism. The only way out of economic depression for the capitalist class is to do whatever is necessary to restore the profitability of capital. One way or another, this means intensifying the exploitation of the working class.

It is important to realise that capitalists are not always looking for ways to increase the degree of exploitation of workers because they, the capitalists, are inherently greedy but that they do this because of the way in which the capitalist economy operates leaves them with no choice if they are to stay in business. Similarly, if workers are not to be worked to death and totally impoverished then they have no choice except to take a common stand together against capitalist employers so as to resist employers’ attempts to exploit them even more. This is done by forming trade unions to defend wage levels and working conditions. In Britain a greater proportion of workers are in trade unions than in any of the other advanced capitalist countries. Even so it is obvious, especially with the onset of an economic depression, that trade unions only have a very limited capacity to defend the living standards and working conditions of the working class. While trade unions are a necessary means of defence of the working class against the capitalist class it is also the case that they pose no fundamental challenge to the whole capitalist system. Trade unions do not challenge the right of capitalists to exploit workers but only the degree to which this takes place. Even the most militant trade union struggles, involving workplace occupations and clashes with the police, pose no fundamental challenge to the dominant position of the capitalist class. If the working class does not rise above the level of recognising the necessity to organise industrially, of a trade union consciousness, then it will be doomed to an eternity of struggle with the capitalist class.

The whole of capitalist society is organised around the capitalist economy. The modern family is structured to produce and discipline the workforce, labour power. The state passes laws and maintains the police and armed forces So as to keep the working class in line. Education and the mass media are powerful means of spreading the ideas and outlook of the capitalist class, bourgeois ideology, among the working class so as to get them to accept the capitalist system. Religions promise the good life in this world for those who knuckle under to oppression and exploitation in this one, and so on. Capitalist society in its totality is structured so as to preserve the exploitative relationship between the capitalist class and the working class which lies at its heart. Nonetheless this same system contains within itself forces which periodically throw it into crisis and open up the possibility of its final overthrow arid replacement by a society where oppression and exploitation do not exist.

As with all class societies, there is a fundamental division between the small but immensely rich and powerful monopoly capitalist class who own and control the chief means of production and the great majority of people, the working class, who own and control no means of production except for their ability to work, their labour power which they are forced to sell to the capitalist class in return for wages. The relationship between capitalists and workers is unavoidably and inherently exploitive and oppressive because capitalist profits are derived from paying workers less than the value of what they produce. It follows that all the time a class-divided capitalist society exists there will be a continuous, never-ending class war between capitalists and workers. The main enemy of the working class, the target of the revolution, is the capitalist class. While there are differences within this class on what is the best way of controlling the working class so as to perpetuate the rule of capital they stand united in their determination to uphold its reign.

These people are the real rulers. Many people believe in democracy, and that everyone should have a say in how the country should be run, what laws should be passed etc. In reality this is an illusion, a clever and subtle illusion which is propagated by the capitalists. It is they and they alone who have real power over the destinies of the great mass of the people. The employing class own and control all the means of production, that is the factories and all the other places where wealth is created by means of the exploitation of the working class. In this way the ruling class dominate the economic life of the whole people. Yet economic domination in and of itself is not sufficient for them to maintain an all-round rule. They also need to dominate in an ideological way, that is, they need to mould and shape the very thinking of the people whose bodies they already control: They need to rule both hearts and minds. The ruling class need to manipulate and restrict the consciousness of the working class so that their world-view is seen as the only possible way of seeing things and is the natural order of things which can never be altered. So in order to maintain economic and ideological control, that is - total control, over the great mass of the people, the boss class have created a number of agencies of social control. One very important agent of ideological control is the bourgeois state. More specifically the idea that this state is fair and neutral; that it is the same for everybody, rich or poor, that it stands above the class divisions in society. Yet in truth, the bourgeois state is the instrument of control of the employers and investors who exercise a dictatorship over the working class. The range of activities of the capitalist state has been expanded in response to the growing instability of the whole capitalist system and a corresponding desire on behalf of the ruling class to keep control at all costs. The working class can only take control of its destiny by taking political action to capture the bourgeois state and then to abolish it as an institution of class rule. As the working class abolishes capitalist relations of production and replaces them by non-oppressive, non-exploitive ones then the alienation characteristic of capitalism will begin to disappear. As the great mass of people gain control of their productive activity and the products of their labour so their antagonistic estrangement from each other and their aversion to work will be overcome. Productive activity will become once again a creative, fulfilling and truly human activity. The division between work and non-work will gradually disappear and people will freely choose what to produce rather than being constrained by immediate necessities.

Workers in Britain are just one part of the global working class and our revolutionary struggle is essentially an international one. Although we have an immense task in front of us it is one worth tackling for ’the proletariat have nothing to lose except their chains, they have a world to win’.

Protect Nature

Environmental groups have claimed Scotland's natural environment and wildlife are in "serious trouble". A total of 23 organisations compiled the "Responses for Nature" report and have now called on the Scottish government to take urgent action. The organisations, which include RSPB Scotland and the Scottish Wildlife Trust, said conservation laws need to be fully implemented.

The report is a follow up to the 2013 State Of Nature UK-wide report, which warned that 60% of 3,148 species studied had declined in past 50 years, and 31% had declined strongly. More than one in 10 of all species assessed were under threat of disappearing from the UK's shores altogether.

Stuart Housden, director of RSPB Scotland, said: "In 2013, our State of Nature report demonstrated that nature was in serious trouble. As NGOs, we naturally asked ourselves 'What should be done about that?'

Housden may well place his faith and trust in government action. The Socialist Courier blog confidently predict that he (or his successor) will be mourning the failure of those recommendations and lamenting over the inaction of governments to protect Nature against the encroachments of commerce. We advise Housden to seek out an alternative economic system if he wishes to have Nature conservancy as a priority. 

Build a New Society

Movements continue to arise to confront the absurdities emanating from capitalism, with all its damaging consequences. If all these campaigns fail to link up into a generalised struggle against capitalism then their failures will far outweigh their successes. As corporations become larger, they seek out markets and cheap labour and resources in every corner of the world. Governments try to help out local capitalists by prying open foreign economies. In their endless search for greater profits, human needs, the environment and basic services are all treated as barriers to profits which must be removed. The pressure for change will not abate but this, does not mean that the inspiration behind this pressure will necessarily always be progressive. Some of it, even much of it, if recent experience is any guide, will in some countries be reactionary, racist, xenophobic, and steeped in the worst kind of religious sectarianism. Socialism must seek to distinguish itself today by having a better recipe. In countries where capitalist democracy prevails, socialists will advance their cause within the existing constitutional process, by means of a combination of electoral and extra-parliamentary activism. Socialists will express their aims as the creation of truly democratic and egalitarian societies which cannot be realised without the dissolution of the existing structures of privilege and the transfer of economic power from private hands into public ownership (but not state/government ownership.)

We are living under a system which is more and more clearly revealed as the enemy of humanity. It has vast productive potential, but produces only poverty for the majority. It brings hunger and starvation. It imposes draconian cuts in living standards on the already poor, simply in the interest of still greater profits for the capitalist class. Capitalism is responsible for the thoughtless destruction of the environment. Its armaments industry monopolises most of the world’s research and development and cynically profits from a series of wars of unparalleled destructiveness. The root cause of all this is capitalism’s guiding principle, the quest for profit, which takes precedence over any human interest. Capitalism threatens the future of humanity. Capitalism brings nothing but misery and exploitation to people of all lands. From the standpoint of the vast majority of the world’s people it is already an obsolete system, and the productive forces and technology it has created needs to be turned to the benefit of humanity as a whole under a new social system. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It has undergone many changes in its history, but these have simply meant finding new ways to exploit the people. The only solution is to destroy it and build a new social system. Today the destructive threat of capitalism is so acute that humanity cannot afford the luxury of a lengthy process of experimentation on the road to socialism. This means that we have to be very serious in learning from the movement’s past mistakes. Socialism was often erroneously seen as economic growth minus capitalist crises, and state ownership was seen as a definition of socialism rather than seeing socialism as a different way of organising daily life. The Labour Party has always been an instrument of capitalist rule over the working class.

The profit motive is incompatible with safeguarding the world’s resources. So long as it is profitable, environmental destruction is perfectly 'logical' under capitalism. Humanity’s problem is not limited resources but the waste of resources which is an essential part of the process of capital accumulation. The environmentalist movement has been valuable in highlighting and researching many of these specific problems. The movement is a diverse one with some Green Parties integrated into the system but there are many groupings which rely on their own strengths and local or international mass action, advancing the view that sustainable life systems living in harmony with nature are a real alternative to the exploitative system. This trend is positive. Socialism will provide the opportunity for a society planned for the majority rather than for the profit of a minority. By taking environmental issues seriously we can realistically plan to build a society in tune with land and nature. Worldwide, an upsurge of socialism is bound to come. It is more and more apparent that profit is a crazy way  by which to organise the world’s resources.

Marx and Engels explained that only the working class could be the force bringing about the necessary revolutionary transformation of society. We must be under no illusion about the difficulty of overthrowing capitalism. Our vision is of a party which does not claim a monopoly of correct ideas but which brings together those who agree upon a common objective - the task is to abolish capitalism and bring about a socialist society. We lay down no blueprint except for some general context on how this will be achieved because the socialist society of the future will draw its strength from the new organisational forms thrown up in the course of its struggles. Democracy is not something invented by the bourgeoisie, its roots go back to the earliest struggles of working people against the ruling class. The new society of the future will carry this to fruition. Socialism can only be realised by pooling the ideas and concrete experiences of workers the world over and in the coming period our duty is to build links between forces committed to socialism, to share experience and support one another to lay the foundations for a new society!

Little rest and recuperation for the doctors

An investigation found that nine out of 11 Scottish health boards expected their junior staff to work for as many as 12 days straight. Junior doctors in Scottish hospitals are working more than 100 hours before they get a day off. Figures obtained by the Glasgow Herald under Freedom of Information laws show that nine out of 11 of the main Scottish health boards were still asking junior doctors to work more than 12 days in a row.

An investigation into the 2011 death of a 23-year-old junior doctor killed in a car crash, Lauren Connelly, found she had been working long hours at the Inverclyde Royal hospital which may have contributed to her death. Her father revealed in the weeks leading up to her death that she had covered long hours - including one stretch where she worked 107 hours in 12 days. Since his daughter’s death, Mr Connelly has been campaigning for health boards to properly enforce the European Working Time Directive which guarantees employees cannot be forced to work more than 48 hours a week. The health authority which employed Dr Connelly, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, was said by the newspaper to be one of the worst offenders, asking its doctors to work 114 hours at work between days off.

It comes as junior doctors across the UK are preparing to strike over plans to cut their overtime pay by up to 30 per cent.

Dr Kitty Mohan, co-chair of the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee, told The Independent that the doctors felt "palpable anger and frustration" over the plans.

Dr Clifford Mann, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said the proposed changes had implications for “the future of medicine and patient care as a whole”.

More On The Environment

More on the environment – an international group of scientists have calculated that if we burn all the coal, oil, and gas resources available, the Antarctic ice sheet will melt entirely triggering a global sea level rise of more than fifty metres. It would take thousands of years to unfold but would reshape the face of the earth. The scientists believe that any more than a two degree warming would set in motion a melting that would be unmanageable. Another reason, they say, for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. John Ayers.

Shriking Water Lakes

On July 31, 2015, the temperature in Bandar Mahshahr, Iran reached 72 degrees on the humidity index that combines moisture and the temperature to state what it really feels like. Actual temperature was 'only' 46 degrees Celsius. In Iraq, a government was sacked over its inability to deliver air conditioning. The first decision by Iran's new government under president Hassan Rouhani was not about the nuclear power deal but to deal with the country's shrinking lakes. Lake Oroumieh, once home of the biggest salt water lake on earth has shrunk eighty per cent in the last decade. In Pakistan, more people have died from the heat this year than from terrorism. (All from The New York Times, Aug 30) Climate change and how to deal with it is appearing on the political agenda of those countries who are feeling the effects. It will be interesting to see how capitalism will deal with this, or not. John Ayers.

The Hopes and Dreams of Socialists.

This is a time of change and transformation. Many say we have begun to move forward again and difficult decisions, hard battles, and no doubt some serious defeats, lie ahead. But, for all that, we have begun to move forward again. We have reached a turning point in the class struggle. To build the socialist movement we need to clearly state our case. Environmental campaigners are confronting a ‘single issue’ of such enormity that its political ramifications demand a more general critique of the system. Many of these activists have such a critique, although it may not be a socialist critique. Today the movement against corporate-driven globalisation is at a decisive juncture. There are different proposals on how to move forward. Let us not waste the opportunities opening up by being wed to the thinking and strategies of the past.

Freedom is not a thing that can be won for a few. If any are in chains, no one is truly free. Nor can freedom be granted as a gift. It must be taken by the many because only in doing so can we learn to use and expand it. The rich hate the thought of socialism so much that they call ‘socialist’ any reform in the system that cuts into their wealth in the slightest—from public education to environmental regulations  Such reforms, however needed they might be, are not socialism. Real freedom, socialism, will mean turning that system over, or, more accurately, standing things right side up. It will mean organizing society and the economy on a totally different basis, where the wealth created by the labor of the many goes to serve the people and not to enrich a tiny handful of parasites. Today the rich and powerful, the tiny handful who squat atop our social pyramid try to claim the banner of freedom for themselves. But we have a different vision of freedom. The great majority of the globe’s women and men want freedom from misery, from exploitation, from the jackboots of the state, from living our whole lives in alienation and insecurity. And more, we want freedom to become fully human, to develop all our gifts and abilities. And millions of us sense that this cannot be done by each of us as individuals, but only by the pooling of our collective strength and wisdom. Because the over-riding law of capitalism is “expand or die,” enormous waste, suffering and environmental destruction are built into the system we live under. In place of this dog-eat-dog madness, we need cooperation, and collective planning.

The original role of money, before the development of capitalism, was to serve as a medium, a standard that made easier the exchange of one commodity for another. But under capitalism, this medium of exchange has taken off with a life of its own. For the capitalist, the aim of production is not to produce goods to exchange and to use, but instead it is a compulsory drive to accumulate capital through exploitation– simply put, to make more money. Once money becomes the aim of production, labour power has to become a commodity. In other words, a worker’s labour power can be bought and sold. Besides the fact that people must be legally free–that is, not slaves owned by others or serfs tied to the land – the labourer must have lost all means of production and thus all ability to produce either for consumption or exchange for himself. An example of this is peasants being driven off the land. Labour power as a commodity is the necessary complement of the private ownership of the means of production by the capitalists.

 Only by buying the worker’s labour power can the capitalist make profits. Workers produce more than what the capitalist pays them in wages and benefits. This is the basis of exploitation of the workers. What the workers produce over and beyond the socially necessary labor for keeping themselves and their families alive and working is surplus value. Surplus value is the only source of profits and is ripped off by the capitalists. While with socialism labour power is no longer a commodity, you no longer sell your labor power to the capitalists and we are not thus equating it to labor power in the land-bound, bodily-restricted conditions of the past. The context is modern society, a complex, highly productive and healthy society compared to the past periods.

The employers have one basic goal in life: to make more and more profits, and they accomplish this by dominating the economics, politics, and cultural life of their workers. They will throw workers out into the streets to starve, promote nationalism and racism, and build a military arsenal that can destroy the world several times over – anything for profits! This is an irrational and unjust system. But life does not have to be this way. We can improve our lives and society, and eliminate exploitation and capitalist injustice, by overturning the capitalist system. We can replace capitalism with a rational and humane system – socialism. Socialism is a social system where social wealth is genuinely controlled by society and for the benefit of society; where the common good, not profits, becomes the chief concern; where the everyday working people become the rightful masters of society. It takes a radical solution to bury the miseries of capitalism. The socialist revolution has become a possibility and a necessity. There is no other choice today but for the working people to organise to struggle and, one day, win socialism.

The world today is a land of stark and bewildering contradictions. We possess the greatest technological industrial and agricultural power in history yet cannot feed, clothe and provide a decent livelihood for millions. What is the reason for these contradictions between the promises, the potential of this society, and its stark reality? Why is there such a gap between what is and what could be! The answers to these questions cannot be found “human nature” or apologies about “that is the way things are.” No! Capitalism, the social system under which we live, is responsible for the contradictions of in society. A system of exploitation thrives on the private control and ownership of society’s wealth and production – production involving the interconnected efforts of millions of working people. Socialism, by fundamentally changing the social system will end situation and will qualitatively improve the lives of the working people. 

If the working people, and not the capitalists, controlled the great resources of our society, we could improve all our lives. We could all have employment and safe places to work. We could end pollution and the threat to the environment. We could guarantee a decent life for all. Women and men, young and old, and people of all lands are realising we must unite and struggle to survive, to be able to work, eat and live as decent human beings. Today each person on the planet is faced with the choice of either enduring the suffering of unemployment, brutalisation and war; or taking the path of struggle – joining with the millions of others who are dissatisfied and know that a better society is possible. People are crying out against pollution and environmental destruction. We could live in a society that is not preparing constantly for war and self-extinction. These are the promises that encourage us forward. These are the hopes and dreams of socialists.

We are a Marxist Party

Socialism has been defined and interpreted in lots of different ways, most of them bogus. We are one of the few political organisations who emphatically maintain that socialism should be identified with abolition of wage-labour and creation of economic equality between people. This clearly distinguishes us from all those currents who identify socialism with state-ownership or with redistribution of wealth. We maintain that socialism requires the abolition of wage-labour, and the transformation of the means of labour, means of production, into the common property of society. Social welfare and economic security of people can only be the result of such a revolution in the economic foundations of society. Marxism is not a scholastic criticism of capitalism. It is the worker’s criticism as a definite class and a living fighter in capitalist society.

There are a many sincere people these days on the Left who seek modify or revise Marxism. Such as trying to add the "market" to the concept of socialism. As far as we are concerned, it is absurd to abandon Marxism to people who accept it, not as a critique of capitalism, but as a fashionable school of thought that they can pick and choose whatever suits their thesis. A great many of them are people who had been using Marxist terminology as a wrapping for views and social aspirations alien to Marxism. As a Marxist political party we challenge the non-Marxists in the general labour movement. We criticise, from a Marxist standpoint, the way they explain the condition of the working class, the society, the economy, the state, religion, the political regime, etc. This is a fundamental objective of our party. Our account of the history of the social struggle of the working class, and of the causes of socialism's failure so far, is itself a characteristic and distinctive feature of our tradition. On why we have not yet achieved socialism, some have already come up with what they regard as answer. The tell us: "Marxian theory was wrong" and "socialism, in general, has always been a Utopia; it's not practicable". In response to such explanations we put forward a totally different argument.

In response, we are able to explain other reasons for the failure. We are able to show capitalist movements borrowed the slogans and the language of our movement. We can explain our movement was defeated by nationalism and the experiences of the false socialism in the Soviet Union. We can point to the reformists who said their way was the most efficious way towards socialism as it led workers and their organisations up the garden path to dead-ends. The victory of socialism was never inevitable and a pre-determined outcome of history. A modern slavery for several generations could just as well be the destiny of the world.  The resistance and protests of workers against capitalism is, of course, inevitable. But no one can claim that this protest will inevitably occur under the banner of the real socialists. Our future depends entirely on the actual practice of our movement and its activists; on what they do, and what visions they have and hold out to the workers' movement. If we do it right, it will work out; if we don't, it won't. There is no historical inevitability here.

Our socialist case , however, begins within our own class, as a current critical of the non-socialists, as the political party that pursues a more fundamental cause and a more radical change, as a Marxist party that propagates a particular view within our class. Supporting trade unions and strengthening the labour movement as a whole against the bosses, is an important task. But, we must examine the visions, the policies, and the views of working-class organisations and their leaders. To democratise the debate we have to ask vital questions: What do you think of socialism and Marxism? What alternative do you have for the reorganization of society? How, in your mind, can workers' total liberation be finally brought about? Workers should be confronted with the question as to why they are not socialists; why they have nothing to say and nothing to do concerning the economic foundations of the present system, the state, religion, the educational system, the permanent war drive, and so on, and so forth. We do not bow to the attitudes of the reformist workers' movements. We are duty-bound to intervene in economic, political, cultural and intellectual life of society. We want the worker to emerge as the force that presents the whole human society with a real alternative. We regard socialist vision, the Marxist critique and social revolution as crucial; just as we regard the fight for a wage rise, or to defend unemployment benefits, the right to strike, and organising to bring about improvements in the economic and political condition of the working classes as vital. Each one of these aspects expresses a different moment in the life, the struggle, the self- assertion, of the working class; aspects that we regard as indivisible and indispensable. We must criticise all social tendencies, working-class or otherwise, which break apart this whole and keep workers away from the social revolution and the social revolution away from the workers. We are fighting for the establishment of the worker’s social and economic alternative as a class. The worker’s position in production does not change. The economic foundation of society does not change. This class’s alternative for the organization of human society does not change. The worker still has to sell his or her labour power daily in order to live, and thus views the world from the same standpoint and offers the same solution to it.

The Socialist Party arose from a certain tradition of struggle within the class itself. Its relation with the working class is thus based on the relation of that tendency within the class with the working class as a whole. This means that it is not a party formed by a number of social reformers for the salvation of the working class. It is not the party of "all workers" irrespective of their outlook and their social and political aims. This is the party of the socialist workers who put forward a fundamental and comprehensive critique of the present system. We consider ourselves not a political party outside the class, but a critical party, with a definite socialist outlook, within the class itself. It is therefore for us to confront others within our class theoretically, politically, and ideologically. Socialism is the cause of workers to destroy capitalism, abolish wage-labour and do away with exploitation and classes. It may seem that socialism has turned into the password of reformist parties who to realise their palliative programme have needed workers’ power. But the workers remains where they are, with their objective situation, with their protest against the effects of the wages system and private property, with their real solution for mankind, and cannot protest against the present system except by socialism. We as activists in this socialist movement movement declare this movement, and this movement alone, is the only the present situation. The working class will triumph by virtue of being the backbone of production in the existing society and the social class having a real solution to human suffering as a whole. The power of the working class lies in its size, we have the numbers, but also rests on this class’s position in capitalist production. The era of workers’ show of strength on the political stage is once again arriving, and this time, particularly, in the cradle of capitalism its heartlands where allegedly workers’ weight has declined.

Edinburgh's Luxury Houses

Chinese investors are snapping up multi-million pound Scots homes – because they are “inexpensive”. House prices in Scotland remain modest compared to those in London, China’s big cities and Hong Kong. Wealthy Chinese families have been showing growing interest in Scotland’s “affordable” high end property market. Interested buyers have even flown halfway across the world to view extravagant mansions that most would only be able to dream of acquiring.

Estate agents across the country have revealed that as a result, there has been a surge in the sales of properties over £750,000 in recent months. A private island off Scotland’s west coast is currently up for sale for just £550,000 – the same price as a one-bedroomed flat in certain parts of London.

Savills, CKD Galbraith, Rettie and Strutt and Parker say they have all had recent interest from Chinese investors, particularly in Edinburgh properties. They say that education plays a key role in the city’s appeal, with several sought-after private schools located in the centre. Blair Stewart, a partner at Strutt & Parker, said: “Two or three high net worth Chinese buyers who have children going into St George’s and Fettes have come over recently. They want houses nearby in the Inverleith area. “Last week we had a Chinese buyer fly over to look at Windmill House, a £2.8 million property in Edinburgh. The buyer’s daughter is going to St George’s School, right next to the house, and he was over from Beijing and thought that the Edinburgh property market was very inexpensive.”

Windmill House, located in secluded grounds in the heart of Murrayfield, boasts ten bedrooms, eight bathrooms and an impressive south-facing terrace. It is described as being in “one of the most desirable residential areas in the city” with private riverside access to the Water of Leith.

Max Mills, at Rettie, said: “High-end contemporary flats appeal to Chinese buyers. One example is Quartermile, because it’s a new development. It was designed by an award-winning architect, and it comprises shiny new properties with lots of glass and stainless steel, which reminds them of upmarket flats in the Far East.

Peter Lyell, of Savills Edinburgh Residential, said: “We have had three sales at Quartermile alone to buyers from China, Hong Kong and Singapore already this year. There are more being sold as new-build investment properties in the same development.”

Oceans Of Plastic?

As many as nine out of ten of the world's sea birds probably have pieces of plastic in their guts, a new study estimates. The birds mistake plastic for fish eggs so they think they are getting a meal. One researcher said, "I've seen birds eat everything from cigarette lighters to bottle caps, to model cars, even toys." It's obvious it's time to clean up the oceans, but can it be done in our present system? And, The New York Times reported recently that researchers have found a' stunning' amount of plastic in the world's greatest fresh water system, The Great Lakes. Studies show that there are about 7,000 plastic particles per square kilometre in Lakes Superior and Huron, 17,000 in Lake Michigan, 46,000 in Lake Erie and a whopping 248,000 in Lake Ontario. Another report published in "Global Change Biology" states that fifty-two per cent of turtles worldwide have eaten plastic debris. Not too surprising as, in this throw-away society, developed to increase profit, about thirteen million tons of plastic is dumped into the oceans each year John Ayers.

Hoarding Money

Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star, discussing politics and the election, wrote, "Corporations still make profits (in spite of the recession). But because demand for goods and services they produce is so weak, many don't reinvest. Canadian companies are sitting on billions of dollars worth of what former Bank of Canada governor, Mark Carney, called dead money." Bingo! He got it right. All socialists know that when something is not profitable, money gets hoarded, production slows, and unemployment results. Nice to see it written in the press, though. John Ayers.

Fracking and farming

Scotland has announced a moratorium on underground coal gasification and has also widened a review on the effects of fracking, moves that have delighted environmentalists. Scotland was taking a “precautionary, robust and evidence-based approach” to unconventional gas” explained Fergus Ewing, the SNP energy minister.

Campaign group Friends of the Earth Scotland praised the new moratorium, saying underground gasification was a “risky and experimental technique, with a very chequered history around the world”.

Fracking for shale gas under Scottish farmland could have a "profound effect" upon the food chain for current and future generations, Professor Robert Jackson, a pollution expert has warned in a recent issue of Scottish Farmer.

 Described by Scottish Water as one of country's leading independent experts in waste water management, he has cast doubt on the gas extraction industry's safety claims, citing years of evidence from the US that many hydrocarbon wells, sooner or later, will threaten groundwater with noxious leaks.

Incredibily Stupid

Although, as reported last month, the Pope has supposedly lost support for his stance on climate change, he is currently appearing to large cheering crowds in the US. Not all are happy, however. A University of Iowa professor, who should know better, criticised him by saying, "The church should be about making people holy, not about making the environment clean." Incredibly stupid. John Ayers.

U. N. Failing Goals

Talking of the UN, it appears to be failing in reaching many of its stated goals such as ending poverty – the Democratic Republic of Congo has GDP per capita of US$394 per year; End hunger – six million Syrian refugees are totally dependent on food aid; ensure healthy lives – the world's highest infant mortality rate is in Afghanistan with 117 deaths per 1,000 live births; full and decent employment for all – Bosnia and Herzegovina's youth employment rate is a staggering 62.8 per cent, the highest of any country at peace. The list goes on and on showing the incredible failure of the capitalist mode of production. John Ayers.

This is what socialism is

The Socialist Party struggles for the complete victory of the social revolution of the working class. The advances of human society in economy, science, technology and standards of civic life have already created the material conditions necessary to set up a free society without classes, exploitation and oppression, i.e. a world socialist community. Marxism is a very coherent explanation of capitalist society. It is the indictment of a particular section of society – the wage-workers– against the existing relations. It is an analysis which contends to be the true explanation of society and there is no reason to reject it, and the recent world developments only more emphatically prove its legitimacy. Marxism proposes that economic relations determine society’s political and cultural life. Everyone knows that it all comes down to profits and labour productivity. At the back of their mind, everybody knows what the state is good for, what the police and the army have been built for. All know that there is an incessant conflict going on within society between the employer and the employee; that any trace of freedom and humanity has come from the power of worker and working-class organisations to prise gains from business and their state. People naturally expect unions to be against exploitation and discrimination, to stand for social welfare, and so on. Intellectuals considers the Marxist label as boost to their credentials (deservedly or not) and dress themselves up in the Marxist garb. Nationalists, and reformists and a whole host of other tendencies had turned to Marxism. We need not a revision of Marxism but the application of it to the contemporary world.

To this day, socialism, in the sense meant by Marxists, has not been set up anywhere. Marx was the most important and profound critic of the dehumanisation of humanity under capitalism. In capitalist society the human being is slave to blind economic laws which determine his/her economic fate, independently of his/her thinking, reasoning and judgement. Socialism aims to return this identity to human beings. The slogan `from each according to ability, to each according to need’ is entirely based on the recognition and guaranteeing of the right of every person himself/herself to determine his/her position in society.  Socialism is a society in which human beings gain control over their economic lives, are freed from the chains of blind economic laws and themselves consciously define their economic activity. The decision is with the person not with the market, or accumulation or surplus value. This liberation of entire society from the blind economic laws is the condition of emancipation of the individual and the restoration of humanity and human specificity of every individual. The basis of socialism is the human being – both collectively and as an individually. Socialism is the movement to restore man’s conscious will, a movement for freeing human beings from economic necessity and enslavement in pre-determined moulds. It is a movement for abolishing classes and people’s classification. This is the essential condition for the growth of the individual.

Technical innovation and improvement in product quality is not an invention of capitalism. Human beings are always eager for knowledge and improvement in production techniques and in the quality of their lives. In capitalism it is the market that defines the needs and the level of demand for the commodities which satisfy them. Capitals which produce these commodities make profit. It is through these capitalist equations that scientists and experts find and take up their researches and projects. It is here that the proportion of society’s resources which should be set aside for scientific research, the direction science and its practical application should take, the areas which have priority are decided. In socialism, on the other hand, there is no market, no competition and no individual interest. But people and their scientific curiosity and drive for innovation and to improvement of the quality of life are there. A socialist society is an open and informed society. In socialism it will be a routine procedure to constantly inform people about the needs and problems in the various areas of human life worldwide. Under capitalism it is the market that informs capitals about the existence of demand and the opportunity of making profit in the production of certain commodities. In the socialist system it is the citizens and their institutions that constantly inform each other of the economic, social and human needs, as well as of the scientific and technical advances of the different sectors. Given the present technology, the organization of such information interchange and of everyone’s constant access to it is feasible even right now. A socialist society will be a society in which people enjoy a much higher level of scientific education than today. Access to learning and participation in scientific activity is not a privilege of a particular social group; it is everyone’s elementary right. Just as once literacy was the privilege of a few but today is regarded as a basic right. We see even today how, for instance, using computers and even their relatively complex and specialized application, at least in the more advanced countries, has become so generalized – though still a far cry from socialism’s capability in promoting general scientific capacities and making the means for scientific work accessible to all.

Capitalism has itself brought about striking technical changes but in this society technology develops where it is profitable for capital. Alongside the enormous progress in the development of armament technology we see the advances in medicine and health care, education, housing, agriculture thwarted by lack of investment. And the majority of the people of the world is deprived of the results of this technological progress. Socialism will certainly be different from capitalism, since the technical priorities of a society based on improving people’s lives will be totally different from a society driven by the profit motive.

Capitalism’s stereotyped picture of the human being and human motivation cannot be a starting point for the organisation of socialism. Capitalism builds on individual self- interest and competition. To make the economy work, it bolsters these qualities in people and trains them in this spirit. The basis of socialism, however, is man’s humanism and his social nature. Scientific effort and the socialist ideal cannot be realised without getting rid of the intellectual prejudices fostered by capitalism. Like any other social system, socialism will reproduce the appropriate human being and it is not difficult to imagine a society in which people’s motivation in their economic and scientific activity is to contribute to the well-being of all, to participate in a common effort to improve the lives of all.

The realisation of socialism is the result of class struggle, and this struggle is capable of defeat so capitalist barbarism, on a scale perhaps not yet experienced by our generation, can be the outcome. There is now a need to express the socialist vision in more concrete terms and offer more practical models of economic organisation in socialist society and elaborate further. If you’d put this question to a Marxist at the beginning of the century he or she would reply that it is not for us to devise blueprints and utopias, that our task is to organise a revolution against the existing system, that our goals are clear and the process of workers’ revolution itself will provide the practical forms of their realisation. The rise of capitalism itself was not on the basis of a clear positive model of the system. But what has to be done is, firstly, to clarify the precise meaning of socialist aims, and, secondly, to show the feasibility of their realisation. It must demonstrate, for instance, that the abolition of capitalist ownership does not mean introduction of state ownership, and explain how the organisation of people’s collective control over means of production is practical. It must be emphasizes that socialism is an economic system without money and wage labour, and then shown how organizing production without labour power as a commodity is feasible. What cannot be done is to prepare a detailed blueprint of production and administration in a socialist society. The specific form of economy, production and system of administration in a socialist society should be worked out in the context of the historical process. Our job to show in what ways socialist society differs from the existing one. For example, we show the process of the withering away of the state following a workers’ revolution by explaining the material basis of the state in class society and its superfluous requirement as a political institution in a classless society, and not by issuing a step-by-step pamphlet dismantling of state institutions and departments.

We can always find people who shrug their shoulders at socialism, at socialist organization and even at having lofty ideals. Deriding socialism and workers has always been rewarded by the elite. Perhaps more intellectuals and academics than ever before, in the media, universities and the various think-tank institutions have turned it into ‘honourable’ profession. This is not our concern. More important today is implanting Marxist ideas and actual involvement in working-class mass movements. We emphasise the terms Marxist because for many on the left protest simply means anti-capitalism and not proposing socialism. Many times what is meant left activism is participation in reform movements or democratization of this or that political regime, and so on. The world is full of campaigns and protesters who carry out ‘alternative’ activity only later to find it incorporated into the established tradition. The ruling class are putting up its own economic, political and cultural ‘alternatives’ – from nationalism to religion, neo-fascism and racism. The period we are entering will not be lacking in working class protest movements and actions. But the outcome of these struggles and specifically their impact on the general conditions of workers in society, their power and dignity, is another question. It requires an active socialist movement in society and a revolutionary presence within the workers’ movement.

Money free, wage free, market free

It is at the point of production exploitation takes place. Robert Tressell's ‘Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ piece on waged slavery is still applicable today.

Poverty is both actual and relative.

Capitalism is global and will continue to exploit locally and globally to extract surplus value from the workers it employs on a waged rationed access basis. It must 'exploit or die' its watchword, Accumulate! Accumulate!

"…capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt". (Marx)

We need to have a dialogue with fellow workers worldwide, and make our common cause about abolishing waged slavery and establishing a post-capitalist commonly owned world of free access for all, in re callable delegated democratic conditions of social equality.

Capitalism cannot be reformed and must be replaced, by a post-capitalist society, a commonly-owned, production-for-use, not a for-sale society.

Which has free access to the common produce.

Which is a money free, wage free, market free society.

Which has delegated democracy over the control of resources. Not representative democracy over people.

"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.’ (1879 Marx and Engels)

The Socialist Party of Great Britain speakers, who had a platform in Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow on most Saturday afternoons espoused the unequivocal case for socialism. They were and still are, the only political party who don't want to be leaders or 'guvnors', insisting, 'don't vote for us if you don't understand', that the task of bringing in socialism is the task of the working class themselves and pointed to self-education allied with political action as the means of self-liberation.

Wee Matt

Edinburgh Branch