We only need the majority

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." - Herbert Spencer

Sympathy with Corbyn for the way the media have treated him as a person is one thing, but support for his reformist Old Labourite policies which failed in the 60s and 70s is another.

Capitalist, left,  right or centre, politicians, can only deceive themselves that they can alleviate in some way the inevitable concomitants of a capitalist society, of war (business by other means) and poverty (absolute or relative). Capitalism cannot be reformed, no matter however noble or ignoble the politician.

It is time long past for a brand new post-capitalist social system. One which is owned by us all, in which production is for use and not for sale.

In a socialist society, a real one, not a capitalist reformist pretend one, we won't need any classes or political leadership, as we will have local, regional and global control over all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, in a commonly owned world, of production for use and free access, "From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs", with recallable delegates where we need to delegate administrative tasks.

The Labour Party, those in it who think they are taking small steps towards some kind of socialism, have been baby-stepping since 1906. As the left-wing of capitalism, they baby-stepped workers into war, baby-stepped their strikes with the army. (Attlee had the troops out 8 times)

Any reforms inside capitalism are made when the capitalist class are afraid of a social revolution, after wars etc., if there is a boom, even when there is not any real evidence of that happening.

There is no gradualist road to socialism.  That is a reformist delusion which keeps capitalism tickety-boo, as a caring wage-slave master, who frets about the cost and efficacy of his munificence, (welfare etc.) set against the surplus value which will accrue to him, or her, or them.

A social revolution will only happen when the majority make it happen. It won't be the work of Leftist leaders, but the conscious action of the immense majority asserting their common possession of the world and everything in it,and on it, to abolish ownership by individuals, the state, corporations and share its abundance in common with fellow human beings worldwide. with no ruling elites or classes.

We do not need to be led, we need a majority.

Educate! Agitate! Organise!

Supporters of capitalism argue that we have always had poverty, but you didn't have man-made poverty in the midst of plenty. Famine amongst food being available for export.

The Iraq war was not fought simply to overthrow a brutal dictator—though this surely happened — nor even to stop the spread of chemical and biological weapons - those didn't exist. It was fought over a key energy source - oil. The chief aim was to secure future supplies of such energy resources. In other words, the Iraq war was no different from any of the wars that have taken place in modern times. It was a business war.

War is fought for the interests and advantages of the ruling class, fought to protect or extend capitalist profits. Of course, no ruling class will ever admit going to war for such sordid motives. Every war has to be justified as a ‘righteous’ and ‘just’ war reluctantly resorted to for ‘humanitarian’ reasons or in defence of international ‘justice’, otherwise, no worker would sacrifice their lives or surrender their liberties so willingly.

Many assume Hitler was the sole cause of the Second World War and all the associated horrors. This is a gross oversimplification. Germany in the 1930's wasn’t suddenly corrupted by Hitler’s charisma. The political tensions and strife were all there, results of a previous world war and a great depression. Hitler was just able to capitalise on this. But if he hadn’t there’s nothing to say that nobody else would. Elimination of the main figurehead won’t necessarily prevent events that were as much a product of the wider socio-political context...and don't forget also the 'war science' of Nagasaki and Hiroshima upon a civilian population, done by liberal democracy, the 'good guys'. Still picking sides for another go too.

Socialism has never existed, as it is a post-capitalist, production for use, commonly owned, priceless, waged slavery free, democratically controlled, global system of free access.

In the absence of elite social classes, the administration is over things, locally, regionally and globally by the people themselves rather than by government over people, using recallable delegation where necessary.

Some may be confusing post-feudal revolutions, (Russia, China) introducing state capitalism, or attempts to regulate capitalism by reforms, as 'socialistic'' in some way. All were doomed to fail, but as failures of capitalism, which cannot be reformed, despite politicians promises or aspirations.

Capitalism and any variants of it, must be replaced. It has outlived its usefulness in developing the means of production and educating its waged slaves, who already run it from top to bottom.

All that is required is the political mature decision of the majority, to seize ownership and control of the means of producing and distributing wealth, from the parasite class (private, corporate or state) and make ownership common, using the Achilles heel of capitalist political democracy, to usher in an age of super-abundance with production for use and not for sale.

Nothing is forever, including capitalism. It is an obsolete and outmoded method of production. It can never satisfy human needs while retaining private, corporate or state ownership of resources and the means and instruments for producing wealth, as its mode of production. It can only satisfy market requirements even then imperfectly and not human needs. The ideas of capitalism, overthrowing feudal relations and the Divine Right of Kings, would have seemed a fantasy in feudal times.

The bourgeois democracy brought in by capitalism, is its own Achilles heel. The educated working class who presently produce all of the wealth, but do not own it, who run capitalism from top to bottom, yet it is not in their own interests, but the interests of a privileged minority, will dig the grave of capitalism.

The wealth producers 99%, are compelled to wage-enslaved production (for sale) of wealth for the 1% capitalist parasitic class. The interests of the 99% lies in removing ownership and control from the 1% and establishing a commonly owned society. Workers have never controlled production, so many are confusing demand-led, state control with its antithesis, production for use and common ownership. It is workers who run capitalism from top to bottom and who make decisions on their behalf, so that the capitalist class, whether, state, corporation or private, are placed in an exalted, privileged position only due to their ownership.

Nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

"The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor." - Victor Hugo

We have a world to win. Dissolve all governments and elect yourselves.

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs"

Wee Matt

For Industrial and Social Democracy

Socialism is revolutionary in principle, i.e. it puts up a totally new principle in place of the old, not just patches up the prevailing system. The old ideas of competition and self-interest fostered by capitalism once seemed sacrosanct are now slowly eroding away until they no longer seem so sacrosanct, and new ideas of cooperation and solidarity have gradually taken their place. It’s easy to lose hope when important battles are lost, or to become over-confident when they’re won. But, in both defeat and victory, workers must still go on striving for socialism. Unfortunately, more and more people to escape from the reality of their life and its disappointments seek solutions through nationalism and racism. It gives them opportunities to blame their misery and troubles, not on a broken economic system but on a tangible enemy: the brown and black people “taking” from the whites and native-born. These folks are rightfully angry that something they were promised was not delivered and much of the right-leaning media are pandering to prejudices about who is to blame for their woes. Even mainstream media rhetoric lead many to frame their economic disadvantage upon the supposed “theft” of jobs and welfare benefits by minorities and immigrants, creating a vicious class divide squeezing all levels of society other than the very wealthy. The anger has spawned an enormous amount of, xenophobic nationalism and we've seen how racism and scapegoating are so easily manipulated.

Today, we see the discontent of people in so many countries -- ordinary people who have lost trust in the elites and the powers that be. Even though socialists presently may not be successful in accomplishing their goals, they have at least got some people talking about the issue. Actually, it has convinced those people that there is an issue. So even if the socialist movement currently fails to change the status quo, it gets people arguing and thinking in ways they hadn't, and somewhere down the line, this will influence and inspire the future. What it means is that there is a constant struggle that constantly needs to be fought. Some causes seem more important than others, some are more urgent than others but it is the socialist aim that musters them all under the same banner. Today, we need to take socialist ideas seriously and work towards making them a reality. Be very wary of parties using the language of change that is merely the language of promise. The reformist approach is one of masquerade. The Socialist Party is still very small, and we have no illusions that we will get big votes. We know that there is much work to be done to transform the current situation where the majority of workers feel powerless to change things. Nevertheless, there are growing numbers of people who are not prepared to quietly accept the present order. We campaign in elections not to win votes but to use the elections as a platform to put the truth about the capitalist system before the workers at a time when they have an increased interest in politics. In the very unlikely event of an SPGB candidate being elected he or she would enter parliament to expose the system´s falseness; to treat that body as the camp of the enemy, to fight above all for the class interests of the wage workers, by which we mean both their economic and also their political interests. What are these? Simply, the achievement of a socialist society based on means of production under the rule, not of a small minority of capitalists as at present, but of the great majority of the working class; i.e., under working-class democracy.

Of course, we harbour no illusions that we will get a seat in parliament in the near future. Workers desperately need a political movement of our own. A movement which puts our interests first because it is a movement by, for and of us. Since the system we live under capitalism, is based on our exploitation, such a movement needs to be explicitly anti-capitalist. It needs to aim for the overthrow of the capitalist system and its replacement by a new truly socialist society, based on organising production to meet the human needs of all rather than private profit for a super-rich few

"Doubt everything" – Marx

Socialism cannot be 'given'. It has to be won by a politically conscious majority, who know what it is. The democratic 'ends determine the means' rather than the Leninist/Stalinist justifying of them. All the parties of the right, Left, centre, blue, green, purple, red and tartan are parties of class rule.

 It is not going to happen until a majority recognise their common interests to make it so happen. But this doesn't stop us struggling to deal with the day to day effects of capitalist exploitation. Countries like China didn't get their timings wrong, as they established capitalism with all of its birth pangs, accelerated by their states, in the absence of a capitalist class, to take them out of feudalism. Effectively post-feudal revolutions. A fiction, useful to the capitalist class, the idea of socialism ever existing.

"State capitalism would be a step forward for us." (Lenin)

"What you have is state capitalism." (John Foster Dulles to Nikita Khruschev)

Common ownership is NOT state ownership. There is no government over people in a socialist/communist society.  Rather people themselves administer things (production and distribution etc.) Unfortunately, 'social ownership' was confused with state ownership. A 'meet the new boss' result. Common ownership and social ownership (means the same) has no need for a state as it is a classless society managed by us all in condition of free access to the commonly owned and created wealth.

"From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." (Both abilities and needs are self-assessed)

We have a World to win.

"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)

Capitalist democracy, flawed though it is, can and must still be used as the 'Achilles heel' of capitalism, as long as a sufficient majority are convinced of socialism, i.e. the establishment of a commonly owned society then the capitalist class will be unable to resist. (Peacefully if we can violently only if we must).

Clause 6 in the S.P.G.B.'s Declaration of Principles, (1904) states:

"That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic."

It would be foolish to expect the capitalist class to voluntarily give up its privileged position in society. Governments exist solely to administer the society as it exists, in the interests of the ruling (capitalist) class, so governments will not end the privilege. Capitalism will continue as long as the working class accepts it. The working class will have to force the capitalist class to give up its position of privilege. Socialism will be the result of workers democratically choosing a new, classless society based on the satisfaction of human needs. And since capitalism is a global system of society, it must be replaced globally. The machinery of government has to be captured in order to prevent guns being fired upon the workers. Direct action as such will consist of workers being self-organised for the event.

No post-capitalist society has ever existed anywhere. Please do not conflate claims of 'socialism', which are really reformist capitalist positions, with the real thing, a commonly owned, democratic, wage-free, a World of free access. It is impossible to have some oasis of socialism inside a global capitalist society. It can only arise out of an advanced capitalism with a majority of educated and politically conscious workers, self-organised to this end. Nothing will stop this when it occurs. People will be caught up in the new post-capitalist Zeitgeist, nothing will stop an idea which time has come. Ultimately, everyone wants a World without war (business by other means) and poverty (absolute and relative). You can't have capitalism without those twin concomitants.

Wee Matt

Onward, fellow workers

Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to reform it. The Socialist Party thinks a working peoples’ industrial democracy can displace the dictatorship of capital and organise society on values of human solidarity and dignity. The rulers say they’re rich because they’re smart, but the truth is they’re rich because they exploit us. The working class produces all the wealth, and we can become confident and strong enough to run all of this society. Our society is based on money, but we are worth so much more than we make in a paycheck. The working class is capable of using its intelligence and capacities to take the road to socialism. The needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of a socialist society. It is becoming increasingly apparent that our political system is not run by the majority, but controlled by a network of economic elites and private interests. The well-being and needs of the people must replace the accumulation of capital and profits.  The Socialist Party’s mission is to raise awareness of social, economic and political issues through dialogue with fellow workers, creating the foundation for wide-scale change. Knowledge is a torch of freedom and the fundamental step towards liberation begins with education. We aim to build a peaceful, people-powered revolution of conscientious active participants. Our objective is to help shift public perception towards true socialism, a society that benefits the many and not the few. It will take a collective effort of shared resources and ideas to restructure our world into one that is founded on economic security and equal opportunity. Tyranny and oppression cannot be challenged until we unite and act to reclaim our power. The dominance of capitalism has blinded us to the alternative – socialism. Much needs to be done to open the minds of our fellow workers to the new possibilities beyond capitalism and to redirect their energy from remedial campaigns to social revolution.

The campaigns to improve our lot under capitalism are endless. Once one form of oppression is dealt with, there’s always another left to tackle, but while engaging in that new fight, the former is bound to return because no progress is ever permanent under capitalism. Rights are won, and the next day they’re under attack. We put much of our energy into defence instead of offence. The fight against exploitation and oppression is never-ending, but does that serve to focus our attention away from the larger fight; from the fight to overturn capitalism and the oppressive structures it perpetuates? As we seek to reverse inequality, reduce poverty, achieve equal rights for minorities, fighting so hard for basic human decency, our minds become stuck in a frame of capitalist realism instead of challenging the very core structures that create the problems against which we fight. Until the structures that create this oppression are dealt with, the fight will never be over. Racism, sexism, and the class system will always return unless the structures responsible for them are destroyed. Instead of placing the focus on the battles for legislation and regulations that will most likely be eventually be overturned or side-stepped, the fight needs to be brought to the system as a whole. Humanity is in a very precarious place right now. It's time to take action in order to survive.

The task before us is to understand the world and how we relate to ourselves. In facing up to the many profound crises of our time, we face a conundrum that has no easy resolution: how are we to imagine and build a radically different system while living within the constraints of an incumbent system that aggressively resists transformational change? The Socialist Party challenge is not just articulating the socialist alternative, but identifying credible strategies for actualising them. The Socialist Party is focused on reclaiming our “common wealth,” in both the material and political sense. We want to roll back the pervasive property system with its profiteering from our natural resources and to assert participatory control over those resources and community life, to seek effective social control rather than abusive, unsustainable market behaviour. Socialism generates people’s social connections with each other and with nature. It helps build new aspirations and identities. The world socialist movement seeks to change our very conception of the economy.

A money-free world to win.

Who produces all the wealth, manages and runs capitalism from top to bottom? The working class - that is who. Please do not equate Marxism with Leninism. A bit like blaming Jesus for the sectarian Christian divisions manipulated by power-seekers. There is an honourable anti-Bolshevik tradition in Marxist politics:

‘We have often stated that because of a large anti-socialist peasantry and vast untrained population, Russia was a long way from socialism. Lenin has now to admit this by saying: “Reality says that State capitalism would be a step forward for us; if we were able to bring about State capitalism in a short time it would be a victory for us” (The Chief Task of Our Times)…If we are to copy Bolshevik policy in other countries we should have to demand State capitalism, which is not a step to socialism’ (Socialist Standard, July 1920).

 ‘Both Trotsky and Stalin draw up their programmes within the framework of state and private capitalism which prevails in Russia’ (Socialist Standard, December 1928).

 ‘[all the Bolsheviks] have been able to do is to foster the growth of State capitalism and limit the growth of private capitalism’ (Socialist Standard, July 1929.)

The social democratic experiments of the Labour Party were all attempts to manage capitalism with reforms. But capitalism cannot be reformed and shorn of its concomitants of war (business by other means) and poverty, absolute or relative (essential, to keep us as wage-slaves.) It cannot be shorn of its economic cycle of booms and busts.

“In 1918, in the shadow of the Russian revolution, they made a deliberate, conscious, ideological choice, that they would not pursue the syndicalist road, that they would not pursue the revolutionary road – it was a real choice in those days. They would pursue the parliamentary road to socialism.” Neil Kinnock

That just amounted to their infamous Clause 4 definition of 'common ownership' with a 'means of exchange'. In other words, not socialism at all, but nationalisation, state ownership and not common ownership, retaining the wages slavery system, prices and social classes. They are bourgeois vacillators between potential winning capitalisms, masquerading as radical. The Labour party was never a socialist party but a reformist one. Capitalism cannot be reformed however noble or ignoble the politician.

Representative democracy is seriously flawed, not least by the principle of leadership. Representation is a myth. It is a surrendering of power within a restricted choice of capitalist politicians. Proportional Representation merely diffuses the political power over us giving an ersatz illusion of choice of bosses. In a class society, the politicians are elected to govern 'over' us in the interests of the dominant economic class. This is the only control they exert, 'over us', as they are powerless in respect of the economic conditions of the day in a market society where production is for sale with a view of realising a profit and capitalist , left right or centre politicians, can only deceive themselves that they can alleviate in some way the inevitable concomitants of a capitalist society, of war (business by other means) and poverty (absolute or relative).

In a socialist society, a real one, not a capitalist reformist pretend one, we won't need any classes or political leadership, as we will have local, regional and global control over all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, in a world owned in common, where production is for use and there exists free access, "from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs", with recallable delegates where we need to delegate administrative tasks.

Socialism isn't a commodity for sale, but a social relationship of classless free access in a post-capitalist social system which will arise out of the present system without the contradictions of private ownership, production only for sale, or social elites with advantageous access to the social product. Once people aspire to dissolve governments and elect themselves, no power can stop them. Nothing will stop an idea when its time has really come. Socialists have always wanted working people to ‘take control’ of their collective destiny. That’s what real socialism is all about. This is not possible under capitalism because it is a system governed by uncontrollable economic laws which impose themselves on people whatever they want or decide. The only way to take control (‘back’ is out of place since the majority class of wage and salary workers has never had any control) is to take control of the places where we work and where wealth is produced and run them for the benefit of all.

Socialism and communism mean the same thing. 'Common' or 'social' ownership. Just because power-hungry politicians utilised the name 'socialism' to sell their dodgy reforms as 'socialistic' doesn't alter one iota the definition of socialism. It is a commonly owned, world of free access and democratic control over the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth. Nothing to do with nationalisation, state ownership or any of the paraphernalia of state-regulated market capitalism.

Socialism has to be the work of a politically conscious worker class themselves organising to this end. The democratic ends determine the means rather than the Leninist/Stalinist justifying of them. We have a post-capitalist world to win. Socialism will not be the bloody capture of power by a minority, but the politically aware and responsible act of the immense majority, expressed "peacefully if we can violently, only if we must".

The workers of the world already run capitalism from top to bottom, it is just a change a change of ownership, from private or state into common ownership and democratic control, with production for use and not for sale, allied with free access and voluntary production.

Wee Matt

Capitalism - A Ship Without a Compass

The socialist case is a clear one but its advancement is held back by incorrect ideas constantly pumped at the workers through the media. Socialism can only be brought about by the working class taking conscious and political action to achieve it. As for reforming capitalism, the Socialist Party recognises that any attempt to smooth the rough edges off capitalism will not only fail in solving any basic social problem but will sidetrack the workers from the real path for their emancipation—Socialism. As long as capitalism lasts there will be a conflict of interests; in other words, war is caused by capitalism and cannot be avoided under that social system. Socialism will abolish war because it will bring a community of interests; it will be a society without frontiers, without nations, without classes, without conflict.

Like it or not, we live in an inter-dependent world in which we either all rise together or fall together. Blaming migrants for the problems and crises produced by a global economy that is a tyrant rather than a servant is no solution. To be a migrant is to be human, and to attack migrants is inhuman.

Migrants are blamed for taking up places in housing and schools, burdening the country's health and welfare system and weakening the working class. Anti-migrant xenophobia has become a recognisable feature of vote-catching politics in Britain and have shaped successive election campaigns. One reason why myths hang around so long seems to be that we like simple explanations – such as that immigrants are to blame for crumbling public services – and are inclined to believe them. Scant attention is paid to how policies of privatisation and austerity -- have led to a degradation of standards of living life and a growth in inequality in the UK. Capitalism will be replaced either by new visions of social progress or by a dystopia of racism and authoritarianism.

The impacts of immigration have not been distributed evenly in Britain. The rich have accrued the economic gains while the poor have faced cut and austerity policies. The burdens on public services of an increasing population have been over-stated but there are some neighbourhoods where strains are real. So too in some sectors of the labour market wages have been kept down through the exploitation of new workforces in Eastern Europe, whether through immigration or capital flight. The problem is not immigration per se but the way it becomes a focal point for deeper processes of dispossession. The culprits are not refugees or Eastern European immigrants but the whims of global capitalism. Scapegoating newcomers is particularly outrageous since economic and trade policies have been a major contributor to their plight. The fundamental problem then, as we see, is not migration but the misallocation and misdistribution of wealth and resources, which is a non-negotiable condition of capitalism. Stopping immigration by setting quotas and implementing ever more stringent border controls and measures is futile. The only way to reduce it is to deal with its underlying causes – namely inequality and poverty, stemming from capitalism.

The party of socialism in this country is the Socialist Party which makes socialism its one and only objective. The Socialist Party understands that only a majority of class-conscious workers can build socialism. It has made its task therefore the advancement of an unadulterated, uncompromising socialist its object. We urge the workers of all countries to organise as a class to gain control of the political machinery in order to establish the socialist commonwealth, where shall arise happiness, comfort, and luxury for all.

Speed the day!

Primitive Accumulation (1967) - How they got the Scottish Highlands

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

How they got the Scottish Highlands

Even after a newcomer to Socialism has seen that capitalism is based on the exploitation of the workers, he may still feel that originally the propertied class must have obtained their property by superior merit. Surely, he will argue, riches were obtained in the first place by worthy individuals who worked hard and saved?

Marx deals with the question of “primitive accumulation”, the original gathering together of wealth, in Part VIII of Capital. This “primitive accumulation”, he says, plays the same part in orthodox economic theory as original sin does in theology. “In times gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal, élite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living . . . And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work.” The facts, Marx pointed out, are very different. Wealth was originally accumulated by a process of legalised robbery. The land of Britain, for example, once belonged to those who tilled it. The theft of the land by a few has gone on in stages throughout the last fifteen centuries.

This expropriation was perhaps most striking, as we look back now, in the Highlands of Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries. The reason is that the blight of private property struck in the Highlands later than in other areas, so that the whole of the coercive forces of Britain were available to help on the transformation, which as a result was particularly sudden and brutal.

The Highlands owed their long immunity to their physical configuration. Entrance to the mountainous area could only be gained through narrow passes, where a handful of men could defeat an army; and the glens and straths within the Highlands were easily defensible against invaders for the same reason. Within this area, during the first part of the 18th century, the clans owned their own clan territories as they had done for centuries. The Campbells in Argyll, the Stewarts and Robertsons in Perthshire, the Rosses and Munros in Ross-shire, could have been forgiven for thinking that their ownership of their land was eternal and unchallengeable. It was not individual ownership; no clansman owned this or that stretch of land to the exclusion of all other clansmen; clan ownership meant that every clansman had the right to hunt the game on the mountain and moor within the clan land, to share in the general grazing, and to till part of the clan's soil. The general right to a living off the land had a corresponding duty: the duty to defend the clan land against invasion. At any alarm the croishtarich — the fiery cross, a piece of wood burnt at one end and dipped in lamb’s blood at the other — would go from township to township through the clan land, and every man capable of bearing arms at once repaired to the pre-arranged rallying spot (the Grants, for example, at Craigellachie, and the Clan Chattan at Dunlichity hill) to ward off the danger.

But among the institutions thrown up by clanship was one which was pregnant with future disaster. It was the chiefship. The chief led the clan in war, and judged any dispute in peacetime. When a chief died, another chief would be chosen, usually a new or distant relative of the last chief: although this meant little when every member of the clan believed himself related to every other, and could recount his descent — whether real or mythical — from the clan’s founder. (Clan is Gaelic for children: the Clan Leod were the children of Leod — the originator of the clan — and each man was Mac Leod, or son of Leod, and each woman Nic Leod, or daughter of Leod). In time it became usual for chiefs to be chosen from the members of one family — the system of tanistry. If a chief’s eldest son were old enough when his father died to lead the clan in war, and the clan thought highly of him, he would usually have the best claim to the succession.

The Highlands, however, were not isolated. Together with the English-speaking Lowlands they formed the kingdom of Scotland. This was largely a theoretical arrangement: the king in Edinburgh had no control in the Highlands, and the only way he could force his will on any clan was by leading an army against it — and often not even then. There were in practice many kings in the Highlands — the chief was “king” of his clan territory. The chiefs soon began to meddle in Lowland politics; and to gain their support, the Edinburgh king would often grant a charter to a particular chief to say that he owned the land of his clan. These charters were of no practical effect at the time, since the chief was unable to exercise any of the powers of ownership. The clansmen paid the chief small annual sums, analogous to present-day taxes, to support him; he had no right to increase this annual tax, much less to evict the clansmen from the clan land. Indeed, if he had gone beyond his traditional powers the clan would have evicted the chief. As a matter of historical fact, whenever a chief was found unsatisfactory he was deposed, and replaced by another member of the chiefly family.

The clan (if it even knew of the fact) was probably relieved when its chief did secure a charter to the clan territory, since it meant that no other chief could do so. Occasionally a chief in particular favour at court would obtain a charter not only to the land of his own clan (which did not belong to him) but also to the land of other clans (which, equally, did not belong to him). The chief of Macintosh, for example, got charters to the lands of the Camerons and of the MacDonalds of Keppoch; and both the Camerons and the MacDonalds had to light several battles to assert their right to their own land by beating off Macintosh and his clan who, out of a mistaken sense of duty, had followed him to support his claim.

Some of the Highland clans followed James Stuart, the Old Pretender, in 1715, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, in 1745. Both rebellions were defeated. The British Government determined to end the anomaly of having more than a sixth of Great Britain still under a type of society based on communal ownership, a system moreover which produced such superlative fighting men that only a few thousand of them had seemed about to topple the Government twice in thirty years. In addition the Industrial Revolution, beginning in the middle years of the 18th century, both provided the material strength needed to conquer the Highlands, and spawned great cities which demanded large supplies of food from the non-industrial districts, such as the Highlands. Soldiers marched and counter-marched through the Highlands, garrison towns were created, and the old Highland law was crushed, making way for the new private property law of the Lowlands.

According to this Lowland law, the charters which most of the chiefs had by this time obtained gave them exclusive rights to the whole of the clan land. This was such an enormous change, since it entailed the replacement of an entire system of society by another, that the chiefs themselves were hardly able to comprehend it for a time. Then some of the chiefs, desirous of making a fine figure in Edinburgh or London, realised that by turning out the clansmen and letting the clan land to sheep farmers, they could at one stroke increase their incomes five or six times. The clansmen were as astounded at this turn of events as if they had been told that the sun was henceforward to rise in the west. They had lived in and defended their land from time immemorial: and now the chief had brought in a lawyer who said that because of some writing in a foreign language on a small piece of paper in Edinburgh, the chief—chosen and loyally supported by the clan, and in fact the embodiment of the clan—had now the right to tell every clansman to leave, and to bring in instead a capitalist tenant farmer with great flocks of sheep! Some clearances were met with physical resistance, rioting, and violence; but where that happened, the chief brought up a detachment of Lowland, English, or Irish soldiers, and evicted the clansmen at the point of the bayonet. Often the threat of force was sufficient, especially since the local parish ministers backed up the landlords with warnings of eternal punishments as well as temporal ones. The odds against the clansmen were too great. In district after district the Gaels packed up their belongings, sold off their sheep and cattle, and left the glen for the last time, headed by a piper playing a clan lament. Often the chief cleared out his clan himself; sometimes he sold out to a buyer at such a high price that the new owner obviously intended to recoup—and did recoup—by a wholesale clearance. The tide of evictions crept steadily northwards. From the 1760s to the 1780s there were clearances among the Campbells in Argyll, the MacPhersons in Strath Spey, the various clans of MacDonalds in Glen Garry, Glen Coe and Keppoch, and the MacKenzies in Ross-shire. In the first decade of the 19th century there were many clearances in Inverness- and Ross-shires. MacNeil of Barra, the Chisholm, and MacLeod of Dunvegan were clearing out their clans; Glengarry was doing the same for the MacDonalds, Lochiel for the Camerons, Seaforth for the MacRaes and MacKenzies, and Lovat for the Frasers. Then, from 1807 to 1820, the great Sutherland Clearances took place, the Countess of Sutherland putting to flight thousands of Sutherlands, Murrays, MacKays, and the other Sutherland clans. Lord Reay, chief of a neighbouring clan of MacKays, was doing the same in what was now his land.

The clearances would have been completed sooner than they were but for two complicating factors. Chiefs who still had clansmen to call on found they could raise Highland regiments for Britain's repeated wars between 1740 and 1815; it was financially profitable to them, and in addition they could nominate officers (thus providing for impecunious relatives) and bask in the reflected glory of vicarious military adventure. Further, there was a kind of sea-weed called kelp found in the Hebrides and along the coast of the western Highlands, which when burned was a source of soda (an ingredient of glass) and of iodine. During the Napoleonic wars this burnt kelp brought £20 a ton, at a time when the kelp-worker got only £3 or less a ton. The enormous profits to be made meant that the coast and island landlords were eager to retain as many workers on their estates as they could. For these two reasons landlords would usually allow some of the evicted people to squat (for a rent) on odd comers of marsh and moor that no large farmer would have as a gift. The clansmen were always ready to accept these crofts because any toehold in the venerated land of the clan was better than none, especially when the alternatives were either to undergo the horrors of factory work in the Lowlands, or to go overseas in coffin ships to clear the thickly timbered wilderness in America—an experience many of the emigrants did not long survive.

After Waterloo great wars were few, and the demand for soldiers disappeared. Further, from the 1820s to the 1840s the kelp boom faded to nothing as Free Trade politicians allowed the duty-free import of foreign alkalis, with which kelp could not compete. Finally, the introduction of a Poor Law into the Highlands in 1845 meant that henceforward the landlords would have to pay steep poor rates to help support the very paupers they themselves had created. The clearances now rose to a crescendo. The steady driving out of the Gaels in the 1820s and 1830s (e.g. in Skye, Arran, Morven, Kintyre, Breadalbane, the Menzies country, and Rannoch) was now succeeded by a frenzy of evictions in the 1840s and 1850s. Most notable, perhaps, were those of Seaforth and Sir James Matheson in Lewis, Robertson of Kindeace in Glen Calvie and Greenyards, Colonel Gordon in South Uist and Barra, Lord Macdonald in North Uist and Skye, and Macdonell of Glengarry in Knoydart. These are only examples. Everywhere ships were ordered up to the sea-lochs of the Western Highlands and Islands, and people were herded on them for transportation to Canada or Australia without being consulted, and indeed against their strongly expressed wishes. Any escaping were hunted down and put back on board the emigrant vessels with the aid of the police. In this fashion the Highlands were emptied.

By the time of the 1880s crofters were to be found in any number only in Skye and the Outer Hebrides and along a few lochs on the west coast; even there they clung to patches of land, the good land having all gone to make either sheep farms, or deer forests where rich idlers—noble and royal— came from England and the Continent to make merry in the glens which had seen the tragic and brutal dispersal of the Highlanders. In the 1880s the groundswell of discontent burst out into a series of open insurrections in Skye, Lewis, Barra, Tiree and other places. It was called the Crofters’ War, and resulted in some measure of protection against eviction for the scattered remnants of the Gaels. But it was too late. The Highlands had already been won for capitalism, and great fortunes had been established through the expropriation by a few of what had previously belonged to the many. It may safely be said that the income from Highland land rose fifty or more times between 1750 and 1880.

Today in the Highlands many of the old chiefs’ descendants still own vast stretches of what was once their clans’ land—the Duke of Sutherland, Lord Lovat (chief of the Frasers), the Countess of Seafield (chief of the Grants), Cameron of Lochiel, the Duke of Atholl (chief of the Stewarts), the Marquis of Bute, the Earl of Cawdor (a Campbell chieftain). Lord Macdonald, Sir George Macpherson-Grant of Ballindalloch, and others. Many others of the old chiefs' heirs have preferred to sell their clans’ land, and otherwise invest the proceeds. None of them should be in any doubt as to the real nature of capitalist primitive accumulation.

Alwyn Edgar

Stand Together

"In actual history, it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, and force, play the great part." - Karl Marx

Arguments against socialist ideas and principles are taught in the classrooms or disseminated by the mass media, are nothing more than the mythological construction of, and obsession with, equating socialism to government authority. Mainstream education and journalists continue to falsely associate capitalism with freedom, private property with liberty, and socialism with dictatorship and theft. There simply is no substance because there has been literally no scholarship on these topics. It is done without any learning, any thought, any investigation, or any historical analysis. It is simply propaganda, designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to justify and maintain a system of exploitation, oppression, and mass inequality. Victims of the capitalist system are made to believe our victimization is not only justifiable but necessary – there is no alternative. This one-liner has been used ad nauseam by proponents of capitalism. It is, after all, a perfect sound bite for those who do not want to take the time to read and learn or to critically think. The notion of private property is lauded by right-wing theories of "libertarianism" as the basis of liberty and freedom. In reality, private property accomplishes the opposite and makes any semblance of human liberty obsolete and impossible. Legalistically, under capitalism and the state's enforcement of property law, the illegitimate ownership of land creates a scenario where land is monopolized by an extremely small and privileged group of people for the sole purpose of extracting wealth (essentially through force and coercion) from both natural and human resources. The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital.

Anti-socialist propaganda is based upon four basic presuppositions:

(1) that capitalism equals freedom; or, at the very least, is the only alternative,

(2) that capitalism naturally produces "winners" and "losers,"

(3) that capitalism is as meritocratic as possible, and thus everyone has an equal opportunity to become a "winner" or "loser," and your individual outcome is based solely on your "hard work" or lack thereof, and

(4) that "winners" have earned their wealth through their own exceptionalism, and thus deserve it; while, in contrast, "losers" have earned their impoverishment through their own shortcomings, and thus deserve it.

These ideas are ahistorical, they rely on a theory - that human beings, as we exist today, have just appeared in our current state, and that this state and was not shaped by history, as history does not exist. With this blank-slate approach, investigation is not necessary and inquiry is not necessary. Because finding the roots of these ills is a painstaking and overwhelming process that would rather be deemed unnecessary. For the world is as it is, the systems we live in are the best we can do, and emotion and instinct are all we need when reacting to the problems placed before us. In reality, there are historical causes and effects that have created modern conditions. Wealth, land, and power are accumulated in only one fundamental way: through the murdering, maiming, coercing, stealing, robbing, or exploiting of others. There simply is no other way to amass the obscene amounts of personal wealth as have been amassed on earth. Certainly not by hard work or abstinence. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer has been the case throughout history. It's no secret that capitalism has run amok over the past centuries

Capitalism is a system of property owners and property-less workers and respective governmental systems have always used their power to keep that division intact, literally for the sake of keeping wealth with wealth, and thus, power with the powerful. The founding fathers of the United States, as wealthy landowners and aristocrats, had no intentions of swaying from this model. When constructing a unique federal system in the colonies, John Jay captured the consensus thought of the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia, proclaiming that "those who own the country ought to govern it." And, in the influential Federalist Papers, James Madison echoed this sentiment, urging that a priority for any governmental system should be to "protect the minority of the opulent (the wealthy, land-owning slave-owners) against the majority (the workers, servants, and slaves)."

No new social class came to power through the door of the American Revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class. There was nothing egalitarian about this experiment. Roughly 10 percent of the American settlers, consisting of large landholders (the landed aristocracy) and merchants (the commercial aristocracy), owned nearly half the wealth of the entire country, and held as slaves one-seventh of the country's people. The founding fathers and settlers sought to create a political and governmental system that avoided handing any meaningful sense of power or influence to the people, while also establishing a rule of law capable of protecting the extreme unequal distribution of land and wealth. A general insecurity and fear of the masses, or "the mob," was a primary motivation in the birth of the nation. The makers of the constitution had direct economic interests in establishing a strong federal government: The manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the money-lenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slave owners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds.

Whether speaking of caste systems, nobility, aristocracy, feudalism, indentured servitude, chattel slavery, or capitalism, all modern socioeconomic systems have carried one common trait: they all amount to a minority using the majority (through exploitation or displacement) as a source of wealth, and thus have enforced and maintained this causal relationship by the threat and use of physical force and coercion in order to protect their minority interests. An economic system that relies on structural unemployment (a "reserve army of labour"), mass labor exploitation, the concentration of private property via the displacement of the majority, the forced extraction of natural resources, and constant production for the sake of conspicuous consumption needs a coercive, powerful, and forceful apparatus to protect and maintain it. The capitalist state serves this need,

In 1937, investigative journalist Ferdinand Lundberg obtained tax records and other historical documents in order to expose this perpetual chain of concentrated wealth. His findings, duly titled "America's 60 Families," concluded that:

"The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth. These families are the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States, functioning discreetly under a de jure democratic form of government behind which a de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments, has gradually taken form. This de facto government is actually the government of the United States - informal, invisible, shadowy. It is the government of money in a dollar democracy."

Nothing has changed. The unequal beginnings have remained consistent through history and have been maintained through a governmental system designed to protect them. From chattel slavery to wage slavery each epoch has continued seamlessly by constantly replacing and rebranding forms of human exploitation - peasant, servant, slave, tenant, labourer - as sources of concentrated wealth. Humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force. The world's problems are the result of capitalism. It is working exactly as it is supposed to work, intensifying as time goes on. Wealth and greed continue to rule the day and the wealthy are unapologetic.

62 individuals have been allowed to amass the same amount of wealth as 3.6 billion people combined. As of 2010, " the top 1% of US households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.1%."

“In virtue of this monstrous system, the children of the worker, on entering life, find no fields which they may till, no machine which they may tend, no mine in which they may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what they will produce to a master. They must sell their labour for a scant and uncertain wage." - Kropotkin in ‘The Conquest of Bread’

The basic mechanisms of capitalism is the relationship between capital and labor. No matter what argument one may make in support of capitalism, this fundamental relationship can never be denied. Everything from entrepreneurship to small, family-owned businesses to corporate conglomerates must rely on this foundational interaction inherent to this economic system. Whether branded as "crony-capitalism," "corporate-capitalism," "unfettered-capitalism" or any one of the many monikers used to distract from its inherent flaws and contradictions, proponents can't deny its lifeblood - its need to exploit labor. And they can't deny the fundamental way in which it exploits labor - by utilizing property as a social relationship. It is in this relationship where masses of human beings are commodified, essentially transformed into machines, and forced to work so they may create wealth for those who employ them. This fundamental aspect of capitalism is not debatable. It is explained by Marx in Capital, Volume One:

 "As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital."

The use of private property as a way to exploit others is unique to capitalism. For example, in contrast to feudalism, capitalists only allow workers access to their property during times when said workers are laboring to create wealth for said owners. In feudal times peasants were allowed to live on this land, and even use it as a means to sustain themselves and their families, as long as this personal activity was done after the lord's work had been completed. Now, with capitalism, workers "clock in," proceed to labor for a specified amount of time in exchange for a fraction of the wealth they create, "clock off," and then are left to find their own means of housing, food, clothing, and basic sustenance with only the wage they receive. This latter task has proven to be difficult for a majority of the world's population for the past number of centuries, even in so-called industrialized nations, which is why welfare states have become prominent as a means to facilitate the mass exploitation of the working class. Capitalists, and their governments learned long ago that workers must be able to survive, if only barely so that they may continue to labor and consume.

The unnatural and unequal distribution of power among humanity can be understood by simply imagining the start of any such society, where all would have equal footing, equal rights, equitable futures, and the basic will to satisfy needs (without taking that will away from others). However, if and when a member of that community decides to take more than they need, they immediately create a scenario where others will inevitably go without, be subjected to an exploitative social relationship, and/or rely on the illegitimate landowner for basic needs (in the form of some sort of exchange). Those who own property exploit those who do not. This is because those who do not own have to pay or sell their labor to those who do own in order to get access to the resources they need to live and work (such as workplaces, machinery, land, credit, housing, and products under patents).

And because of this inherently exploitative and dehumanizing labor process found under capitalism, the state has been needed to act on behalf of those who accumulate the illegitimate wealth from this process. Without the state, this unequal social arrangement - where the majority is essentially born into bondage - would not survive. In every system of class exploitation, a ruling class controls access to the means of production in order to extract tribute from labor. Capitalism is no exception.

Jean-Jacque Rousseau, in his 1755 ‘Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men,’ wrote:

"The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.' "

The wealthy few have stolen from the world; and have enslaved, impoverished, and indebted the rest of us (over 7 billion people) in the process. They have no right to their wealth. It belongs to us - it belongs to global society, not so we can all live extravagant luxury lifestyles, but rather so we can satisfy the most basic of human rights and needs - food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education - and thus carry on our lives as productive and creative human beings. Imposing new forms of taxation is a pathetic compromise. Reforms and regulations have tried and failed. Expecting representatives from the ruling class (who are directly employed and controlled by the owning class) with hopes of them voting away their own wealth has been proven to be a perpetual act in futility. The only just solution is to re-appropriate the stolen wealth; to end the capitalist system; to allow human beings the dignity and self-determination they deserve and to expropriate the expropriators once and for all. Righting centuries of wrongs is not "theft," it's social justice.

Adapted and abridged from an article by Colin Jenkins of the Hampton Institution. Full article can be found here.

Socialism will not fall from the skies.

Elections bring a renewed interest in politics. For at least a moment, it is a time to reflect on deep issues and concerns. However, beneath all of the political discussions lies an uncomfortable and overwhelming truth: Nearly all of our problems are rooted in the massively unequal ownership of land, wealth, and power. These problems are rooted in the majority of the planet's population being stripped of its ability to satisfy the most basic of human needs. This predicament is far from natural and is the product of centuries of political and economic policy carried out by a minuscule section of the world's people. If we are to ever establish a free and just society, mass expropriation of personal wealth and property will be a necessity. In other words, the few dozens of families who have amassed personal riches equal to half the world must be forced to surrender this wealth. This is a harsh and discomforting truth, indeed. But it is an undeniable truth. It is a truth that we must recognise. It is a truth that, despite being conditioned to resist, we must embrace if we are to construct a just world for all. After centuries upon centuries of being subjected to extreme hierarchical systems - from monarchies to feudalism to capitalism - we are on the precipice of making a final choice: economic justice through the mass expropriation of the capitalist class or continual wage-slavery.

Make no mistake, expropriation is not theft. It is not the confiscation of "hard-earned" money. It is not the stealing of private property. It is, rather, the restoration of massive amounts of land and wealth that have been built on the back of stolen natural resources, human enslavement, and coerced labor, and amassed over a number of centuries by a small privileged minority. This wealth, that has been falsely justified by a vast array of courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers, all of whom have been created to protect the interests of the ruling classes. Before we can take collective action, we must free our mental bondage (believing wealth and private property have been earned by those who monopolize it; and, thus, should be respected, revered, and even sought after), open our minds, study and understand history, and recognize this illegitimacy. With this understanding, we can move beyond the futile process of trying to reform systems that are rotted from the core and move forward on deconstructing this formidable autocracy and plutocracy.

Socialism is the system under which classes and exploitation are abolished for good and the differences between town and country and between manual and mental labour no longer exist. With socialism people are not forced to obey the division of labour as slaves, work no longer becomes a means of making a living, and the people will perform their social duties without any special coercive apparatus for the public good.  To eliminate the old society and build a brand-new social system is a great cause.

The basic cause of capitalist ills are the right to private property, the right to exploit, the right to rob, the right to cause crises, the right to compete, and cause wars by the lords of capital who herd people into factories and offices. Our choice is between two worlds, a world of exploitation, social injustice, chronic insecurity, economic crisis, and recurring wars ... and a world of proper economic planning, progressively increasing living standards, prosperity, and peace.

Socialism will not fall from the skies. Socialism can be realised only as the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. Every attempt to find another way, by supporting the capitalists, by conciliating them, by collaborating with them, in peace or in war, has led not toward the socialist goal but to defeat and disaster for the workers.

Socialists are not out to create a bloody insurrection. Socialists strive for the improvement of the conditions of the people. Our understanding of society teaches us that that improvement can only be attained by changing basic social relations, by a shift in ownership and control from the few to the many in an all-embracing socialisation - the elimination of the private ownership of the entire means of production - socialism. The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. And in the work of abolishing it, we all will co-operate together. We will work together so that we may enjoy together. Socialism, real socialism, is the only alternative to capitalism; and it is worth fighting for. If society is to change in a socialist direction and if capitalism is to be replaced by socialism, the source of that change must be the fight against the exploitative society by the exploited people themselves. Socialism is, and must always be a revolutionary idea. Unless it means the transfer of economic power from a small, greedy and irresponsible elite to the democratic control of the majority it means nothing. Socialism means nothing unless it means taking control of society from below. There has never been a time when real socialism is more relevant.

The Socialist Party is anxious that the interests of the workers as a class shall come before all other interests, either individual or sectional. The purpose of the Socialist Party is to gather these conscious workers together, to organise them, so that they can actively agitate and pursue the aim of achieving socialism. The object of the Socialist Party is the overthrow of capitalism, the emancipation of the workers from their oppressors and exploiters, and the establishment of the socialist commonwealth.

Being a footballer - it is just a job

Kevin Thomson played for Hibernian, Rangers, Middlesbrough and Dundee and has represented Scotland. He began his career with Hibernian before joining Rangers in 2007 for a £2m transfer fee. Middlesbrough signed Thomson for a fee of £2m in July 2010.

At 14-years of age, Thomson thought about jacking in football altogether after he earned a move to Coventry City. "Things didn't work out for me at Coventry," he recalls. "I felt I had a real chance to make it, but I hated it. It was such a hard environment for a young boy being away from home…When I came back up the road I'd lost my love for the game and felt being around my mates was more important. I had three or four months when I wasn't interested in football. I enjoyed the freedom of playing with my mates with no pressure," he says. "At that point, I wasn't interested in being a professional footballer."

Upon making his life-changing move to Rangers, Thomson was roundly derided by the Hibs faithful for selling his soul to the devil. However, while acknowledging their reasons for feeling betrayed, Thomson insists supporters need to understand that footballers are like everyone else in the sense that when money talks, you've got to listen. 

"Fans will only have read bits and pieces about what went on, so I understand why a lot of them dislike me. If I was a Hibs fan paying my money and a player signed for Rangers I would want them to fail as well, so I totally understand the fans' point of view. But I think all fans need to realise that in any walk of life if you can get ten times your salary elsewhere, then there's no way you'll stay where you are. The argument that a footballer shouldn't be influenced by money is just stupid. If you are offered better money and better opportunities elsewhere, why are you going to stay at a club just because you support them? I know there's a lot of Hibs fans that would say they'd play for Hibs for nothing, but let's not beat about the bush - for footballers it's a job first and foremost…If you've no desire to go from Hibs to a bigger club and then another bigger club, what's the point of playing football?”

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/kevin-thomson-i-ve-never-lost-my-love-for-hibs-1-1702268

We aim for a new society – The Socialist Commonwealth.

There are just two classes in this world. One owns tools it cannot use, and the other uses tools it does not own. The capitalists have the tools, which they cannot use. Working people have not the tools, without which they cannot live. Socialism comes because nothing else can come. The competitive system has become disastrous; it was useful, for it paved the way to the socialist commonwealth. The Socialist Party’s goal is to organise the large working mass in the whole world for the overthrow of capitalism, the emancipation of the toilers from oppression and exploitation and the establishment of the socialist commonwealth. It shall carry out a wide agitation and propaganda of the principles of social revolution for the purpose of overthrowing the capitalist system.

The Socialist Party stands for the socialist cooperative commonwealth. The only issue for the working class is the abolition of the wage system and to rescue themselves from their commodity status in modern society. Knowledge and experience have demonstrated that no reform under capitalism can be of any benefit to the working class as a whole. The revolutionary spirit seeks to make changes as great as can effectively be made, the reforming spirit seeks to make changes as little as can effectively be made. History is a chronicle of the slavery of the working class in many forms -chattel slavery, serfdom, wage-slavery. At various periods one group of exploiters has wrested the power from another—kings from priests, barons from kings, merchants from barons, plutocrats from them all; but always the workers have toiled, and always the product of their labour has been taken from them. Capitalism can no longer satisfy even their most elementary daily needs. Many attempts have been made by the workers to overthrow their exploiters, and to enjoy the fruits of their labour, in the words of John Ball, “without money and without price.” Today the workers are becoming conscious of their power and ability to win the world. When the working class heaves its giant shoulders like Atlas , the entire superstructure of Capitalism cracks and falls in ruins. Socialism is the hope of the whole working class. A classless socialist commonwealth cannot be attained without the overthrow of the rule of capitalism. To accomplish this aim is the mission of the working class.

Under state-capitalism the important industrial plants, the means of transport, and trading belong to the State. In the hands of the government, they are run on a profit basis. Thus enormous power is concentrated in the hands of the government. A powerful bureaucratic machine springs up ready to crush the individual citizen. The State is everybody’s employer, everybody’s landlord, everybody’s tradesman. The individual citizen finds himself completely at the mercy of the State. State capitalism, therefore, always develops strong tendencies towards dictatorship. Workers need to stand together against the worldwide system of oppression and exploitation that is capitalism.

Socialists often hear the comment that "Socialism is a good idea but it’s not practical." But today it’s becoming more apparent than ever that it is the present system — capitalism — that is impractical and unworkable. The quality of life is deteriorating. Reforms will not change the condition of working people. Working people are moving into action in defense of their rights and everywhere there is a searching for a solution to the problems confronting working people. We, in the Socialist Party, stands for a socialist society: where ownership and control of the means of production are taken out of the hands of the tiny minority of capitalists and placed in the hands of the majority — the workers. The capitalist system is run for the profits of the few, not the needs of the majority.

Working people can be educated to socialism, but they cannot be driven, lured, or bulldozed into it. The socialist conception of the world process is not cataclysmic. Socialists have come to build, not to destroy. For in this way alone shall the world be freed forever from war and oppression, from hunger and ignorance. Capitalism — the rule of business — must be abolished. The needs of working people can only be met by creating a planned economy, where ownership and control of production and distribution are taken from the tiny minority of capitalists and placed in the hands of the working people, to be run democratically. When the vast resources available to us are used to serve the needs of all instead of the profits of the few then the way will be opened for unparalleled growth in culture, freedom and the development of every individual. Such a society is worth fighting for. Capitalism has had its day and is doomed. Socialism is dawning.

The ruling class has no use for us because we know them, and they know we know them. We did not begin this class struggle, as others charge, but we are going to end it for others.

The problem is not Trident, it's capitalist wars

Anti-Trident demonstrations are taking place across Scotland ahead of a House of Commons vote on whether to renew Britain's nuclear deterrent. Thousands of people are attending 36 protests in cities and towns including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness and Dumfries. The Scottish Scrap Trident Coalition, which organised the rallies, said about 7,000 people had attended. A demonstration at the Mound in Edinburgh attracted about 500 peoplewhile there was a rally at Buchanan Street's steps in Glasgow. Smaller rallies also took place outside Scotland's cities, including Cromarty in the Highlands and the North Ayrshire town of Largs, where about 50 people attended.

Getting rid of Trident makes barely a dent in the global killing machine fuelled by capitalism's wars over our bosses' markets and resources. Long ago at the corner of Sauchiehall Street, stalwarts of the Socialist Party of Great Britain stood to greet a CND march with a huge banner and slogan which read: "This demonstration is useless—You must first destroy capitalism." Sad but true, nevertheless.

If you are opposed to war and all that it represents—as any right thinking person should be—you will advocate policies and take actions which will make war impossible, by removing its causes. That is, you will seek to transform society in the interests of human beings as a whole, without restriction to so-called race, nationality or gender, by establishing socialism in place of capitalism. To object to some weapons which might be used in wars, whilst implicitly tolerating others—is to accept the inevitability of war, and the social system which underpins it. Your efforts, because they oppose only certain kinds of war, and not war itself, serve, whether intentionally or otherwise, to make war more likely. It makes the likelihood of enlightenment and desirable change the more difficult. However concerned you may feel about the welfare of the human race, your actions betray the very constituency you claim to serve.  Campaigning against nuclear weapons is an irrelevance. Nuclear weapons are unlikely to be used in Syria, or Iraq, or South Sudan, or any of the other myriad "trouble spots" across the globe. Tens of millions of people have been killed since the end of World War II, and not a nuclear weapon fired in action. Are you unconcerned about such matters? By what contorted logic does "manner of death" come to mean more to you than "fact of death"?

We accept that the protestors were well motivated: that to use a cliché, "they care". But actions if they are to be effective require more, to be effective it must be appropriate. If you really care you will want to campaign for an absence of nuclear weapons and war—in a word, for socialism. What is needed is to go beyond a moral outcry and to attack the system which creates war. Good intentions will not solve the problem of war but there is a revolutionary alternative: "You must first destroy capitalism".

Corrupt Scotland

Off-the-shelf Scottish firms are being used for money-laundering and tax evasion in the former Soviet Union. Shell firms - advertised as "Scottish zero-tax offshore companies" - are being marketed across the European Union complete with official UK Government documentation that enables their owners to open bank accounts. Concerns have been growing for more than a year over controversial limited partnerships - a unique Scottish corporate structure used in the elaborate looting of $1bn from Moldovan banks in 2014. The use of an SLP and a bank account in an EU country allows former Soviet "investors" the ability to bypass so-called blacklisted tax havens. Several former USSR states have banned direct contact with offshore zones. However, an SLP enables them to deal indirectly with jurisdictions such as Belize and Panama. That is because SLPs while registered in Scotland are often owned by "members", or partners, in the Caribbean. So the SLP is used to provide a financial bridge between the former Soviet Union and tax havens by, nominally, provided a corporate based in the respectable European Union jurisdiction. That SLP then opens doors to a bank account in another EU jurisdiction. However, the SLP does not need to publish financial accounts if it does not business in Scotland, meaning it effectively enjoys the secrecy and tax advantages of its offshore parent companies.

At least a dozen agencies in Latvia, Ukraine and Russia are selling Scottish limited partnerships (SLPs) along with Certificates of Good Standing, essentially references from Britain's Companies House confirming that the SLPs are bona fide. Such papers are then used to secure bank accounts in, say, Riga, Latvia, or Nicosia, Cyprus. Russian-language adverts seen by The Herald show such certificates being offered for a price of 350 euros - on top of one-off payments of 1700 euros for an off-the-shelf SLP, typically registered in a virtual office or private flat somewhere in Scotland.

Green MSP Andy Wightman WHO has campaigned for reform of SLPs, said: "These revelations are further proof that Scottish Limited Partnerships are now the vehicle of choice for a growing number of criminal enterprises. The ease with which they can be registered and exploited for nefarious purposes such as money-laundering emphasises how urgently the Scottish and UK governments should be dealing with this issue."

Socialism - A sustainable co-operative commonwealth

To substitute common, for private, ownership of the means of production and abolishing the present system of production means substituting production for use for production for sale that is the economic development the Socialist Party urges. The Socialist Party’s objective is the social or co-operative production for the satisfaction of the wants of a commonwealth. Mankind has always been a social being, as far back as we can trace ourselves. Until the present system of production (production for sale) was developed, co-operative production for common use was the norm.

If the modern state nationalises certain industries, it does not do so for the purpose of restricting capitalist exploitation, but for the purpose of protecting the capitalist system and establishing it upon a firmer basis, or for the purpose of itself taking a hand in the exploitation of labour, increasing its own revenues. As an exploiter of labour, the state is superior to any private capitalist. Besides the economic power of the capitalists, it can bring to bear its political power.  The state has never carried on the nationalising of industries further than the interests of the ruling classes demand, nor will it ever go further than that. Nationalisation will never be carried so far as to injure the capitalists and landlords or to restrict their opportunities for exploiting the proletariat. The state will not cease to be a capitalist institution. The Socialist Party has set to call the working-class to conquer the political power to the end that and to establish a self-sustainable co-operative commonwealth.

The fact remains that none of the reformist parties has so well-marked and clear an aim as the Socialist Party. It may, indeed, be questioned whether the other political parties have any aims at all. They all hold to the existing order, although they all see that it is untenable and unendurable. Their manifestoes contain nothing except a few little piecemeal palliatives by which they hope and promise to make the untenable, tenable and the unendurable, endurable. The Socialist Party, on the contrary, does not build on hopes and promises, but upon the unalterable necessity of social progress. All other political parties live only in the present, from hand to mouth; the Socialist party is the only one which has a definite aim for the future, the only one with a consistent purpose. Those who oppose the Socialist Party declare that the co-operative commonwealth cannot be considered practicable and cannot be the object of the endeavors until the plan is presented to the world in a perfected form, and has been tested and found feasible. They start with the notion that “human nature” is unchangeable. Socialists are told that they must come out with their plan of a future socialist society; if they refuse, it is a sign that they themselves have not much confidence in it. The predictions and blueprints can at best show that the socialist commonwealth is not impossible and they are bound to be defective. They can never cover all the details and minutia of social life; they will always leave some loophole through which critics can object to.

The capitalist social system has run its course; its dissolution is now only a question of time. The substitution of a new social order for the existing one is no longer simply desirable, it has become inevitable. Socialism is not only to be possible, but to be the only thing possible. If indeed the socialist commonwealth were an impossibility, then mankind’s civilization will relapse into barbarism. As things stand today we must move forward into socialism. Working people live in such conditions that, increasingly, they realise that the only way out of their grave situation lies through socialism. Thus, increasingly favourable conditions are being created for bringing them into the active struggle for socialism.