A breath of fresh air (Not)

 Since the demise of most of the smoke stack industries in Scotland and elsewhere the, passing of the Clean Air Act 1956 which was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed in response to London's Great Smog of 1952. It was in effect until 1964, and sponsored by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in England and the Department of Health for Scotland.

  The Act introduced a number of measures to reduce air pollution, especially by introducing "smoke control areas" in some towns and cities in which only smokeless fuels could be burned. By shifting homes' sources of heat towards cleaner coals, electricity, and gas, it reduced the amount of smoke pollution and sulphur dioxide from household fires. Reinforcing these changes, the Act also included measures to relocate power stations away from cities, and for the height of some chimneys to be increased.

  The Act was an important milestone in the development of a legal framework to protect the environment. But it came rather late on after capital had exhausted its initial steamrollering of human rights and expectations of dignity in life and work and in response to the fact that the killing smogs of the day could not be expected to distinguish, which class of lungs they permeated, as city institutions demanded at least some occasional attendance from the moneyed classes.

 Since then however although there has been a marked reduction in visible smoke polution, there has been an increase in recorded invisible polution and carcinogenic particulates in the air we breathe, this time from the rapid increase in the use of motor vehicles.

FoE Scotland campaigner Emilia Hanna said it was particularly harmful for small children, pregnant women and people living in poverty.

"For people living in an official pollution zone or near traffic-choked streets, breathing in toxic air is an inescapable fact of life," she said.

"It should not be this way, we have the right to breathe clean air just as we have the right to drink clean water.

"The Scottish government and local authorities are not tackling this public health crisis with the seriousness and urgency required."

The number of pollution zones in Scotland has risen, according to new figures from Friends of the Earth (FoE) Scotland.

The group found that there are now 38 zones where safety standards for air quality are regularly broken - five more than last year.
The environmental campaigners warned the pollution levels were a "public health crisis".


 But it is even more serious than this. As we reported in January of last year.

In Britain, where latest figures suggest that around 29,000 people a year die prematurely from particulate pollution and thousands more from long-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide gas, emitted largely by diesel engines, the government is being taken to court over its intention to delay addressing pollution for at least 10 years.


 The World Health Organisation has issued a new warningabout deadly levels of pollution in many of the world’s biggest cities, claiming poor air quality is killing millions and threatening to overwhelm health services across the globe. WHO says there is now a global “public health emergency” that will have untold financial implications for governments. According to the WHO, air quality is deteriorating around the world to the point where only one in eight people live in cities that meet recommended air pollution levels.  The latest data, taken from 2,000 cities, will show further deterioration in many places as populations have grown, leaving large areas under clouds of smog created by a mix of transport fumes, construction dust, toxic gases from power generation and wood burning in homes.

 Maria Neira, head of public health at the WHO, said “Air pollution leads to chronic diseases which require hospital space. Before, we knew that pollution was responsible for diseases like pneumonia and asthma. Now we know that it leads to bloodstream, heart and cardiovascular diseases, too – even dementia. We are storing up problems. These are chronic diseases that require hospital beds. The cost will be enormous.”

 Frank Kelly, director of the environmental health research group at King’s College London, and an adviser to several governments on the health risks of pollution, told the Observer that air pollution had become a “global plague”. “It affects everyone, above all people in cities. As the world becomes more urbanised, it is becoming worse.”

 A report from the EU’s European Environment Agency (EEA) says pollution is now also the single largest environmental health risk in Europe, responsible for more than 430,000 premature deaths. “It shortens people’s lifespan and contributes to serious illnesses such as heart disease, respiratory problems and cancer. It also has considerable economic impacts, increasing medical costs and reducing productivity,” said the EEA director Hans Bruyninckx.

Trying to improve the air quality of 38 streets in Scotland is laudable, but the problem is a global one, requiring a global solution, which only a post-capitalist, production for use society of common ownership and democratic control of resources can provide.


 Working people are continually involved in a day-to-day struggle against business and government over the basic necessities of life. Hazards in the industrial environment result in disease, disability, and death on an unprecedented level. Millions of cases of occupational disease due to factory pollution occur annually. Workers are forced to breathe air highly saturated with tiny particles, leading to all sorts of diseases such as black lung, silicosis, and asbestosis.


 We have to recognize that there are forces in the society which are anti-life — the ruling class, which is content to maintain its rule as the entire society rushes towards oblivion, a force that we must struggle against if life is to be guaranteed. And in this struggle the primary question is who is going to have the power and it is the necessity for socialists to realize that, the end is life. But the beginning is the successful struggle for a socialist society. A confident, organised working class is essential for the creation of a society in which workers can truly formulate and decide between alternatives.

World's eight richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%

 The world’s eight richest billionaires control the same wealth between them as the poorest half of the globe’s population, according to a charity warning of an ever-increasing and dangerous concentration of wealth.

  In a report published to coincide with the start of the week-long World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam said it was “beyond grotesque” that a handful of rich men headed by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates are worth $426bn (£350bn), equivalent to the wealth of 3.6 billion people.

  The development charity called for a new economic model to reverse an inequality trend that it said helped to explain Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.

  Oxfam blamed rising inequality on aggressive wage restraint, tax dodging and the squeezing of producers by companies, adding that businesses were too focused on delivering ever-higher returns to wealthy owners and top executives.

But this is normal capitalist accumulative behaviour.

 It is no accident, nor is it capitalism going out of synch. it ever was the business of capitalism to ,"Accumulate ,Accumulate" as Marx said.

'Twas ever thus.
“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.” ― Voltaire


 The World Economic Forum (WEF) said last week that rising inequality and social polarisation posed two of the biggest risks to the global economy in 2017 and could result in the rolling back of globalisation.

  Oxfam said the world’s poorest 50% owned the same in assets as the $426bn owned by a group headed by Gates, Amancio Ortega, the founder of the Spanish fashion chain Zara, and Warren Buffett, the renowned investor and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.

  The others are Carlos Slim Helú: the Mexican telecoms tycoon and owner of conglomerate Grupo Carso; Jeff Bezos: the founder of Amazon; Mark Zuckerberg: the founder of Facebook; Larry Ellison, chief executive of US tech firm Oracle; and Michael Bloomberg; a former mayor of New York and founder and owner of the Bloomberg news and financial information service.

  Last year, Oxfam said the world’s 62 richest billionaires were as wealthy as half the world’s population. However, the number has dropped to eight in 2017 because new information shows that poverty in China and India is worse than previously thought, making the bottom 50% even worse off and widening the gap between rich and poor.

 Oxfam called for fundamental change to ensure that economies worked for everyone, not just “a privileged few”.


 But the fundamental change they wish to see does not address the problem in any fundamental way. It merely exhorts the parasite class of capitalists to redistribute some more of their wealth and does not ask any questions of where this wealth comes from or is derived in the first instance.

  The society of today is a capitalist society and the classes that face one another are the capitalist class and the working class. The form of bondage is different from the forms that prevailed formerly, but it is still bondage.

  The wealth producers of today are not bound to a lord or master as were the serfs and slaves. They may refuse their services to this or that capitalist. But they cannot escape from the capitalist class. They must deliver their abilities to some member or members of that class. In no other way do they have access to the things needed to preserve life.


 When they do this,in return for a rationed access to the wealth which the workers produce in the form of wages, they create a surplus store of wealth for the capitalist class.


 All wealth then comes from the working class.

  And in spite of the often repeated claim in various circles that the classes of today have mutual and harmonious interests, the facts show a struggle between these classes as grim as any that preceded it.

 From the beginning of the existing form of society down to the present day there has been a never-ending conflict between the capitalists and the workers: on the part of the capitalists to squeeze every possible ounce of energy from the workers at the lowest possible cost; on the part of the workers to check these efforts and to try in turn to gain bearable living and working conditions for themselves.

 Workers of the world exist in a disadvantaged economic capacity as a part of the world's working class, whether by hand or by brain, even if they are bosses or schoolteachers.


 They have more in common with each other globally, than with the capitalist class in the country they live in.

 Workers also run capitalism from top to bottom.


 A fundamental change is indeed the answer to inequality and poverty, but this has to remove the source of that impoverishment.


 The capitalist class used to be the revolutionary class with a number of kings heads as well as a Tsar to show for their Jacobinist opportunism.

  The tremendous success of capitalism in creating the technological means and the educated mass (90-95%) to run its productive and distributive and even coercive governance capacity, allied with representative democracy, its Achilles heel, makes possible its supercedence of capitalism by a post-capitalist, delegatory, democratic, production for use, free access ,world commonwealth of comparative superabundance.

  It is in the interests of 'everyone' that we end war and poverty, along with the wasteful despoliation of the planet, its resources, seas , land and even the air we breathe.

 But we are not addressing 'everyone'. We are only addressing the potential revolutionary class who will make this happen in their own class interests. The 90-95% working class. The fact of it benefitting all, will eventually percolate across class boundaries.

In the face of this politically conscious majority revolution, resistance would be foolish and futile.

Nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

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

Labours share of (H)unts

The latest rat to leave Labour's sinking ship is Tristram Hunt, author of a hostile biography of Frederick Engels. He is leaving parliament to take a higher paid job as head of the Victoria and Albert Museum. In doing so he shows two things.

First, that many Labour MPs are just careerists. With Labour doomed to lose the next General Election there's no chance of any of them becoming a government Minister until at least 2025, i.e. for at least 8 years. Those who can change career -- and as an academic Hunt can -- are doing so. The rest are going to have to stick it out. But even without a minister's salary the money's not that bad..

Second, at least he practises what he preaches. Under the headline ‘We’re furiously pro-business, Labour MP tells private sector’, the Times (9 February 2015) reported him as saying:
Quote:
"I’m enormously enthusiastic about businessmen and women making money, delivering shareholder return, about making profit".

And historians.

The cause of the Labour Party is not the cause of socialism and never was. It's original reason for existing was to get reforms for working people.

Damn all to do with socialism.

Real socialism is a post-capitalist society where waged slavery will have been abolished.

All government, however well meaning politicians are, whether Leftist Rightist, Centrist,or "Can't make up their mindist", to win power, are governments over us in the interests of the dominant economic capitalist parasite class.

“The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England.” (T. Benn)

Jeremy Corbyn calls for maximum wage law

 So we can conclude that the Labour Party do not want socialism then and wish to continue supporting capitalism and the wage slavery system from which capitals profits arise.

 The Labour leader says a cap on earnings is needed to address inequality and avoid UK becoming ‘bargain basement economy’.

 It has always been a real bargain for the capitalist class who produce nothing save capital already stolen, due to their privileged ownership of the means of production and distribution, further accumulate even more capital through exploiting fellow humans need for food, clothing and shelter, by providing a waged rationed access to the necessities of life, while reaping the benefit of the productive capacity of their workers to produce a surplus above that, indeed  all of the worlds wealth springs from labour.


 Jeremy Corbyn has called for a maximum wage for the highest earners, saying he fears Brexit will see the UK become a “grossly unequal, bargain basement economy”.

 The Labour leader would not give specific figures, but said radical action was needed to address inequality. “I would like there to be some kind of high earnings cap, quite honestly,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday.

 When asked at what level the cap should be set, he replied: “I can’t put a figure on it and I don’t want to at the moment. The point I’m trying to make is that we have the worst levels of income disparity of most of the OECD countries.
“It is getting worse. And corporate taxation is a part of it. If we want to live in a more egalitarian society, and fund our public services.

.. obviously not socialism then. Real socialism is a post-capitalist society where waged slavery will have been abolished.

 As capitalism is run from top to bottom by the working class, 95%, so it can be replaced by a commonly owned, production for use, free access society, with no elite access to its products.

 The capitalist class, liberals or neo-cons, are an economic parasite class.

 All government, however well meaning politicians are, whether Leftist Rightist, Centrist,or "Can't make up their mindist", to win power, are governments over us in the interests of this dominant economic capitalist parasite class.

 That class control is easily removable when the workers of the world aspire to a free access, democratically controlled , commonly owned, world where production is for the use of everyone to satisfy all human needs, where the organising principle is , "From each according to their ability to each according to their needs".

 Marx warned us about those pretentious political pseuds,reformers and reactionary alike, Left, Right and Centre and insisted we have to make the new society without them.


 We urge you to consider what socialism is.

What is socialism?

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" 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 )

'Successful' Reforms

 Given the apparent futility of reform campaigning to remove the social problems and economic difficulties capitalism creates, socialists know that a revolutionary change in the basis of society is necessary. However, does this mean that all reforms are doomed to failure and do not really make a difference to workers' lives? Of course not - there are many examples of 'successful' reforms in such fields as education, housing, child employment, conditions of work and social security. Indeed, the Socialist Party does not oppose all reforms as such, only the futile and dangerous attempt to seek power to administer capitalism on the basis of a reform programme - reformism.

 Any socialist elected to Parliament or to local councils would be delegated by the Socialist Party to treat individual reforms that came to their attention on their merits, principally as to whether they would benefit the working class at large, or indeed, the movement for socialism in particular. At all times, however, socialists would refrain from advocating specific reforms of capitalism or supporting organisations wanting to reform this or that aspect of the system.

 This is because while there have been some 'successful' reforms, none of them have ever done more than keep workers and their families in efficient working order and, while reforms have sometimes taken the edge off a problem, they have very rarely managed to remove that problem completely. There have been some marginal improvements, but the social problems that the reformers have set out to deal with have generally not been solved - hence the need for an uncompromising socialist party to pursue revolutionary change.

 Let us take some examples of 'successful' reforms. If we look at education, we can see that despite the 1870 Education Act, the introduction of comprehensive schools and now grant-maintained schools, it is arguable whether the education most children receive is adequate to their needs or conducive to their wellbeing.
  It is mostly designed to prepare them, conveyor-belt fashion, for the job market.

 In housing, successive governments have brought in measures claiming to solve the housing problem and the majority of wage and salary earners are indeed better housed than ever before. Yet official figures show that there are tens of thousands of homeless people, many in 'bed-and-break-fast' accommodation or sleeping rough on the streets, while millions of homes are either unfit to live in or require substantial repairs.

 Concerning the welfare of children, the suffering many underwent in chimneys, mines and factories in the last century was eventually ended by government legislation. Nevertheless, twenty years after the beginning of the 'welfare state' there were still enough children living in deprived conditions to merit the setting up of the Child Poverty Action Group. When it was first formed, its members were so certain that the problem would be solved within the year that they did not even open a bank account. That was in 1965 . . .

 More generally, reform legislation has meant that employers can no longer impose unlimited hours of work on their employees and are officially obliged to provide minimum conditions of safety. It has meant that sick, unemployed and old people no longer generally have to rely on charity to live. Yet for all this, many people are forced to work long hours of over-time to make ends meet, accidents and deaths at work run into many thousands annually, government figures show that more than one in five families live on or below the official poverty line, and many old people die each winter through not being able to afford adequate heating. Increased stress means that one in four workers will suffer mental health problems during their lives.

 The problems remain, then. What we have is an education system to provide better trained and more skilful workers, work regulations to make sure that we are not driven beyond endurance, a health service to patch us up quickly so that we can return to work, and social security schemes to ensure that our working ability does not degenerate too much in periods of unemployment.

 What reformers have to ask themselves is whether it is worthwhile campaigning for reforms when, as we have seen:

• their campaign, whether directed at a 'right-wing' or a 'left-wing' government, can only hope to succeed if it can be reconciled with the profit-making needs of the system;
• their campaign, whether directed at a 'right-wing' or a 'left-wing' government, can only hope to succeed if it can be reconciled with the profit-making needs of the system;
• the measure they have supported, even if implemented, may well have consequences they did not foresee and would not have wanted;
• any reform can be reversed or eroded later if a government finds it necessary;
• any number of reforms bearing on a problem rarely, if ever, actually solve that problem.

 How can the increasing number of people involved in reform activity, and clearly concerned with the problems that affect society and their own lives, most usefully direct their energies? The answer lies in a recognition of the uselessness of appealing to governments to bring in benevolent reforms, and of the necessity of democratic political action to get rid of the very need for governments.

 The institution of government does not feel threatened by appeals to it to act on single issues - even if those appeals take the form of mass public protests. On the contrary, government only feels a sense of power and security in the knowledge that the protesters recognise it as the supreme authority to which all appeals must be made. As long as people are only protesting over single issues they are remaining committed to supporting the system as a whole.

 But government will take quite a different view when large numbers of people confront it not to plead from a position of weakness for this or that change or addition to the statute book, but to challenge the whole basis of the way we live - in other words to question the inevitability of buying and selling and production for profit, and to actively work from a position of political strength for its replacement by the socialist alternative.

 In such circumstances, the governments aim will be to buy off the growing socialist consciousness of workers. In other words, reforms will be much more readily granted to a large and growing socialist movement than to reformers campaigning over individual issues within the present system.

 Not of course that the growing movement will be content with the re-forms the system hands out. All the reforms the system is capable of are paltry compared with the worldwide satisfaction of needs and the fully democratic, self-organised activity that a society of common ownership and free access will have to offer.

 True, in some countries living standards have improved over the years for the majority of people. However, the proper comparison is not between conditions now and conditions 50, 100 or 200 years ago, but between the way we have to live today and what life could be like in socialism.

 To those who still say that, while they ultimately want socialism, it is a long way off and we must have reforms in the meantime, we would reply that socialism need not be a long way off and there need not be a meantime. If all the immense dedication and energy that have been channelled into reform activity over the past 200 years had been directed towards achieving socialism, then socialism would have been established long ago and the problems the reformists are still grappling with (income inequality, unemployment, health, housing, education, war. etc.) would all be history.

 To say that we should spend our time on reforms while waiting for socialism is effectively to dismiss the idea of socialism altogether. If everyone followed that line, no one would ever get down to working for socialism. It would never get to being on the agenda. Even the argument that we should strive for both revolution and reform simultaneously is a way of putting off revolution.

 Promised 50-50 activity always ends up in practice as 100 per cent reformism, as the history of the workers' movement shows.

 It is only when people leave reformism behind altogether that socialism will begin to appear to them not as a vague distant prospect, something for others to achieve, but as a clear, immediate alternative which they themselves can - and indeed must - help to bring about.

Edited from a pamphlet The Market System Must Go 

The Mythology of the Left

 Many political groups, somewhat disenchanted with orthodox reformist practice, fancy themselves as 'vanguards' of the working class. We do not.We say that workers should reject these would-be elites and organise for socialism democratically, without leaders.

 By fostering wrong ideas about what socialism is and how it can be achieved the vanguard organisations are delaying the socialist revolution. It may help to clear away confusion if we list a number of doctrines held by most of these groups, and then state why we disagree with them:

1. State ownership is socialism, or a step on the way to socialism.
2. Russia set out on the way to socialism.
3. Socialism will arrive by violent insurrection.
4. Workers cannot attain socialist consciousness by their own efforts, only a trade union consciousness.
5. Workers must vote for the Labour Party.
6. Workers must be led by an elite - a 'vanguard'.
7. Workers must be offered bait to follow this vanguard in the form of ‘transitional demands', a selective programme of reforms.

 It is easy to see how these beliefs interlock and support each other. If, for example, workers are so feeble-minded that they cannot understand socialist arguments then they need to be led. Socialism will therefore come about without mass understanding, by a disciplined minority seizing power. Widespread socialist education is not only unnecessary, it is pointless. If the best workers can do is reach a trade union consciousness and vote Labour, then this is what they must be urged to do.

 Since workers must have some incentive to follow the vanguard, 'transitional demands' in the form of reformist promises are necessary, and since these tactics were successful in carrying to power the Russian Bolsheviks, it is assumed that Russia must have set out on the road to socialism. The basic dogma on which all this is founded is that the mass of the workers cannot understand socialism.

 Vanguardists may protest at this summary, they may insist that they are very much concerned with working class consciousness, and do not assert that workers cannot understand socialist politics. However, an examination of their propaganda reveals that 'consciousness' means merely following the right leaders.

  When it is suggested that the majority of the working class must attain a clear desire for the abolition of the wages system, and the introduction of a world-wide moneyless community, the vanguardists reply that this is "too abstract", or (if they are students) "too academic". Indeed, they themselves do not strive for such a socialist system. None of the vanguard groups advocate the immediate establishment of a world without wages, with production democratically geared to meeting people's needs.

  Some of them say, when pushed, that they look forward to such a world "ultimately", but since this "ultimate" aim has no effect on their actions it can only be interpreted as an empty platitude.Far from specifying socialism as their aim, they are reticent and muddled about even the capitalist reforms they will introduce if they get power.

 Ironically, Bernstein's dictum "The movement is everything, the goal nothing" sums up the vanguard outlook very well, as a cursory glance at Militant or Socialist Worker will confirm.It seems fair to conclude, however, that the vanguardists' ideal is the brutal state capitalist regime that existed in Russia under Lenin, a fact which causes us socialists some concern, as it means we would be liquidated (a fate which would undoubtedly have befallen us under the Bolshevik tyranny).

 State ownership is not, of course, socialism, but a major feature of all forms of capitalism. It means merely that the capitalist state takes over responsibility for running an industry and exploiting its workers for profit. However wage-slavery is administered it cannot be made to run in the interests of the wage-slaves.

 The Labour Party, which receives the support of most of the vanguardists, is not socialist and never was meant to be. Every time it has been in power it has administered capitalism in the only way it can be, as a profit-making system organised in the interest of the profit-takers (the capitalists) and not the profit-makers (the workers). The vanguardists are fully aware of this but their proposition that workers cannot understand socialism commits them to the view that the only way workers will come to see that Labour is no good is through personally experiencing the failure of a Labour government to further working class interests.So, they tell workers to vote Labour.Some even join the Labour Party themselves.

 This is an intellectually arrogant view, which sees workers as dumb creatures that only learn by immediate experience without being able to draw on the past experience transmitted to them by other workers. The thinking behind it is that when the workers see the Labour leaders fail them they will then turn to the vanguard for leadership instead.

 This has never actually happened - not after 1945, nor after 1964, nor after 1974 - and, fortunately (since experience of rule by a vanguard party is one experience workers can certainly do without), probably never will. Some workers do indeed learn by such experiences, but the vanguardists never do. They go on repeating their slogan "Vote Labour" in election after election. Their mistaken view of the intellectual capabilities of workers leads them to urge workers to vote against their interests by supporting one particular party of capitalism in preference to its rivals. The Labour leaders are happy with this and so, no doubt, are other supporters of capitalism who realise that the vanguardists merely channel working class discontent away from a really revolutionary course.

 It is the same with 'transitional demands', which are just promises to reform capitalism. Workers are urged to struggle for these under the leadership of the vanguard party in the expectation that when these reforms fail to materialise or fail to work (as the vanguard know will happen) the workers will turn against the present system.

 There again, because of their flawed basic position that workers are incapable of understanding socialism, the vanguardists reject the direct approach of presenting workers with the mass of evidence that reforms don't solve problems and at best can only patch them up temporarily, and again seek to manipulate workers into personally going through the experience of failure.

 Workers don't need to go down any more blind alleys. The vanguardists, however, don't agree. They say workers should go down every blind alley they come across until they learn in the only way they supposedly can - direct personal experience of the futility of reformism. And they appoint themselves to lead workers down these blind alleys.

 The vanguardists often justify their reformist actions by saying it is a practice known as "developing consciousness through struggle". "Struggle" is apparently a sort of metaphysical driving force which is supposed to turn reforms into sparks of revolution. Such mystification is essential to the curious doctrine that the workers will establish socialism inadvertently, while they are occupied with something else. But the effect of this is to encourage reformist illusions among the workers, and in fact, since all the main capitalist political parties including Labour now recognise the limits that capitalism imposes on improving living standards, the vanguardists have ended up as the main advocates of reformism today.

 Look again at the misnamed Socialist Worker or any other Leninist paper and you will see that they spend all their time proposing this measure or opposing that measure within capitalism and none educating workers in the basic principles of socialism. Since they don't believe the workers can understand these principles anyway they are at least being consistent; as from their point of view to campaign for socialism is to cast pearls before swine.But once again the effect of their mistaken 'tactic' is to keep capitalism going.

 The belief that socialism or something like it used to exist in Russia is common to most vanguard groups. This is to be expected: the vanguard strategy has been put into practice many times, and should surely have succeeded once or twice. Russia, from Lenin to Gorbachev, furnished fresh proof every day of class privilege and working class poverty that was typically capitalist, but all its obviously anti-working class features were dismissed as the results of 'degeneration'. Some looked to China or Cuba as less degenerate systems. Some still do. Some even look to North Korea.

 Others are not so stupid. They are the vanguardists who have come round to the view that Russia was capitalist, but even they still cling to the idea that the Bolshevik revolution was socialist - and, by implication, that a future socialist revolution will be run on similar lines. After all, an admission that the Russian working class never held political power, and that Bolshevism was always a movement for capitalism, would call into question the entire mythology of the left.A topic of serious concern for vanguardists, if no-one else. is the question: when did 'degeneration' start? In truth, more clues to the answer with be found with Robespierre, Tkachev and Lenin than with Stalin.

 The belief that Russia was socialist or a "workers' state" has been a source of confusion for many decades now.Happily, it is ebbing away - illusions are usually corrected by material reality sooner or later. But the fact that such a doctrine could catch on so readily shows the hazy conception of socialism that has always been popular amongst vanguardists.

  Disputes about how to get socialism usually turn out to be disputes about what it is. For instance, it is apparent that if socialism is to be a democratic society a majority of the population must opt for it before it can come into existence. Any minority which intends to impose what it calls "socialism" on the rest of the population against their wishes or, for that matter, without their express consent, obviously intends to rule undemocratically.

 A minority which uses violence to get power must use violence to retain power. The means cannot be divorced from the ends.

Vanguardism often emerges in the minds of people who know that there is a lot wrong with society and aim at something radically different. But they avoid facing up to the unfortunate fact that at the moment the great majority of workers do not want a fundamental change. Workers grumble and desire palliatives (or these days desire that things don’t get any worse) but they don't seek the end of institutions like the police, the armed forces, nor even the Queen, let alone class ownership, the wages system, money and frontiers - the abolition of which is necessary for socialism.

 It is this refusal to face squarely that the bulk of the working class still accepts capitalism which leads to notions of elitism and insurrectionary violence, to the idea that workers must be manipulated by slogan-shouting demagogues brandishing reformist bait. Discussion, the most potent means of changing attitudes, is treated with contempt. 'Action' for its own sake is lauded to the skies.

 We socialists have never tried to forget the obvious fact that the working class does not yet want socialism, but we are encouraged by the knowledge that we, as members of the working class, have reacted to capitalism by opposing it.

 There is nothing remarkable about us as individuals, so it cannot be a hopeless task to set about changing the ideas of our fellow workers - especially as they learn from their own experience of capitalism.How much closer we would be to socialism today if all those who spend their time advocating 'transitional demands' were on our side!

 Marx's (and the Socialist Party's) conception of the working class as all those who have to sell their labour power, from road sweepers to computer programmers, is inconvenient to members of vanguard groups, who often believe that they themselves are not members of the working class, whilst admitting that it is the working class which must achieve socialism. "The workers" cannot grasp anything so "abstract" as socialism, it is claimed.

 But the exponents of vanguardism do understand it, or so they say.Evidently then, they are not workers: they are the 'intelligentsia' or 'middle class'. They constitute the officer corps. The workers are the instrument, but they wield the instrument. Socialism is a paper hoop through which the working class, performing circus animals, must be coaxed to jump. They are the ringmasters.

 Or, as their hero Trotsky saw it, the masses are the steam, and the leadership is the piston which gives the steam direction. This notion that they are not members of the working class explains why these people sometimes say to socialists: "What are you doing to get in among the working class?" The socialist worker who is only too chronically and daily aware that they are in and of the working class finds such idealism baffling but entirely consistent with the general confusion exhibited by reform-peddling leaders everywhere.

Edited from the pamhlet The Market System Must Go

Not fare

(Aother classic post from our recently deceased comrade Vic Vanni)

The famous "Fares Fair" scheme, by which some Labour members of the Greater London Council tried to ease London Transport's ( L.T.)financial worries (and win some votes), pleased some people but enraged just as many more. Some complained that reduced fares were being paid for by higher rates while businesses claimed the increase would drive them to the wall and cause even more unemployment.

In the end the scheme was thrown out by the House of Lords and L.T. fares were doubled in March. This decision greatly pleased those other reformers, the Tories, but it did not solve L.T.'s financial problems - the consequence was a massive jump in fare-dodging.

This fare-dodging has been a long standing worry for L.T. but just
recently it has come to a head because of several articles in the London evening newspaper, the Standard. Its August 10th article Find the Fare Fiddlers was all too reminiscent of similar headlines during the last two decades.

Back in January l97l the Socialist Standard carried an article on this
subject. At that time L.T. claimed to be losing only £1million yearly due to fare-dodging, but as the article in the Socialist Standard stated: "The signs are that London Transport's figure of £1 million will be shown to be hopelessly underestimated". In 1972 L.T. admitted that the losses were £5 million. By 1978 the figure was £12 million and in 1982 the loss is expected to be an astonishing £30 million - or over 5 per cent of L.T.'s total income.

In 1966 plans were made to install automatic ticket gates to control
passenger entrance and exit. This was to have cost £10 million at 1966 prices but the rapidly escalating costs of the system have resulted in its partial introduction only. As most stations have no automatic gates many passengers simply pay the collector at the other end a fraction of the real
cost of the journey.

In the past you could hand over a five penny piece and walk through the barrier with no trouble at all, but nowadays there is a marked change in the attitude of the collectors. They are much more zealous in their duties, not out of any new-found loyalty to L.T., but because many of them realise that the more they collect in excess fares the more they can keep for themselves. L.T. reckon that another £10 million is being lost to staff using this method, plus a variety of ingenious variations.

Not that Underground employees get all of this £10 million to
themselves, for L.T.'s bus conductors also have ways of keeping part of what they collect. These include the use of Black and Decker drilling machines to wind back the counters on ticket machines and, according to the Standard newspaper article, more than 2,000 of L.T.'s 13,000 bus conductors have already been cautioned for fiddling fares.

This conflict between L.T. and its employees is actually part of the
ceaseless struggle between employees and employers, whether the latter be private companies or state or municipal concerns. The main bone of contention is usually wages and conditions of work but workers will also claw back a bit of what they can't get legally.

Rare indeed is the worker who never goes for a read or does a "homer" in the company's time, never uses the photocopier for his or her own purpose, never takes home the company's stationery or arrives late or leaves early. And it's the same with the army of
fare-dodgers. True, they aren't employees of L.T. (no doubt many of them think L.T. belongs to them!) but hard-up workers will always try to supplement their earnings with a bit of free travel if they can.

Vic Vanni

Socialist Standard October 1982

Why all Workers Should Read this Blog

 Those who address these pages to the reader are working-class men and women—clerks and taxi-men, artists and accountants, shopmen and sweeps, carpenters, " bricklayers, masons, excavators, plumbers, painters, journalists, printers, scientific workers, weavers, porters, software programers, women and men of many other trades—but all working-class people; all folk who depend for their livelihood on the sale of their own labour-power, or the sale of the labour-power of those who are their breadwinners.

 The men and women, then, who address you through these pages are in die same position as you are. They work side by side with you in the office, workshop or factory; they face death and disablement with you in the mine; they "fight shoulder to shoulder with "you in the strike; they know what it is to walk the streets day after day in vain search for employment. The experience of poverty and humiliation which has seared your minds has Burnt also into theirs.

 We ask your earnest consideration of blogs that follow, because, being of the same class, suffering the same ills that you suffer we know that only with your deliverance can we be delivered.

 The means of production and distribution which you, made and which you renew and enlarge belong to the capitalists. The wealth which you produce provides, for the whole human race. Yet only part of it goes to the working class, who produce it, while the rest goes to the master class, who do not. It is plain that the more the' masters take, the less there is for you, and the, more you secure the less there remains for the masters.

 What does this mean? Can it mean anything else than opposing interests? Of course it cannot. It is the interest of each class to obtain more of the wealth produced, and since the more either class gets the less there is left for the other, their interests must clash.

 The capitalists admit that the more they get of the wealth produced the less is left for the workers, but they deny that there are opposing interests. They claim that the interest of both classes is to combine to produce more wealth.

 We shall show presently that to produce more wealth by no means necessarily increases either the absolute or the relative portion received by the producers; But even if it were true .that the interest of both classes is to combine to produce more wealth, it ;would remain as true as ever that it would be to the interest of each to obtain the largest possible share, of the "wealth produced, and hence the class interests would still clash.

 As a matter of fact, the classes do combine, willingly or unwillingly, but very effectually, to produce ever greater wealth, yet although they succeed in this, the signs of opposing interests, strikes and lock-outs, remain as glaring as ever.

 It is because it is so plainly the interest of the capitalist class to do all they can to prevent the workers obtaining ownership and control of the means of production and distribution: and more of the wealth they produce, and, therefore, above all, to keep them from learning why they are poor, and how to throw off their poverty, that the latter must look only to their own class for help.

 They must examine closely every message that is opposed and reviled by the masters and by their instruments and hirelings— their press, parsons, and politicians.

 It is for these reasons that all workers should read this blog.

Adapted from the pamphlet Socialism.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism

A Labour Sit In is Forcibly Dispersed

 IFFCO Company for Oils in the Northern industrial zone west of the Gulf of Suez witnessed an incident in which security forces broke into it on the dawn of last Monday and arrested 12 labour leaders from the company on Monday, January 2, 2017.

 

 Security forces entered the factory and forcibly dispersed a sit in, arresting 12 workers and forced the rest of the workers to leave the factory. This raises the number of workers arrested to 14 after security forces had arrested two labour leaders from the company a few days ago accusing them of calling for a strike.

Capitalism is global and the memories of some are fading as to the true repressive nature of the class struggle All the main sources of information and entertainment are owned by the capitalist class, and these gentry are hardly likely to allow them to be used to call sympathetic attention to the wages question or to be critical of the system of wages payment. They like the wages system and they like wages to be low. It is from this state of affairs that their privileges and luxuries emerge. And they know that the more the minds of the workers are directed into channels remote from wages the less attention will they give to wages, and this can react only to the benefit of the employers.

 But in spite of these diversionary activities, which attain a great deal of success in keeping them passive, workers do give attention to the question of wages. The pressures resulting from their status as wage workers, particularly the constant readiness of the employers to use every opportunity to lower their level of existence, compels activity in their own interest, even though this activity is all too reluctant and lacking in depth.

 Over the years working people throughout the world have employed a variety of methods in the hope of improving their living conditions. They have petitioned Parliament, supported candidates for office, organized political parties. They have paraded in the streets, erected barricades and fought against police. But, most important, they have organized in trade unions which have provided them with their most effective weapon, the strike.

 Workers of the company name dabove had entered into a strike after the administration refused to unify the inflation raise and after the decision to hand out a raise of 20% of the total wage of workers and 15% to the administrators and managers.

  But, above all, the workers, besides making the greatest possible use of the trade union, must also come to recognize that even at their best the unions cannot bring permanent security or end poverty .These aims cannot be gained within the limits of capitalist society .

 When the workers have raised their sights high enough to envisage a society where there can be no conflict over wages, and where each will contribute to the production of wealth according to his ability and receive from the produce according to his needs, they are thinking of a goal that can be gained only after they have become organized into a political organization having for its object the introduction of Socialism. Such an organization is the Socialist Party.

Politics

 EVERY so often the worker is invited to the polling places to elect a government for the term to follow. At such times he is an important person - the salt of the earth, the backbone of the nation, the mainstay of civilization. With the compliments of this or that political party his baby is kissed, his hand shaken, his back is slapped, his ego is catered to and the floodgates of oratory are opened to deluge him with emotion-packed words arranged to suggest that they mean something. Whatever his wishes may be - from the distant moon to the lowly carrot - they shall be granted.

 It is a beautiful and inspiring sight. Men of stated worth, whose talents and virtues are repeatedly affirmed in all the important journals, imploring that the worker deliver his vote to them. Billboard signs, newspaper advertisements, radio and television programmes, garden parties, mass rallies, volumes of verbiage, all designed to ensure that he does the right thing. And he does.

 Then comes the morning after. The signs are taken down. There is room in the important journals for more sporting news. The candidates congratulate each other. The oratory is ended.

 The babies are unkissed except by their mothers. The moon fades with the dawn, but still hangs high. The carrots remain in the stalls. And the worker turns up on the job at the usual time to continue the business of working for wages.

 All is normal again and one of the contending political parties has received a mandate from the electorate to keep it that way.

 That's how it goes. Lower income taxes become a substitute for higher wages. Increased old age pensions struggle to keep up with higher prices. A national health plan takes the place of local and company plans. Measures of little merit replace measures of little merit.

 It doesn't matter what condition the world is in. There may be a boom, a depression, or a war. There may be masses of people overworked, underfed, or dying violently. There is no shortage of politicians, amply provided with funds, preying on the gullibility of the populace by insisting that there is nothing wrong with society that cannot be cured by a little patchwork here and there. They may make their appeals to “the People”, or to “Labour”. They may in some cases believe the things they say and they may if elected bring into effect some of their promises. But however impressive and down to earth their efforts may seem, they never succeed in making the existing system of society fit to live in except to the parasite class and their principal protectors and bootlickers.


 The game of politics, for all the sham, the vaudeville, the bombast, the empty promises so often associated with it, is a serious game. Vast sums of money are poured into it and these sums are not provided by the workers. The workers are not usually well supplied with spare cash and they are not in any case very much interested in politics. Their interest is limited mainly to giving ear to the commotion created at election time and deciding in favour of the candidates they think have given the best performance. The vast sums of money that are used to din from all directions the superiority of certain programmes, policies and candidates are provided by the property-owning class, the capitalist class, and they are not provided because of any thought that in this way the interests of society may best be served; they are provided in the expectation that only their own interests will be served, even though these come into serious conflict with the interests of society.

 The capitalists have special material interests that cause them to have differences among themselves and these differences result in the existence of two or more political parties in most countries. But in one thing above all others they are united and that is in their support of parties that stand first of all for the continued existence of capitalism. They are prepared to sanction a generous outlay of attractive promises and political horseplay for the approval of the workers, since it is necessary that this approval be obtained; but whatever the politicians do to get themselves elected they cannot hope to retain the support of the capitalists if they allow the suggestion to enter into their activities that capitalism is not the best of all possible systems of society. Needless to say, they arc careful to protect their sources of campaign funds.

 From all this it must be clear that the capitalists are far more aware of the importance of political action than are the workers. They sponsor and finance vast campaigns to ensure that governments are formed that will protect their privileged position. So great is their interest that in all modern nations they control not only the government but also the greater part of the opposition. This leaves the workers with little of prominence to choose from other than the various parties which, with slight differences dictated by sectional capitalist interests, all represent the capitalist class.

 But there is an alternative. It is not necessary for the workers to continue supporting parties that represent interests opposed to their own. They can when they choose look beyond the noise and deceit that draw their attention at present. It will require some interest in politics. It will require some thought and study - far more than is now shown. But every moment of it will be worth the effort, for it leads unerringly toward a system of society that will rid mankind at once and for all time of the terrors and uncertainties that are so much a part of working class life under capitalism.

 Socialism is the alternative. Its introduction means a change that will make the world a fit place for humans to live in. Most people today oppose Socialism because they do not understand it and are influenced by the sneers and misrepresentations instigated by the beneficiaries of present society. Study and knowledge will change that attitude and will teach the workers that capitalism is not worthy of support no matter what party speaks in its name; that for them only Socialism is worthy of support and Socialism is represented only by the Socialist Party.

Adapted from 

* The Capitalist * The Worker * The Class Struggle * Wages * Depression * Politics

Vic Vanni

The funeral of Comrade Vic Vanni will take place on Tuesday January 10th at 10 a.m.  in the Linn Crematorium Glasgow G45 9SP Map Peter Hendrie, Glasgow branch secretary.

World View: 'USA: The Fallacy of the Free Market' and 'Middle East: Thirsting for Conflict'

1. 'USA: The Fallacy of the Free Market' 

2. 'Middle East: Thirsting for Conflict'

_______________________________________________________

USA: The fallacy of the free market

The illusion that is peddled by sharp-suited government spokesmen on television about the benefits of the free market system is just that—an illusion. Every government in the world is in favour of free trade when their owning class is in a favourable position to compete and in favour of protectionism when some competitor from another country has the drop on them.
The British toadies of capitalism are bad enough but, in the USA the hypocritical posturing of the worshippers of the market system is truly nauseating. As the foremost industrial and commercial power in the world, the USA is loud in its praise of free trade as the cure-all for social problems. In practice, though, it often favours the strictest protectionism and some recent examples from the Press starkly prove this.
The notion that it is the soundest economic wisdom to "buy in the cheapest market" may be all very well for American academic economists to expound in the ivory towers of university and business schools, but in the USA when they find that their home produced commodities are being undercut in price the capitalists appeal to their government to protect US products from "unfair" competition. They call any competition at which they are losing "dumping":
"Anti-dumping duties are a frequent recourse of the US government when faced with a trade problem. As the US trade deficit has mounted, pressure for duties has mounted, pressure for duties has increased rapidly and 36 petitions for anti-dumping have been received by the government so far in 1998, compared with 16 for the whole of last year. Most concerned imports of steel products . . . Ominously, William Daly, the US Commerce Secretary, has invited US manufacturers to make his anti-dumping staff 'the busiest people in town' . . . ." (Independent on Sunday, 22 November.)
The US exporters of Chiquita bananas, produced in Central America, used their political muscle to combat the European Union's favourable trade terms for Caribbean bananas, and got the US government to slap 100 percent duties on such products as sheep's cheese from the EU to the US. The American Financial Group, who own Chiquita, have recently given $1 million to Democratic and Republican politicians to fight the Caribbean preference which the they claim has lost Chiquita $1,000 million in earnings since the EC ruling of 1983 in favour of Caribbean bananas.
Behind the threats and counter-threats of a trade war the US and the EU are playing for higher stakes than are represented by bananas and sheep's cheese:
"Andrew Hughes Hallett, professor of economics at Strathclyde University, believes we need to peel back the skin on this row to understand it. 'I suspect it isn't about bananas at all and it isn't about protecting poor farmers either in St. Lucia or Honduras. It's about political pressure in Washington and Brussels . . . In the EU this dispute is tied up with the power of the agricultural lobby. It's like a bargaining chip. France is prepared to support Britain which is keen to get a favourable deal for its former colonies, so Britain will be more supportive of France on other issues affecting French farmers'." (The Herald, 24 December.)
All over the world the US government pursues a policy of free trade or protectionism, whichever is most beneficial to US economic interests, but it is from New Zealand that we learn of the naked power of the US being used to force its products down the throats of unsuspecting consumers.
As the world's biggest producer of genetically modified food, the US does everything in its power to protect the global ambitions of the agri-chemical firm Monsanto. It is increasingly concerned about European reluctance to accept genetically modified foodstuffs without proper labelling and testing.
In reply to criticisms of the British government that it was being pressured to accept US-produced genetically modified foodstuff, Tony Blair hid behind the cloak of secrecy when he replied:
"By convention it is not the practice of governments to make information on such meetings, or their contents, publicly available."
In New Zealand no such convention applies and it was revealed in cabinet minutes that economic pressure was being applied to the New Zealand government to accept genetically modified food:
"The Cabinet Minutes, dated 19 February 1998, state: 'The United States, and Canada to a lesser extent, are concerned in principle about the kind of approach advocated by Anzfa [part of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Council], and the demonstration effect this may have on others, including the European Union. The United States have told us that such an approach could impact negatively on the bilateral trade relationship and potentially end any chance of a New Zealand-United States Free Trade Agreement.'" (Independent on Sunday, 22 November.)
So there you have it. Blatant economic threats, undisguised self-interest, and no recourse to such fine rhetoric, so beloved by US politicians, as the "free world", or hypocritical cant about "democracy and the freedom of choice".
Capitalism is a horrible society—let's get rid of it.

RICHARD DONNELLY

 _________________________________________________________

Middle East: Thirsting for conflict

Ismail Seageldin, vice-president of the World Bank, made a disturbing prediction in 1995: "Many of the wars this century were about oil, but the wars of the next century will be about water." It was a comment that was to find many echoes at a meeting of UN hydrologists and meteorologists, convened by UNESCO in London back in November.
According to scientists, 7 percent of the world's people do not have enough water to survive. With the world's population set to rise by an India every ten years, by the year 2050, with a global population in excess of 10 billion, 70 percent will have an insufficient supply of water.
With similar facts in front of them, the London meeting agreed to a decade-long campaign to highlight the case for urgent action. UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) has already started the ball rolling and committed itself to making water disputes a priority, currently mediating in disputes in the Zambezi river basin and in the stand-off between Peru and Bolivia over access to Lake Titicaca.
From Africa, which has 19 of the 25 countries with the greatest number of people lacking access to clean water, to Central Asia, where 5 countries contest the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, conflict could indeed break out at any moment, and ironically over the world's most abundant resource.
There is so much water that, shared out, each person could have 100 billion litres. Of course, 97 percent of this is sea water, and of the remainder only 0.8 percent is accessible. Still, taking into account that a person's annual requirement is one million litres, there is still enough. The point is that it is not evenly distributed throughout the world and some countries control much greater resources than others. If we add to this the fact that three-quarters goes on growing food, and that a lot is lost through drainage, poorly constructed channels and evaporation, then we really understand UNEP spokesman Klaus Topfer when he declares that the "potential for water disputes is great and the issue needs urgent political action" (Guardian, 2 November 1998).
Egypt anticipates that its population will double to 110 million within 35 years. Even now it is faced with a water shortage and has for some time imported "virtual water"—grain and other foodstuffs which removes the necessity to use water for home-grown food. Egypt finds itself in the unique position of being totally dependent on the Nile, a river whose flow and tributaries are controlled by 8 other countries.
Already, Egypt has rattled its sabre at Ethiopia, which controls 80 percent of the supply and which has embarked upon a series of dams and irrigation schemes along the Blue Nile and, which if extended, would also interfere with Sudan's supply.
With Egypt looking to irrigate reclaimed desert along its northern coast and needing to increase its share of Nile water by 15 billion cubic metres per year, and with a further 8 countries seeking to increase their share, it takes no great leap in the imagination to see how water is increasingly dominating Egypt's foreign policy and why Egypt sees the taking of more water by its neighbours as an act of war.
At the other end of the scale, Turkey possesses an abundance of water and has primary control over the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates—rivers that both Syria and Iraq are heavily dependent on.
In 1984, Turkey began the South Eastern Antollia Project at a cost of £20 billion—a mammoth effort to construct 22 dams, 19 hydro-electric plants and thousands of miles of irrigation channels.
As Turkey directs more and more water for its own use, Syria and Iraq feel that should they upset their northern neighbour, water could be used as a weapon, and thus are anxious not to upset the controller of their water supply. Turkey has already used its control of Syria's water to great effect, forcing Syria to withdraw its support for the Turkish Guerrilla movement, the PKK. And it's a fair bet that Turkey's political might will be felt further in the region when the 1984-begun project nears its completion in 2005.
Forty percent of Israel's water depends on territory occupied in 1967 and still not handed back. Studies of hydrologists' maps further reveal a pattern of settlement construction in the "occupied territories" along the ridges of aquifers suggesting a wider Israeli game plan to control an increasing share of the region's water.
Interestingly, at a time when Israel is losing interest in Gaza, it can be found that Gaza's groundwater is sinking by 8 inches per year. Just as it's a fact that Israel controls 80 percent of the Palestinian water supply, so too do we find 26 percent of Palestinians with no access to clean water while the average Israeli consumes three-and-a-half times as much water as those Palestinians fortunate to have access.
Meanwhile, Israel's continuing control of the Golan Heights and south eastern Lebanon enables it to guard a series of pumps and pipelines which moves the Jordan's water throughout Israel and as far north as the Negev desert.
Israel's case is echoed the world over. In the former Soviet Union, while the Aral sea continues to shrink because of HEP plants and irrigation, five countries are becoming increasingly dependent on its diminishing waters.
Sensing trouble ahead, the UN adopted a convention on international waters in 1997—basically a framework for sharing rivers and lakes. Before it can become operational it requires 35 signatories. So far only 11 have signed—such is the reluctance of governments to sign such a valuable resource away.
In an age when we have the scientific and technological know how to enable us to solve almost all our problems, it is indeed an indictment on capitalism that so many humans, living on a planet, seven eighths of which is covered in water, have so little access to it. With the ever-present drive to cut costs and make profits, it is little wonder that better irrigation and improved channels are as rare as desalination plants and reservoirs? What wars our master will plunge us into in the coming millennium is anyone's guess, but among them don't be alarmed if the cause of many is water and its control by a profit-crazed élite.

JOHN BISSETT


Edited from a Socialist Standard February 1999


 

The Capitalist

 The Capitalist is a frequently misunderstood person. He is often portrayed in something less than glowing terms. Not that his clothing is shoddy. Usually it is shown to be carefully tailored and made of costly materials. But he is offered to us as a smirking, pear-shaped specimen, lips folded over a fat cigar, whose weight is mainly encompassed by his belt. Sometimes he appears as a banker, a big bad banker, who has corralled all the money and won't let the rest of us have any except at impossible rates of interest. Sometimes he turns up as a munition maker who plots to keep the world at war so that he may sell his guns and tanks and other wares and keep the profits flowing in. Then, again, he may be a landlord whose girth is gained from high rents on slum dwellings inhabited by poor people.

 He may be found in any of these categories, or he may be found in any of a number of other categories equally distasteful. Indignant people are the ones who portray him in these terms. People who believe that more of the good things of life could come to those in need if more money or cheaper money were made available, or that wars could be reduced in number or intensity if profits were removed from the sale of arms, or that better or cheaper housing would be possible if curbs were placed on his bad habits. Indignant people, rebellious people, people who see wrongs in society that must be righted, and who see in the capitalist the source of so many of these wrongs.

 Then there are other people who portray the capitalist differently. They see in him a public benefactor, a philanthropist, a captain of industry, a financial genius, an all-round fine fellow. Press reporters and politicians often tell of his benefactions and sterling qualities. Preachers and elderly ladies dote on his philanthropies. Educators discourse on his industrial and financial greatness.
In the eyes of these good people he brings grace, goodness and distinction to a society which, with all its faults, already scintillates with fine features. The way people look upon society has much to do with the way they look upon the capitalist. Those who see evils about them tend to place these evils at his door.
  Those who observe instead blessings in modern life tend to credit him with these blessings. He is truly the object of much attention.

 And most of it is undeserved. It is unquestionably true that he picks up a dollar here and there through colourful banking operations, the sale of guns, the renting of rat traps and other indiscreet activities. And it is equally true that his industries provide jobs for people, that he contributes generously to churches and charities, that he gives his support to all kinds of groups engaged in social uplifting and public improvement, activities widely conceded to be of worth. But he is really not much different from the rest of us. There may not be patches on his britches or holes in his socks, or callouses where ours are. He may have better clothing, a finer home, a more attractive bank balance. But he could walk along the road with any of us - and who could determine which one owned the alarm clock?

 The thing that makes him a capitalist is not the thing that makes him good or bad in people's eyes. Most people don't even give a thought to the thing that makes him a capitalist. They content themselves with some particular feature of his activities and judge him accordingly.
He is a wicked banker, a blood-stained munitions maker, a thieving landlord. Or else he is the embodiment of many virtues.

 The most important thing to note about the capitalist is that he is a member of an economic category. He belongs to a class in society - the capitalist class. As such he shares with his fellow capitalists in the ownership of the mills, mines, factories, in fact, all the means that exist in society for producing and distributing the food, clothing, shelter and other things needed for the preservation and enjoyment of human life. He and his kind own all these things: the rest of society don't own them. It is this fact of ownership that determines in the long run what he thinks and does and how he lives, and how the rest of us live.

 Consider the position of the capitalist and his factory. Into the factory go raw materials and workers and out of it come products that are sold in the market places to bring him a profit. The profit does not originate in the market places. People who manipulate wealth in market places do not in that way create profit; they simply shuffle it around in such a way that some capitalists benefit at the expense of others. The profit is created by the workers in the factory. It exists in that portion of the wealth which the workers produce in excess of their own wages.

 Not all of it is profit but there is no profit to be found elsewhere. To increase the amount of his profit the capitalist must improve the methods of production, or he must induce the workers to work longer hours or at greater speed, or to accept lower wages. And unless he is prepared to sweat in the factory beside the workers, a thought that is usually repellent to him, there is not much else he can personally do about the profit except spend it. This he does with all the assurance of one who is entitled to it.

 The capitalist is a parasite. He lives without working. He lives on the results of other men's toil and he is able to do this because he owns the means of production and distribution, a condition that is neither necessary nor desirable but is allowed to continue because people have not yet seen in it the source of most of the harm in modem society. For even those who rise indignantly to condemn the capitalists, in most cases condemn only the 'wicked' ones.

 To replace wicked capitalists with worthy ones will not end the exploitation of labour. The workers will continue to live in need, in insecurity, in fear of the future, no matter what may be the quality of those who occupy the high places.

 What is wrong in society is not the wickedness of the capitalists but the wickedness of the capitalist system; and until this system is replaced by one in which there are no capitalists, society can have no hope for a better life. It is not proposed here to imprison or exterminate the capitalist; it is proposed simply to put him in overalls and make him a useful member of the community.

(Adapted from the pamphlet 

* The Capitalist * The Worker * The Class Struggle * Wages * Depression * Politics )

Scots wha hae not

The number of children relying on food banks in one council area has jumped by almost a quarter in just three months.

Statistics compiled by Renfrewshire Council show the number of children receiving food bank help rose from 355 to 437 between July and September.
It said the rise coincided with benefit changes and payment delays and called for help from the Scottish government.
The Scottish government said it would continue to protect the most vulnerable from UK government cuts.
In the same three months, 947 food bank vouchers were issued by the council to 72 families and 149 single parents.

 

This is on top of figures which showed more than 7000 Scots were forced to use food banks in the week before Christmas.

Low income was the biggest factor in 27 per cent of cases, while benefit delays were a factor in 24 per cent and 15 per cent were due to a benefit change.

Ewan Gurr, Scotland network manager for the Trussell Trust, said:

“The message we are clearly hearing in our food banks is not so much that people are struggling with a low income but with no income. This is not about misplaced spending priorities but families struggling on tight budgets where increased winter fuel bills and the absence of free school meals can mean having to make a decision between a warm home and a warm meal. Many individuals and families are simply experiencing a financial famine.”

This is to be set in context with the fact that the 62 richest people on the planet are worth more than the combined wealth of half the world’s population and the richest 1% now has as much wealth as the rest of the world combined, according to Oxfam. Poverty is not just absolute, but relative, to the collective wealth produced.

Leninspeak

(This article by our comrade Vic Vanni who died this afternoon appeared in the Socialist Standard No. 995 of May 1983)

  It really is ironic that those members of the Militant group who face expulsion from the Labour Party should complain about the lack of democracy and tolerance which they allege is being shown to them. After all, as worshippers of Lenin they must know that their hero was no democrat and showed little tolerance of his opponents
outside or inside Bolshevik ranks. We have yet to hear them condemn this.

 One of the most amazing legacies of the Russian revolution and its aftermath is Lenin's image as a humane, even saintly figure, despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary. To this day thousands of people all over the world will revile Stalin but revere Lenin, yet the truth is that it was the latter who commenced the reign of terror after November l9l7 and who deserves his own place in history as a brutal, lying, ruthless dictator.


 Right up till the Bolshevik seizure of power Lenin had been agitating for .the abolition of the state apparatus including the army, police and bureaucracy. Every official, he said, should be elected and subject to recall at any time. He was all for freedom of the press and the right to demonstrate for "any party, any group"'

 Immediately on gaining power he even promised to uphold the verdict of the coming elections for the Constituent Assembly
As a democratic government 'we cannot ignore the decision of the rank and file of the people, even though we may disagree with it ...and even if the peasants continue to follow the Social-Revolutionaries, even if they give this party a majority in the Constituent Assembly, we shall still say, be it so'
(Report on the Land Question,8 November 1917') All of this was, of course, mere window dressing, for Lenin knew that the Russian people would never have supported what he really had in mind for them.  Far from abolishing the state apparatus he set about strengthening it, especially the secret police (Cheka), in order to impose the Bolchevik dictatorship. And instead of officials being elected and recallable the Bolsheviks simply appointed their own men who were answerable to them alone'


 Gradually all opposition press was outlawed and their demonstrations forbidden' When the long-called-for elections for the Constituent Assembly resulted
in a humiliating defeat for the Bolsheviks. Lenin dissolved the Assembly by force.Later on he explained away those earlier promises on the grounds that
'This was an essential period in the beginning of the revolution; without it we would not have risen on the crest of the revolutionary wave, we should have
dragged in its wake' (Report of the Central Committee to the 11th Congress of the Russian Communist Party 27 March 1922.)


 In the run-up to the November coup Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won widespread support with their slogan "peace, bread and land". Of course the
promises of politicians are always easier to make than to fulfill, as the Russian workers and peasants very soon discovered. The peasants, having got rid of the landlord, now had their grain and cattle forcibly taken from them in return for worthless paper money. Those who resisted were shot and many villages were burnt. Lenin claimed that his policy of robbing the peasants was necessary to avoid famine but inevitably, the peasants retaliated by burning their crops and killing their cattle and so Lenin's policy produced famine anyway. In the cities and towns unemployment was rife and the workers, in or out of a job, were starving.

 Lenin's response to the plight of the Petrograd workers was to tell them to ...set out in their tens of thousands for the Urals, the Volga and the south,
where there is an abundance of grain, where they can feed themselves and their families . . ( To The Workers of Petrograd, 12 July 1918.)

How the workers and their families were go get to these areas in view of the fact that the civil war had broken out in each of them, Lenin didn't say.


 Early in 1919 many strikes and protest demonstrations were crushed with great loss of life. Starvation continued to be the workers' lot for several more years but anyone who argued that the chronic food scarcity could be eased by allowing the peasants to trade their produce instead of having it stolen by the state should, said Lenin, be shot. This argument was "counter-revolutionary" - until Lenin himself made it official policy early in l92l.


 Another myth surrounding the period of Lenin's dictatorship is that at least there was democracy within the Communist Party. This is the so-called "democratic centralism", but Lenin no more welcomed opposition from his own comrades than he did from anyone else' Communists who criticised him or his policies were denounced as "unsound elements", "deviationists" or worse' and their arguments “mere chatter", "phrase mongering" and “dangerous rubbish".
 Lenin's anger boiled over at those communists who wanted free trade unions independent of party control' He raged at the *loudmouths" and demanded complete loyalty or else they would throw away the revolution because 'Undoubtedly, the capitalists of the Entente will take advantage of our party’s
sickness to organise a new invasion, and the Social Revolutionaries will take advantage of it for the purpose of organising conspiracies and rebellions'. (The Party Crisis, 19 January 1921 )

He also complained that the debate on the trade unions had been . . an excessive luxury. Speaking for myself I cannot but add that in my
opinion this luxury was really absolutely impermissible' (Report on the political activities of the Central-Committee to the l1th Congress of the Russian
Communist Party, 8 March 1921.)

 In short, shut-up and don't rock the boat. Faced with this attitude the dissidents had no chance. Their various groups, such as "Workers' Opposition",
were expelled (even when they agreed to abide by majority decisions against them) and many of their leaders and members were jailed or exiled.


 All Lenin's actions were the result of his single-minded determination to seize power and hold on to it, even if it meant that millions of Russian workers and
peasants died in famine and repression. The seizure of power was' given the chaotic condition of Russia at the time, comparatively simple: to hold on to power he had to create a state apparatus which, under his personal direction, was used to terrorise all opposition into submission.


 The Leninists of today will argue that all of this was a case of the end justifying the means, that it was done in order to bring about socialism. But
undemocratic means can never bring about democratic ends; any minority which seizes power can only retain it by violent, undemocratic methods. In any case, even before 1917 the Mensheviks and many European social democrats had used Karl Marx's theory of social development to demolish the idea that socialism could be established in a backward country like Russia.

 The absence of larger-scale industry and the consequent smallness of the working class, both of which are essential ingredients for socialism, plus the presence of a vast, reactionary peasantry made socialism impossible. This earned them Lenin's undying hatred, a hatred which only increased as he saw their view justified by events. All that was left to Lenin in the circumstances was to commence building up state-capitalism.The Russia of today is
a grim reminder of how well he succeeded.  Vic Vanni

U.B.I. (Again)

Two councils, Fife and Glasgow, are investigating idea of offering everyone a fixed income regardless of earnings. Scotland looks set to be the first part of the UK to pilot a basic income for every citizen, as councils in Fife and Glasgow investigate trial schemes in 2017.

 The concept of a universal basic income revolves around the idea of offering every individual, regardless of existing welfare benefits or earned income, a non-conditional flat-rate payment, with any income earned above that taxed progressively.

 The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has suggested that it is likely to appear in his party’s next manifesto, while there has been a groundswell of interest among anti-poverty groups who see it as a means of changing not only the relationship between people and the state, but between workers and increasingly insecure employment in the gig economy.

This idea is an old one it was the first Muslim caliph, Abu Bakr (573-634 CE), who introduced a guaranteed minimum standard of income, granting each man, woman, and child ten dirhams annually; this was later increased to twenty dirhams.

 Thomas Paine advocated a citizen's dividend to all US citizens as compensation for "loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property" (Agrarian Justice, 1795).

 Napoleon Bonaparte echoed Paine's sentiments and commented that 'man is entitled by birthright to a share of the Earth's produce sufficient to fill the needs of his existence'.

In recent years it has always been localised trials or feasability studies which the media then blow up into a major story. 

 If the UBI is introduced it will be in the form that is acceptable to the ruling class and for the purpose of mitigating the cost of the up-keep of the increasing and unavoidable numbers of casualties of the class war, automation being one field of battle. The capitalists and their State need us to be impoverished, indebted and enslaved. Would a basic income remove this or just create a new form of dependency? 

 Any UBI will always be framed within the tight parameters that capitalism will permit a reform which will only be passed if it fits in with the agenda of the employing class, will have sufficient built-in constraints  that it will fail to satisfy the expectations and hopes of our fellow workers.

 In the recent Swiss referendum on the issue for a proposed Basic Income referendum the pro campaign literature said that, with the introduction of Basic Income, wages would be reduced by its amount:

“Wages are going to adapt themselves to become a complement to Basic Income. For example with a Basic Income of 2500 Swiss Francs, someone who at present gets 8000 Swiss francs from his employer will not get more than 5500 or so wages which will come to be added to his Basic Income.”

 So, anyone with a wage above the poverty line is not going to be better off: their income will be exactly the same, with instead of it all being paid by the employer, a part will be paid by the State and a part by the employer. It would lead to a massive downward pressure on wages. In fact, it's part of the scheme. They have openly and explicitly said that their scheme involves a wage reduction for all workers above the poverty line even if their total income is to remain the same, i.e. will make no financial difference to the vast majority of workers.

The Swiss voters rejected this proposal.

  What UBI proposes is a reform of the welfare system that would benefit only those on benefits, allowing them to receive these as of right without means testing or the obligation to try to find work. For many supporters, it only makes sense that the budget for UBI would come from cannibalising existing welfare.

 UBI would not exist as an add-on benefit. The logic is to shut down housing benefit and the rest and replace them with a single cheque. The welfare system can finally be eliminated.  Nice if you could get it but hardly likely as long as capitalism lasts.

Now’s the Hour, Now’s the Day and Now's the Year

On behalf of all members the World Socialist Movement, we send our good wishes to the world’s working class for the New Year2017, wishing them all the best of success in the struggle against capitalism.  We believe that next year could indeed be a decisive one in the establishment of socialism. We face the new year of struggle in conditions where the socialist cause is beginning to revive after decades of setbacks and confusion. We also salute our fellow-workers around the globe and express our solidarity in their just struggles. We pay tribute to their sacrifices. A new year is beginning and we hope that it will be one of re-newed growth of the socialist movement internationally.

It is important in clarifying the tasks that we face as we enter 2017 when our fellow workers are confronted by an uncertain future and dismal employment prospects. It is necessary to make plans for the new year, according to tradition. Our vision should not be of a limited horizon that others wish to impose upon us.

We must increase the political work and improve our educational efforts but sadly the signs of a socialist New Year are none too plentiful. All over the world capitalism is daily taking its toll. The ruling class have so succeeded in familiarising people with scenes of slaughter and bloodshed that watching dying workers on the news no longer raises the heart-beat or races the pulse. We intend 2017 to be a year of growing class consciousness. Our brightest hope for the coming New Year is that our work for socialism can take root and bear fruit. Those of us in the Socialist Party are hoping that we will celebrate the establishment of a free, equal and humane society in the next New Year.

A guid New Year tae yin an’ a’.