Liberation not enslavement

We are facing escalating crises and our political leaders are unable to seriously address the threats to the human family and the world we all live in. The climate crisis is spinning out of control, and the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow unabated. When everything points to even more assaults upon people and our planet optimism is not a virtue but a sign of irrationality. Facing climate change, species extinction, global conflicts, and poverty, allowing ourselves to be disturbed by them, moved by them and yet remaining sane, is no easy thing. Anxiety and worry are healthy symptoms. Instead of hiding from this anguish we can confront them, not as isolated individuals but collectively as a class. The disenfranchised, the poor, and the working class need to collectively band together to restructure the system, which has created our discontent in the first place. The hope that comes from facing the worst is enduring because it is not built upon illusion and wishful thinking. It is defiant and courageous and refuses to capitulate. Adherence to old ideas will further exasperate the situation, the very problems it has helped to create—which is truly insane. It doesn’t make sense. Together, we can overcome our fears and need not give in to despair. Think revolutionary.  Unlike the apocalyptic end-of-the-world alarmist Cassandras of doom, socialists recognise that we have choices and we have alternatives and that we can create a better world with a sustainable future. When we understand what is causing the crises, then we can solve the problem. As socialists, our prognosis for the future of life and the planet is a promising one but only if we transform our competitive capitalist society into a cooperative commonwealth. However, to tell people “don’t worry – it’s going to be ok” is doing no-one a favour.

Mainstream politicians will continue to protect the corporate executives, who will continue to maximise profit without concern for the majority of people. We need a revolution to change things. We have to build the new economy ourselves. The key to over-throwing the capitalist order is that it something we have to do ourselves and we cannot leave it to politicians or their parties. It will be up to us – ordinary people – to make it happen. Consumerist capitalist society cannot be reformed to make it sustainable or just; it must be replaced by a society with fundamentally different structures. We refuse to seek a “socialist” veneer, which amounts to an effort to render capitalism a bit more humane and a little more efficient, and no more. Reformism is not liberatory, but merely reformulates the exploitative class relations to make them more palatable. Action is required to be taken to change the entire economic system. Income redistribution and tax reform is no substitute for the abolition of private property. It is not only consumption that must be made egalitarian, but production. Exploitation for capital accumulation must be ended. No amount of reforms can replace revolutionary change by the working class. Of course, this is not an easy path to pursue. While slightly mitigating the suffering of people is not our goal, it is by no means a bad thing. It would be callous to ignore opportunities to alleviate hardship in the name of political purity. However, the Socialist Party position is that there are others better placed and better organised to engage in palliative policies and that a socialist party should remain fixed upon its purpose – the education, agitation, and organisation to bring about a socialist society.

 A radical situation is awakening. People are becoming more receptive to new perspectives. They are readier to see that everything seems possible and quicker to understand that much more is possible. Our radical message is one the powerful ruling class is desperately trying to silence. Capitalists are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill and lie to make money. They throw workers out of jobs and poor families out of homes, they wage wars to take resources and raw materials, they poison and pollute the ecosystems, slash social services, gut health-care and trash public education, plundering, and looting wherever they can in the name of profit.  Those on the reformist left who once dismissed capitalism as exploitative now honour a new version as rational and humane, describing it as “market socialism”, another form of enslavement of the working class. The long struggle for social justice and economic freedom carried out by ordinary men and women alone holds out the possibility of salvation. 

Treating The Symptoms

The November issue of the Anglican Journal includes an article reeking of self-congratulation. The Trinity Anglican Church in Edmonton recently inaugurated a new ministry which is an outreach program serving the mental health needs of the South Alberta Light Horse, a reserve regiment of the Canadian army. With the brilliance and clarity of genius, Arch-Deacon Chris Pappas said, ''You can't go out and be asked to kill, or see the atrocities of war and not come back changed, or hurt and hurting. these inner wounds can harm the reservists relationships with their spouses and children or may result in increased alcohol use, for example. Their effects can also disrupt the reservists finances.''

 Great going Chris baby, you mean there's such a thing as PTSD/?,..now who'da thunk it? 

Nor are the Anglicans alone helping with counselling, pastoral visits, financial advice, ad nauseum; no Sir - the Lutherans, the University chaplaincy at the U of Alberta and the Edmonton Inter-Faith Centre for Education and Action have all rallied to the cause, with an annual budget of $15,000. 

The pity of it all is, when one thinks of the time, effort, money, and good intentions poured into this, one thinks how much better it would be if devoted to bringing about a world where war would not exist. 

John Ayers.

A Revengeful Jam

On November 4th Bridget Kelly and Bill Baroni, former aides to New Jersey Governer Chris Christie, were found guilty of creating an epic traffic jam, to seek revenge on Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for not endorsing Christie for re-election in 2013.

The jam was on the George Washington Bridge, which is America's busiest, connecting New Jersey to New York City. Their excuse was that the closing was due to a legitimate traffic study. 

Christie has denied all knowledge of it, but whether he was aware of it or not, the whole thing was extremely childish and clearly shows how ridiculous life is becoming under capitalism. 

John Ayers.

In defence of the people and the planet

There has never been a more pressing time to rethink politics. We don’t need calls for moral uplift or personal responsibility. We need calls for economic democracy and equality. We don’t need calls for fixing the terminally broken system; instead, we need to build socialism. Such a politics must be rooted in collective struggles. We need a radical imagination infused with the spirit of class-war for an independent politics that regards a radical democracy as part of a never-ending struggle. The future of the human species - if there is to be a future - must be a socialist one. If we really care about whether there will be a human future - each one of us who claims to care has to be prepared to radically challenge the capitalist order. An economic system that magnifies human greed and encourages short-term thinking, while pretending there are no physical limits on human consumption, must be opposed. 

Capitalism is not the system through which we will craft a sustainable future. We must make it clear that ecological sustainability is impossible within capitalism. We have to reject stories about technological miracles. The powers that be are betting on a technological fix to the problems that won't threaten the existing power structure with its unequal distribution of power and centralised decision-making -- a way to keep living as we're living. Even if this was remotely possible, a technological breakthrough would not address the dehumanising way the system subordinates human needs to the needs of the capitalist profit system.

If socialists are to fight against capitalism, we all need to connect issues, bring together diverse social movements and produce long-term organisations that can provide a view of the future that does not simply mimic the present. Even people with a critique of the current system and a yearning for change don't yet know what a new world will look like or how we can create one. In recent years, many individuals and organisations involved in these separate campaigns have begun to embrace a holistic approach that moves beyond single issues. This requires to take real change seriously and be highly critical of any reformist politics yet our socialist message must resonate with people. Our critique of capitalism enables people to ask questions to raise consciousness. Change begins with a public discussion that presents a more accurate picture of our human interaction and recognises the proper purpose of the economy, and highlight the essential social and environmental foundations of true prosperity and well-being. It also means we have to develop political organisations that join together struggles across national borders. If we put aside the fantasies about capitalism found in economics textbooks, we recognise that capitalism is a wealth-concentrating capital accumulating system that allows a small number of people to dominate not only economic but also control the political decision-making process - which makes a mockery of our any alleged commitment to principles rooted in solidarity and democracy. We need to point out that it is not individual greed that created this economic system. None of us voted to put in place an economy that requires endless growth that works against both personal and planetary well-being.

If people are ever to enjoy a free, democratic, and equitable society, they’d have to build it themselves from the bottom up. Leaders move from the driver’s seat to the backseat and let the working class take the wheel. We should be cautious about the temptation to seek a blueprint. After all, a blueprint sounds so static and pre-engineered. But we do need a process of envisioning a new economy otherwise, we won’t know where we are heading. The guide starts with common requirements including cooperation, democracy, and ecological well-being. Such proposals won’t specify the exact details play, just the rough sketch. The goal of socialists has always been to restore community. Marx defined socialism as a free association of producers and as a situation in which the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all. Humanity’s lesson is that individual happiness and fulfillment are best achieved through cooperation, caring, and sharing with one another. The social sciences conclude that we humans evolved to live in cooperative community with one another and nature. Our success as a species has been an extraordinary capacity for creative organisation and resilience.

In order for capitalism to be overthrown, millions and millions of people must be dissatisfied and must want something else, a pressing desire to live a certain way and not to live another way. If this pressing desire were a desire to live free, to be autonomous, to live in democratically controlled communities, to participate in the self-regulating activities of a mature people, then capitalism could be destroyed. Otherwise, we are doomed to perpetual slavery and possibly even to extinction. Despite the countless grassroots projects already under way, the global capitalist juggernaut is too powerful to stop unless more and more of us are becoming aware of how disastrous it is for people and the planet. The social consequences and environmental costs are becoming more apparent. People are beginning to understand that something is fundamentally wrong and that minor tinkering with the current system is not the answer. A critical mass is ready for fundamental change: what they need is a clear explanation of the root cause of the crises we face and solutions that are meaningful. Our answer is a simple one - people should be able to live decent lives without hurting other people and without harming the planet. This means we have to have democratic control and have sufficient material resources to meet our needs.

Seize the Moment

 Demagogues and dictators thrive on fear and insecurity. People are hurting and disillusioned with mainstream politics and increasingly angry at the austerity policies and the economic system destroying lives and the planet. Many believe that it's only a matter of time before a new crisis hits. Yet in today’s world, anyone who fails blame themselves and feels ashamed. People see themselves, not society, as the problem. Even when primary blame is placed upon the global elite, it says that the primary problem is not the system; but the beneficiaries of the system and things would be better if they were not too greedy. That is, of course, not to say that there aren't powerful people in the world that do tremendous damage, or that these people should not be held to account. These people, however, are produced and given power by a system that runs deeper than anyone's capacity to design. It is the money/profit system that has taken on a life of its own. We have a potential abundance at our fingertips. The scarcity that so many experience today is not the result of any fundamental lack, but rather of the misdistribution of resources. Imagine the kind of abundance we could have if we didn't devote ourselves to the production of weaponry, car culture, fashion and consumerism, junk food, and every other form of waste that contributes nothing to human happiness. A world of abundance doesn't depend on any new technology. We have the capability now.

People cannot rely on others to save them because fundamental change is required. If capitalism’s survival is at stake, it will marshal all the weapons to defend itself and stop the emergence of a new system. When we work for change from the ground up and when we are building towards a future we know is possible with our own hands, we find our true power rather than hoping distant leaders. The old economic system is dying and another is struggling to be born. The socialist movement must serve as midwife. Change is not going to be smooth or easy. We are the ones we are looking to and it must be ourselves who grasp the opportunities to come together. We cannot forget all the struggles that came before us, and imagine all those to come and we must remember that social movements are growing all over the world that must merge and coalesce into the common struggle. Socialists urgently need to mobilise fellow-workers around the world for a process of transformation that can end the cause of all our social problems.

The terms socialist and socialism were first used by Robert Owen to describe the views of those who were in favour of the substitution of universal and ordered co-operation for chaotic competition. A socialist means a man or a woman who recognises the class war between the propertyless and the owning class as the inevitable historic outcome of the capitalist system and of the direct economic and social antagonisms which it has engendered and fostered. Who sees that those antagonisms can only be resolved by the complete ownership control over the means of production and distribution, by the whole people, thus abolishing the class State and the wages system, and constituting a co-operative commonwealth or a social-democracy. Who uses existing political institutions to educate the people and to prepare, as far as possible, peacefully for the social revolution which must result in world socialism. Who holds that the methods of giving expression to this great socialist change should be completely democratic and accountable in every aspect. It is in the best interests of the working people that the struggle for political power should be carried through by peaceful means, without civil war. It will not be simple to achieve this. There will be advances and setbacks. Political power must be won; and in the struggle for power, the winning of a majority in Parliament, supreme organ of representative power, is one of the essential steps. A socialist majority in Parliament is to be won it needs the support of the mass movement outside Parliament. The one supports the other. The working class and popular movement will need to be ready to use its organised strength to prevent or defeat attempts at violence against it.

The goal is the democratisation of wealth. The Socialist Party is not resigned to the belief that the system cannot be changed because “that’s the way it is”. Our hope is to build a new system, a new pluralistic economic and political structure. The least we can do is begin by contributing to the solidification of that idea, involving ourselves in it as fully as we can. We seek to construct a new system of collective rights geared towards turning to society into an effective decision-making entity. Chaos and dictatorship are not the only alternatives to the current democracy. A democracy created among all people is possible – a democracy not reduced to merely voting, but founded on participation and citizen popular control.

A Better World

There has been discontent, unrest, protest and movements for democracy and against austerity across the globe. These movements have been a strong expression of anger and address concerns about the lack of democracy, social justice, and dignity. Modern society is a system based on private property and dominated by the capitalist mode of production with the aim to create surplus-value. People are being socialised into passive producers and consumers. Today’s democracy has broken all its promises and the progressive liberal political parties have been reduced to piecemeal reform of capitalism. But even this palliative policy has become problematic as capitalism has developed into a more global system where state interventionism becomes more and more difficult. International free trade agreements and institutions such as the IMF restrict what an individual nation can do and not do. Transnational corporations are powerful players in domestic and international politics.

Unless humanity breaks through the denial that there is no alternative and that this is the best there is we face dim and daunting days ahead. Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry, and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the primary goal of making profits. In capitalism, people are not considered important unless the market potential makes them important. We want a new and better future. Socialism is the worldwide ‘movement of movements’ driven by an awareness that the multiple crises we face are fundamentally caused by an outmoded economic system in need of wholesale transformation. But this is what we still lack - a truly unified fusion of movements that comprises the collective actions of an engaged working class yet this is our greatest hope for bringing about world socialism. We are fighting for a different kind of world, one in which folks stand united in which we dare to see the humanity in each other. Cynicism is the greatest enemy we face in our struggles, even above and beyond the terrors of oppression, because it saps us of the energy we need to actually change our circumstances. We cannot simply wait for the implosion of the capitalist system and expect the socialist utopia to arise spontaneously from its ashes. We can build upon the cooperative and empathetic values if we struggle against those who aim to exploit and systemize our more anti-social attitudes.

If you don’t own the means of production you can never turn them to your advantage. We want a world where we produce things for need, not for profit; for use value, not for exchange. We cannot achieve that without a political challenge to the capitalist class. If we look at ourselves, we find we are not as selfish and calculated as the ideologists of capitalism would have it. We often forget that the vast majority of people know deep down inside that the world is unfair that a few have too much and most have too little. What stops them from taking action to remedy the problem is rarely the lack of knowledge but instead a lack of hope. They feel that capitalism, inequality, and injustice are inevitable. The idea that to struggle for a better world is naive, and that if the system were to collapse, a far worse tyranny would appear. Hasn’t that been the evidence of the past? Not only should we argue that human beings have the capacity for good and evil and people aren’t always cruel and vicious, but we must emphasise that the negative side of our behaviour was not when social order broke down, but when order and the State was restored.

The capitalists who would pit us against each other via the construct of the labour market. Leaders don’t unite us, instead, they incite us one against the other. Leaders don’t respect us, instead, they deceive us. Leaders don’t help us, instead, they corruptly fill their own coffers.

We are set to enter a period for unprecedented change. The world needs to change and has to do it fast. Climate change and environmental degradation war, and economic inequality are key problems the global community currently faces. How can we create participatory workplaces that make decision-making more democratic and equitable? To imagine a better economic and political system is a necessary step in making it happen. It seems impossible to deny that our current global capitalist system has created, and prevents us from fixing, the mess we are in. Primarily this is due to the power of the profit engine of capitalism, which in turn incentivizes the externalisation of as many costs as possible. The owners of capital are driven to make ever greater profits -- the system rewards those who do and punishes those who don't -- which of course leads the profit seeker to reduce costs in any way possible. To survive, capitalists must try to avoid paying for the negative consequences of whatever is the source of their profits, be it the instruments of war, environmental destruction, global warming, over-consumption or an unhealthy food system. Protecting and maximising profit gives capitalists the motive to deny the ill effects of its production methods. Few governments will pass laws that may negatively affect profits which is the source of what some call crony capitalism, but which is, in fact, a logical outcome of a system that promotes greed and private profit. The reality is that governments are run by and for the rich.

But what sort of social system can be imagined which will save us from global warming and growing inequality; one that can come about so that weapons are turned into ploughshares? We refuse to see this one truth: we need a new economy. It is time to come together and build a better system, one that promotes environmental sustainability, equality, and cooperation. For change to happen peacefully it must be popular, supported by most people around the world. That, in turn, means the new system must ultimately be more democratic because the most popular system is one in which most people feel they have a stake and share in.

Socialism aims to create new, free, collaborative economic relationships where the technological tools are owned by everybody and used for everyone in a cooperative way. The World Socialist Movement plans a planetary cooperative and a better world of the future.

Towards real socialism

Did you ever ask yourself why capitalism continues to exist in spite of all the problems it is causing in the world? The simple answer is because the people support capitalism and that they support it because they believe in it. As long as most people believe in the ideas of capitalism it will remain unassailable. A battle of ideas is required, not street battles at the barricades. A popular movement if it is able to ideologically defeat the ruling class then civil servants and police will defect, making a non-violent peaceful revolution possible. Armed insurrection usually gives cause to adversaries to be savage and ruthless, and the State is very much better organized and equipped for any such militarised confrontation. The outcome is inevitably tragic for the workers’ side. The ruling class is increasingly nervous because they know that if revolutionary ideas that question their legitimacy prevail and if their own propaganda to justify their privilege and power fails, they are finished. This is why voices of dissent are suppressed by the state. It is tempting to view the ruling class as simply sadistic but they are mostly acting out of fear, afraid of equality, afraid of real democracy, and afraid of justice. Batons and tear-gas may work in the short-term, but they won’t put out the spirit of change.

Although it appears that the social struggles are lying dormant, radical ideas are percolating are rising among our fellow-workers. Popular discontent for the ruling elite across the political spectrum, from Right to Left is nearly universal. A righteous anger of the people exists. It is a question of which ideas will win through. An insignificant spark can easily ignite a rebellion. No one knows where or when the eruption will take place. We cannot ‘make’ a real revolution. No person or movement can ignite it. No one knows the form it will take. They appear suddenly and unexpectedly, neither the rulers’ nor the workers’ parties having any warning.  But socialists must be organised to educate and agitate when it arrives to transform destructive anger into constructive revolution. The articulation of a viable socialism is of a vital necessity. Once the vision of a new society takes hold in the popular imagination, the old regime is finished. Opposition and protest devoid of ideas and vision are never a threat to the ruling class. Without a clear definition and direction, without ideas behind it, revolution descends into chaos. The development of revolutionary consciousness often goes unseen and unnoticed. The slow, quiet, and peaceful social evolution becomes a revolution. This is where we are headed. Other than an apocalyptic catastrophe, socialism is the only option left. The Socialist Party has the potential to educate people before it’s too late.

Because the socialist movement is an organic living network around the world, it is difficult to set forth a clear blueprint or predict the future. Still, we can embrace certain general principles. Socialism is a concept not well understood, but it essentially advocates a system of common-ownership and democratic control. The goal is actual participation by the people in the running of our affairs, including the work place. Rather than having politicians make all of the important decisions “for” us, a socialist society would have delegates who could be recalled and replaced if they started making decisions on matters of import without the consent of the majority. This is actually the way we have organized ourselves for most of our time on planet Earth. In other words, real participatory democracy of self-governing associations. Socialism is interdependent, interconnected and integrated.

Socialism will consist of  communities with rules, social norms, and accepted practices for managing their commonly-owned shared resources. It is not a free-for-all society in which there is no community, no rules which, in truth, is something more akin to the right-wing libertarian free-marketeers where people’s lives become more atomized and communities have been broken down. Socialism will run by the people who will choose to administer resources in a democratic collective manner, with a special regard for free and equitable access, production for use, and responsible stewardship of the environment. There will be no more private or state plunder of our common wealth. Cooperative activity will supersede the predatory markets and centralised bureaucracies. The scale of human connection has grown - from tribes to communities to nation-states and norms and ethics become inevitable in spaces where groups of human beings come together to interact with another. We know that urban populations are going to keep increasing in the foreseeable future. So we must radically re-imagine our cities. They must become not only ecologically productive and sustainable but able to reflect its citizens’ wishes by participatory democracy and socialising sports and leisure, the arts and culture, cooking and eating.

If the revolution is to be successful it must be global. The very thought of workers internationalism has always struck fear into the capitalist class everywhere. They are accustomed to living in a transnational existence and benefit when we the people are confined within borders but the digital revolution permits us, for the first time, to create a true international. It is time to recapture the spirit of the Industrial Workers of the World and the idea of a global “One Big Union”. The modes of socialist organisation are extremely elastic and can be formed, modified adapted and adjusted, added to, re-shaped and re-formed according to local conditions and changing circumstances, therein is its chief strength. The world socialist movement will be a flexible network of various relationships of mutual aid. Errors and mistakes will thus be confined to the jurisdiction of specific groups and so limiting damage.

Socialists have a daunting task ahead. But it may not be as hopeless as it seems. Capitalism relies to a great extent on voluntary servitude. When enough people in what may be a mass awakening decide the game is up, the game will be up.

Children Exposed To Poverty

As child poverty in British Columbia increases, kids are reaching school age more vulnerable than at any time in the last fifteen years, a new University of BC report has found. Teachers were asked to rate each child based on their physical health, social skills, emotional maturity, language development and communication abilities. The results showed 32.2 per cent were below par.

According to Joanne Shroeder, director of the Comox Valley Child Development Association,''High levels of poverty in BC are a major factor in children's well-being. The stress of living in poverty is not good for children. Many families with young children are working long hours to balance child care and shift work.''

It is one of the most damning indictments of capitalism imaginable that children should be exposed to poverty with all the social ills it creates and alarming that child poverty is increasing. 

Ms. Shroeders suggestion is increased public investment in early childhood development which would do minimal good as long as capitalist politicians can spare the money. 

A society where poverty would not exist would be a better answer. 

John Ayers.

Not So Compassionate

Jarley Silva is an illegal immigrant from Brazil, whom, after living in Canada for nine years, was hit by a car, in 2011, and still bears the scars including 23 screws in his shattered leg. The accident, in Toronto's west end, was a hit and run as he was crossing the street. Since no one took the licence number the driver was never identified. Though Silva has tried hard he hasn't been able to collect a cent owing to his illegal residency. Under Provincial law the government doesn't give payouts from its Motor Vehicle Accident Claims Fund to anyone in Ontario illegally. 

That's what so great about capitalism - it's so compassionate.

 John Ayers

It's Time to Imagine a New Society

We live in the beginning of a global technological revolution which will turn society’s conditions upside down. We cannot stop this transformation, but we can influence where it will go. Capitalism has corroded the social fabric of societies around the world, destroyed solidarity among people and established a climate of fierce competition and struggle for survival. People are left without any positive prospect or hope for the future. People feel cheated by something or someone that they cannot properly identify yet there exists an immense anger. There have been endless mass protests. The position of the Socialist Party, however, is that the irrationalities of capitalism can only be countered by an organised social movement rather than any individualist and anti-technology politics that permeates the so-called anti-capitalist current. There are libraries of books that analyse what is wrong with society, the majority of which are trying to advocate the impossible – which is to propose reforms both old and new that are claimed will benefit the people. We cannot create a better world by waging a war against capitalism while at the same time upholding the current economic system. We have gone too far now trying to make improvements within a society that is led by blind and unbridled market forces. The time has come when we must demonstrate in our millions not against this or that, but rather for something. The one solution is to unite the people throughout the world, for social revolution. No other solution will work until the people throughout the world rise up in unison together. When millions of people gather in protest from nation to nation, there is an unconscious to conscious realisation that we are one humanity.

Humanity must share the world’s wealth and resources. Sharing is inherent in every person and integral to who we are as human beings. The greed and selfish indifference that defines our society has been implanted and conditioned within us. For the Socialist Party, the fundamental thing is that people must want change before they can achieve a social revolution. And they must prepare for a social revolution. We do not place much faith in spontaneous uprisings. We stand for a class-free, state-free society of common ownership in which money becomes redundant and the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" applies. We are committed to the concept of a self-organised majority revolution without leaders and for the working class forming a political party to contest elections and eventually win control of political power, not to form a government but to immediately abolish capitalism and usher in the money-free, wages-free society that real socialism will be. The alternative to capitalism is a society in which all forms of exchange and money will be abolished and all land and property will be taken into the control of the community. The parliamentary path does not imply that people hand over their power to others every few years. Parliament is the institution to which the working class shall send their delegates with the purpose of declaring capitalism abolished and to validate this revolutionary act. There has to be some means to effect the necessary transfer of power from the capitalist to the working class, a means which clearly and democratically indicates the will of the socialist majority. This conquest is, indeed, an indispensable condition of the social revolution, in other words, of the transformation of capitalist property into social property. It is only after and by the political expropriation of the capitalist class that its economic expropriation can be achieved. The parliamentary process is the answer.  It will be within our party, not parliament that the “self-activity” and “self-organisation” of the working class will be realised. Far from excluding each other, electoral action and revolutionary action complete each other. There is not, and there never will be, other than a single category of means, determined by circumstances: those which conduct to end pursued.

We can also dismiss the idea of the “workers’ state” peddled by some Trotskyists. In ‘Socialism: Scientific and Utopian’ Engels gives us a repudiation of the view that the state can be progressive:

“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal collective capitalist. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more it actually becomes collective capitalist, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-workers, proletarians. But the capitalist relation is not done away with; it is rather brought to a head.”

Marx and Engels saw the state as the "executive committee" of a ruling class. In a socialist society, the state, as the government over people, would give way to a simple, democratic "administration of things". The vision of a socialist society can be fairly summed up as a world-wide system of social organisation based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by, and in the interests of, the whole community, a  society where human beings would voluntarily contribute in accordance with their mental and/or physical abilities to the production and distribution of the needs of their society and in which everyone would have free and equal access to their needs.

Capitalism can’t be reformed so as to work in people's interests. Profits always come first and people second. William Morris writes:

"The Socialist League has declared over and over again its sense of the futility of Socialists wasting their time in getting . . . palliative measures passed, which, if desirable to be passed as temporarily useful, will be passed much more readily if they do not mix themselves up in the matter, and which are at least intended by our masters to hinder Socialism and not further it. Over and over again it has deprecated Socialists mixing themselves up in political intrigues; and it believes no useful purpose can be served by their running after the votes of those who do not understand the principles of Socialism."

Socialists understand the global nature of capitalism and the folly of trying to establish socialism in one country. Capitalism is international.

TO CREATE IS TO RESIST - TO RESIST IS TO CREATE

NO MORE RUSH HOURS

The majority of Torontonians are finding the construction projects in the downtown core to be an inconvenience when both streets and sidewalks are closed. 76 per cent, in a telephone survey, said they disagreed with the developers and contractors who said it was necessary. Whether it is or isn't is hardly the moot point, which is the fact that it's just another problem that capitalism causes. Most of the congestion is, obviously, in rush hour. 

In a socialist society work would be organized in such a way there wouldn't be a rush hour. It's probable there wouldn't be a downtown either.

 John Ayers.

The National's Blinkers

Andrew Carnegie was the wealthiest Scot that ever lived, and at one point was the richest man in the world with a fortune that some experts have estimated at the equivalent of $200 billion in current money, or more than twice the worth of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. However, The National’s hagiographic portrayal of Carnegie, as the man who worked himself up from nothing with hard work omitted certain unsavoury aspects of his life. He is absolved of all responsibility in brutal strike-breaking because as the newspaper has it – “he was on holiday”.

The truth is that he did not have the courage to execute his own murderous designs so he commissioned another to carry out the crimes while he mixed and mingled with the upper classes until the ghastly work was done. Just before he left for his Highland estate, Carnegie instructed the head of the plant Henry Clay Frick to reduce wages by 25 percent and end union recognition. Carnegie was not holding back from any confrontation with his strikers. Frick had reputation for ruthlessness against unions and strikers. Carnegie may not have been at the scene of the crime at the time and although he may not have personally pulled the trigger, he had loaded and aimed the gun for Frick to fire. In the cables sent to Frick it clearly shows he supported the move to employ strike-breakers and gave instructions to Frick do whatever was necessary to win the battle against the strikers. Carnegie was fully complicit in how the Homestead incident was handled and he himself wrote: "The handling of this case on the part of the company has my full approval and sanction." 

 Carnegie broke the strike and slashed wages even further, imposed a longer work day and blacklisted over 500 men who would never again work in the mills again. The union lost virtually its entire treasury supporting strikers and successfully defending them against attempts by Carnegie to have them convicted of murder and other crimes. Carnegie effectively crushed the workers at Homestead and as a result, unionism would die in steel plants throughout the country. By 1900, not a single steel plant in Pennsylvania remained union. By 1910, the union had no members at all. Unionism had been eradicated from the entire steel industry, and though the output of steel mills had doubled and the number of working hours had increased from 10hrs to 12hrs a day, pay barely increased. In many mills, it actually decreased. Workers would have virtually no say in their conditions or wages, and while the company's profits soared, its work-force was reduced to a state of semi-slavery. So just remember whose blood, sweat, and tears paid for those libraries.  

Unlike The National newspaper, Henry Frick held a more honest view of his and Carnegie’s morality.

“You can tell Carnegie I’ll meet him. Tell him I’ll see him in Hell, where we both are going.” Frick explained.

Likewise, this anonymous poem well understood the Carnegie that The National refrains from exposing.

"A Man Named Carnegie"

Sing ho, for we know you, Carnegie;

God help us and save us, we know you too well;

You're crushing our wives and you're starving our babies;

In our homes you have driven the shadow of hell.

Then bow, bow down to Carnegie,

Ye men who are slaves to his veriest whim;

If he lowers your wages cheer, vassals, then cheer.

Ye are nothing but chattels and slaves under him.

Evolution or Extinction

Humanity has suffered a loss of vision and direction. Life, as it is, cannot carry on in this way forever. We continue to destroy our forests, pollute our air, soil, and water, and wreak havoc upon our eco-systems. If we continue with our current practices, we may destroy ourselves. Socialists recognise the looming catastrophe, but a few of us also realise that this crisis can also be driving us toward positive change. In the midst of this nascent consciousness, the capitalists try to maintain the status quo despite the many warnings that the old ways are no longer sustainable. We still are lacking a coherent social potential movement to connect our communities and society as a whole. But the fact that people are now awakening is evidence of the emerging progress of humanity. A leader-free network is working to bring about radical change.

Capitalism is built on violence and it was created with violence. Make no mistake there is a class war. Nevertheless, the socialist movement is not here to attack but rather to transcend and include the best of what has come before and to attract that which needs to come forth for the flourishing of our human and planetary potential. Its objective is to evolve all of us, our communities, and our world so that all people are free to fulfill their highest potential. Its aim is not to destroy, but to fulfill. Socialists recognise that we have inherited enormous resources from capitalism and that many of those resources can be re-purposed now for the social good.

We as individuals have not changed much physiologically or intellectually in the past thousands of years, but our larger social body has become radically empowered. We have now been born into an extended social and scientific capacity that has never before existed on Earth. We are beginning to discover a path of collaborative action that will lead us toward an immeasurable and positive future. The crises and opportunities we face today are triggering the next stage of social evolution in which we can cooperate and re-pattern our economic and political systems. We need people who are willing to stand together, build a transformative movement for social change that unites people behind a vision of a world based the economics of production for use and not for profits. The role of the Socialist Party is to simply unlock and open doors to get people thinking more deeply about the world they live in and what is around them.

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign which misdirects us into believing that life-style and individual consumer choices will change things rather than organised political resistance. We so often hear that the world is running out of water and people are dying from lack of water so we need to take shorter showers. The truth is more than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual individual humans. Golf courses use as much water as human beings. An individual’s consumption compared with commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government and military is a negligible impact on energy use, global-warming, and atmospheric pollution. Town and city waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States. Let us not delude ourselves that going “green” is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change. It incorrectly assigns blame and guilt to the individual, not to the system. Our only option is to act decisively to stop the industrial capitalism.

We must not falter

FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

The biggest question for socialists is whether we can build a permanent organisation that can carry forward the political revolution in the long-term; or whether, like so many other previous attempts it quickly dissipates and disappears. There has rarely been a better opportunity to create and build an effective socialist organisation than now. The historical moment is right, with millions now understanding how rigged the economic and political system has become.  We’re at a historical turning point where it is imperative to halt and reverse climate change. Of course, socialists still have a long way to go. Many of the people now declaring themselves socialists aren’t clear about what they mean by the word and it’s safe to guess that they are merely referring to a welfare state and increased government regulation that Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn speak of. Common ownership of the means of production is not yet on their agenda. But this increased interest in socialism generally does make it clear that discontent with decades of stagnating wages and the pain caused by the 2008 economic crisis are starting to take a political form. For millions, the many problems of capitalism are no longer seen as individual problems or the result of personal mistakes but instead, the remind people that the difficulties they face are not their fault and that they deserve more than they are getting. They are looking for collective (class) solutions to social problems. They are beginning to realise that capitalism is an economic system which sacrifices workers to the logic of the capitalist market.

 The role of a socialist party is to offer a direction for this discontent and anger, to name and shame the forces and individuals that benefit from the way society is run and from how the world’s resources are distributed, the capitalists and their politician lackeys. People are stirring again. The era of "me-ism" is drawing to a close. People are awakening again. The courage, imagination and commitment required to begin the journey to a better, just and peaceful world are returning and growing stronger. Our collective voice of protest is shattering the silence once more. Now is not the time to falter. No one said the socialist revolution would be easy. We must remain engaged and engage with others. The greatest problem we have is that many of our fellow-workers can’t imagine any alternative. And that is the challenge: to invent, create and think as if we were living just after the collapse of capitalism, and how we will organise. The socialist movement must endeavor to deepen our relationships to one another, and to reinvent ways of being that are rooted in horizontal solidarity, sharing, and democracy. We cannot legitimise the power of the state through policies of begging and petitioning for reforms. In our revolution, we cannot substitute intermediaries for class participation. We begin with our needs, and from there we decide what we want. The solution is based firmly on the principle of sharing and it that which holds the key to addressing the whole spectrum of interconnected social, economic and environmental challenges we face in the critical period ahead. 

It is becoming increasingly apparent that our political and economic system is not run by the people, but controlled by the economic elite in their own private interest. The World Socialist Movement aims to build a peaceful, people-powered revolution, creating a society that benefits the many and not the few, where our world is founded on economic security and shared resources. We do not live in a world of scarcity. We do not need continuous economic growth through the conquest of nature because there is enough for everyone to live peacefully and prosperously on the planet. Greed, competition, violence should not be regarded as natural phenomena. This is the time for taking care of each other, relying on one another, for our well-being is interconnected. Socialism brings resiliency and freedom. Climate change crisis and ecological devastation forces upon us the possibilities for reshaping how we live.

We are going to win

"Our planet, our society, and we ourselves are built of star stuff."—Carl Sagan

Sometimes it is difficult to imagine alternative ways of living and organising. Capitalism is not the only system there is. It’s not inherent within us. It isn’t some inevitable expression of predefined human nature. It was developed by human beings and so human beings can change it. But in order to get there, we first have to engage in thinking about real change.

Capitalism equates wealth with success, which is then equated to virtue e.g. rich people are good, poor people are bad, therefore poverty is a moral failing of the person and that if we can’t be rich, there is something wrong with us and we deserve to suffer the consequence. We are programmed from birth to believe in the moral philosophy of competition, individualism, the virtue of material consumption, and social status determined by the wealth hierarchy. They tell us that it is people of merit who rise to the top of the system. We are told that those with the most money deserve to have power over the rest of us. Accumulation of money and property is seen as the be all and end all of life. Capitalism promotes the idea that selfishness is rational and efficient. Capitalism turns people and natural resources into commodities in order to attract more capital. That’s its sole purpose. The capitalists use a culture of indoctrination as the means of ensuring we remain submissive, docile and obedient. There is no conspiracy other than the logic of capitalist thought selling us false ideas.  We are told that as the rich get richer the rest of us will get richer too.  We are told that we can solve global poverty if rich countries give more aid to poor countries. We are told that our governments are democratic. They tell us that our media is free, honest and impartial. But we know that these are lies. Education and the news are so heavily filtered and propagandized that it bears little resemblance to any truth.

The World Socialist Movement challenges the capitalist belief-system and points to another way of living. We seek to make our future and create the better world we know is possible, where there is no 'I' or 'you', but only 'we.' I am another you and you are another me. We are all one. I am in you, and you are in me. All of humanity is just one. And all 7 billion of us are all variations of the same. We are different manifestations of the same yet in our details our diversity is endless. Socialism is where no one is excluded.

The WSM sign-posts the first steps on a journey to more connected communities. We are on the side of the people who are willing to fight back. Socialists do not resign ourselves to the fate we are told is inevitable. We are people who refuse to continue as wage-slaves. We are people who know we are human beings. We understand that unless it is stopped, capitalism may kill everyone and everything on the planet. If we don’t change our direction we’re going to wind up in a world of ecological collapse and  social collapse. It’s essential for all of us to look ahead and ask, ‘What kind of world do we want to have? What’s the personal contribution we can make in bringing such a world about?’

A new world  will only arrive when people begin to want it and start to build towards it.

Dundee and Poverty

Large numbers of Dundonians live below the poverty line.

But a number of neighbourhoods in the Lochee council ward suffer more than most.

More than half of residents in some areas in the city’s north-west live in deprivation.

In Whorterbank, the situation is grave, with more than half of residents living below the worst poverty line. And almost a third of children across the Lochee area are facing impoverished conditions on a daily basis.

In addition to that, a fifth of people in the ward fare poorly when it comes to work and income — with unemployment also an issue in the majority of areas — though Gowrie Park fares better than most here with around 60% of folk in a job.

https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/fp/poverty-needs-addressed-lochee/

Societies change, nothing stays the same.

Revolution is the overthrow of previous existing social system and modes with their ruling class. i.e. feudalism to capitalism, capitalism to post-capitalism. The media persist in lying that the Cuban revolt was a social revolution. It was nothing of the kind. Socialism is a post-capitalist system of society. Nothing to do with the state-capitalist, Leninist regime which existed in Cuba, most of the pseudo-'communist' regimes were post-feudal revolutions, attempts to kick-start capitalism and in the absence of sufficient home-grown capitalists, the state stepped into the breach. Socialism is not some top-down management by the state, or a replacement of one dictatorship for another, or reformed Labourite government. Those are certainly doomed to fail, as capitalism cannot be managed or reformed, but they are failures of capitalism and not socialism. Socialism is common ownership, production for use and free access. We use socialism and communism interchangeably, meaning the same thing, as Marx did.

We have been supporting the 5% parasite capitalist class through hell and back with two world wars and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for our pains and they are picking sides for another go, as capitalism has entered its decadent phase, since the start of the last century never mind this one. We 95% do not freely produce for the free use by all but are enslaved by the wages system (rationed) to produce for sale, for the profit of a minority parasite class 5% of owners.

We have created the technological conditions for superabundance and leisure for the free access future society, but require a conscious political seizure by the immense majority of the ownership of the means of production and distribution. Abolish the wages system and establish a society of superabundance where lawyers and bankers, money, prices, etc. will not exist and no more wars over competing economic parasite interests. It is time you stopped following leaders. Everybody else should know better by now to stop clutching at the will o' the wisp capitalist or state capitalist or reformist straws.

Educate agitate and organise, as we have a cooperative commonwealth world of free access and democratic control by us all, to win. Dissolve the governments over you and their politicians. Elect yourselves for the last great emancipation, that of the wage slaves.

"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." Marx and Engels, 1879

The choice is socialism or barbarism.

Capitalism progressive purpose is served. It is now in its decadent phase and has been so since the start of last century. It can't resolve the problems of distribution without the twin concomitants of war (arising out of competition between rival capitalists and poverty relative or absolute, (arising out of waged slavery and exploitation at the point of production to produce profits for the parasite owning class).

Humankind has reached the ‘era of social revolution’ but the revolution is yet to begin. Capitalism has gone into its phase of global crisis cycles and anarchy leading to world wars involving capital against capital, fomenting national prejudices and pitting workers against workers to slaughter one another, destroying productive forces on all contending sides and producing misery, poverty, waste, pollution and environment destruction. This is, however, not to say that capital has come to a dead halt. Capital’s nature of exploitation, appropriation, and accumulation of surplus value continues as long as it exists.

Capital develops unevenly through concentration and centralization. And for that matter capital is still going on accumulating globally whereby one capital kills many giving rise to gigantic conglomerates. Accumulation is going through destruction and annihilation. This is reactionary. This is decadence

Productive forces have developed to the stage of both actual and potential abundance for all. But the working class consciousness and organization have remained subdued under the domination of capitalist ideas and interests – constantly and crushingly campaigned by all pervading 'right', 'left', 'centre' chronicles and ideologies.

They comprise all various belligerent factions of capital. Although they use different names and slogans on their banners, they don’t have any scientific alternative to capital’s devastatingly continued reproduction. They are mere reformists of all various hues. We have experienced enough of such things. And enough is enough! They have given capitalism a century-long anachronistic existence. Measures which were once very necessary and useful for maturation of the system have already more or less accomplished their tasks and grown old and outdated.

The material productive forces of society have come into conflict with the existing relations of production. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations have turned into their fetters or, in other words, the productive forces have outgrown the production relation. The real revolution takes place with the battle of ideas in the lead up to the post-capitalist society, to ensure the majority is a politically aware one with the consciousness.

Why settle for crumbs when we could have the whole bakery.

We have a world to win

But nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

Wee Matt

Are Cooperatives the Way?

“If cooperative production is not to remain a sham and a mare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; if the united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, thus taking it under their control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of Capitalist production—what else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism, ‘possible’ Communism?” – Marx

“My proposal envisages the introduction of cooperatives into existing production ... just as the Paris Commune demanded that the workers should manage cooperatively the factories closed down by the manufacturers’… [neither Marx nor he himself had] ‘ever doubted that, in the course of the transition to a wholly communist economy, widespread use would have to be made of cooperative management as an intermediate stage’ – Engels

Co-ops have been embraced by significant groups of people at different times and places. Their attraction is offering a means to consolidate small producers and take advantage of economies of scale, shared risk, and common gain. At the advent of the capitalist era, cooperatives were one of many competing solutions offered to ameliorate the plight of the emerging working class. Cooperatives were considered as intermediate steps towards socialist relations of production. Cooperatives offer advantages to both workers and consumers. Workers are thought to benefit because the profits that are expropriated by non-workers in the capitalist mode of production are shared by the workforce in a cooperative enterprise. Working conditions are necessarily improved since workplace decisions are arrived at democratically without the lash associated with the profit-mania of alienated ownership. In reality, cooperatives are largely indistinguishable from small businesses. Like small private businesses, they employ few people and rely heavily upon sweat equity for capitalization. Like other small businesses, cooperatives mostly operate on the periphery of the economy.  Most present day advocates proponents, see cooperatives as a “third way” between reformism and revolution yet without noting the steady evolution of these once “third way” institutions towards a conventional capitalist business model.

Economic democracy and workers’ self-management is absolutely central to any genuine socialist society, but they can only be permanently established by adopting a strategy aimed at dismantling the power of the capitalist state and expropriating the expropriators. In other words a political strategy, not one focused primarily on attempting to create alternative economic models within existing capitalist society. The concept of cooperatives as an alternative to both private and state ownership resurfaces over and over again.

The questions we must ask in regard to cooperatives are co-ops models of socialism within a capitalist society, possible islands of socialism in the ocean of capitalism and are they politically practical steps along the road socialism, laying down the foundations of such a society? Cooperatives certainly show that workers can run factories themselves, that democracy in the workplace is possible, and capitalists are not necessary for the organization of production but can they bring about fundamental social transformation.

Worker co-ops replace the capitalist with the democratic association of the workers - the workers become their own capitalists, they can thus arrange operations amongst themselves to the extent they wish. “By deed, instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behest of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands.” And again Marx explains, “Cooperative factories provide the proof that the capitalist has become just as superfluous as a functionary in production…”

The workers’ welfare can be materially enhanced, since the profits that the capitalist would have made as a result of ownership of the firm become incomes of the 99%, which are proportionately increased as that of the share of the returns to the 1% disappears. The fact that workers control their own immediate work, itself a contribution also enhances their well-being, reducing alienation from their work. Yet these advantages have their limitations, because the pressures of competition and requirements of marketing in a private profit-driven market economy restrict their options. Co-ops operating within a capitalist, profit-driven market economy cannot operate independently of that economy. As Marx has it:

“The co-operative factories run by workers themselves are, within the old form, the first examples of the emergence of a new form, even though they naturally reproduce in all cases, in their present organization, all the defects of the existing system, and must reproduce them.”

The pressures of day-to-day competition, pressure to cut costs, trim quality, and hold wages and the number of jobs down, is relentless. Efforts involved to run the business and compete successfully enough to at least stay afloat are daunting. Running an enterprise is time consuming, energy consuming, and beset by commercial problems. It weakens more than it strengthens political aspiration for system change. Most cooperatives seek only individualistic economic gains for workers through the market system, and do not work to mobilise workers into radical class consciousness nor revolutionary class struggle. Cooperative movements from this perspective were simply an individualistic capitalist enterprise that could not bring about fundamental social change due to the absence of political mobilisation

Marx rejected Lassalle’s belief that workers’ emancipation should be brought about by a system of state-aided producer cooperatives. Based on the Gotha programme, one means of solving social problems was to demand State aid to fund the establishment of producer cooperatives under the democratic control of the mass of the working people. Marx disagreed on this point by objecting ‘that the workers’ desire to establish the conditions for cooperative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to transform the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid’. Otherwise—Marx argued— socialism would be established through State action—in stark contrast with the central idea that workers will only achieve emancipation through their own efforts. If workers were to require the support of the State for their revolutionary movement, they would thereby only reveal their ‘full consciousness that they neither rule nor are ripe for rule!’ Marx concludes that ‘as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of workers and not protege´s either of the governments or of the bourgeoisie’

But socialists don’t take what Marx or Engels as canon. Rosa Luxemburg subjected cooperatives to criticism in her pamphlet Reform or Revolution.

“Co-operatives,” wrote Luxemburg, “especially co-operatives in the field of production, constitute a hybrid form in the midst of capitalism. They can be described as small units of socialized production within capitalist exchange.”

The problem is that cooperatives that are established in the context of the capitalist market must compete in order to survive, and if the rate of exploitation is high among your competitors, then you must match it.

As Luxemburg put it, “in capitalist economy exchanges dominate production. As a result of competition, the complete domination of the process of production by the interests of capital—that is, pitiless exploitation—becomes a condition for the survival of each enterprise.”

She continues:

“The domination of capital over the process of production expresses itself in the following ways. Labor is intensified. The workday is lengthened or shortened, according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the requirements of the market, labor is either employed or thrown back into the street. In other words, use is made of all methods that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market.”

Some cooperatives find small niche markets in which to survive, but the majority will either be driven out of business or be forced to copy the practices used by other employers.

In Luxemburg’s words:

‘The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur—a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving.”

Socialists have long argued that socialism in one country is not possible because a socialist revolution that does not spread will either be crushed from the outside or survive by being transformed from within. Socialism in one work-place is even more of a non-starter. 

And despite his sympathies for cooperatives Marx also realised that:

“the experience of the period from 1848 to 1864 has proved beyond doubt that, however excellent in principle and however useful in practice, co-operative labor, if kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen, will never be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, nor even to perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries.”

Co–ops by themselves do not challenge the system and actually may divert energy away from doing so.  Individual co–ops do not threaten the system, are likely to degenerate, and can absorb time and resources that could be used for other kinds of organizing. Marx also noted that a variety of establishment figures had become supporters of co–ops:

“It is perhaps for this very reason that plausible noblemen, philanthropic middle-class spouters, and even kept political economists have all at once turned nauseously complimentary to the very co-operative labor system they had vainly tried to nip in the bud by deriding it as the utopia of the dreamer, or stigmatizing it as the sacrilege of the socialist.”

Marx understood that the capitalist class would not stand idly by and allow themselves to pass into history. They had the power of the State behind them:

“To save the industrious masses, cooperative labour ought to be developed to national dimensions, and, consequently, to be fostered by national means. Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economic monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour. … To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.”

To liberate humanity from the misery of capitalist exploitation and make full use of society’s scientific and technical achievements to overcome material and cultural inequality cannot be done by an uncoordinated set of cooperatives – it will require the pooling and coordination of all society’s productive capacities according to a common plan of production to meet all our individual and collective needs and desires.

On their own a cooperative can easily be a capitalist enterprise owned by its workers in which, as Marx says, the workers become their own capitalist. Nor can they “out compete” capitalism. Corporations will always have larger capital to invest in research, technology, machinery and their willingness to cut costs through lower wages, less environmentally sounds practices, outsourcing, etc, will give conventional capitalist enterprises an advantage. Worker cooperatives generally are in industries which generate lower profit margins and because they are smaller and do not have the advantages of scale which larger companies do, workers are often are forced to work long hours at lower wages to stay afloat. This can be called “self-managed exploitation.”  The pitfalls of workers cooperatives are often missing from its proponents’ discussion. Their proposals for getting rid of capitalism would actually lead to a entrenchment of capitalism

As Chomsky explains it:

 “Worker ownership within a state capitalist, semi-market system is better than private ownership but it has inherent problems. Markets have well-known inherent inefficiencies. They’re very destructive. … [what is needed is to] dismantle the system of production for profit rather than production for use…If you’re in a system where you must make profit in order to survive. You are compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.”

There is no real or meaningful self -management insofar as it is limited to single companies operating within the market. As cooperatives exist within a market system, their interests are to compete with other companies and expand their market share. This is a key and important difference between workers cooperatives, where the means of producing goods and services are owned by a specific group of workers competing with other cooperatives and capitalist companies through a market system and the deeper and post-capitalist goal of a socialized economy whereby all the means of producing goods and services (or at least the vast majority) are seen as belonging to society as a whole and while directly operated and run by the workers at each entity would be federated and coordinated in a horizontal manner to produce products and services based on need. An analogy to the problem is that a strategy of advocating worker cooperatives is akin to allowing small groups of slaves on a small number of plantations to self-manage themselves. It makes life better for some, but it doesn’t end the system of exploitation. While worker cooperatives can have some uses, the perspective cannot be described as anti-capitalist in a meaningful sense.

 The Socialist Party supports the idea that workers should run the economy, but we think it needs to go way beyond what advocates of cooperatives put forward. Our aspiration is the socialist cooperative commonwealth described thus by Marx:

“Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.”

If you want to open small businesses organized as cooperatives, as a strategy for survival, by all means do so but please do not declare that it's somehow a path beyond capitalism. Workers coops have persisted throughout the history of capitalist development, although today, with a few notable exceptions, they are mostly relatively small, local operations. When they are successful, they often tend to evolve in the direction of more conventional capitalist firms, hiring non-member employees as a way of expanding production rather than enlarging the full membership of the producer coop itself. While many, perhaps most, people who work as members in cooperatives continue to see them as an alternative way of life to working in a conventional capitalist firm, for most participants they are no longer part of a broad strategy for building an alternative to capitalism and are certainly not part of an organized anti-system strategy as was the case in the 19th Century cooperative movement.

The big question that has to be answered is, although, worker-owned cooperatives remain one of the central expressions a democratic egalitarian vision of an alternative way of organising economic activity , can worker coops cooperate with each other through a kind of voluntary federated structure which would facilitate coordination and joint action as suggested by mutualism that would form the basis of a new society, initially within capitalism itself and eventually replacing capitalism? The conclusion in not one of conjecture but a matter of historic record – No.