Tomorrow does not belong to us

Today people all over the world are afraid and are wondering what will become of them and why. Human nature is not one of greed, or dog-eat-dog competition. That is learned. We know in indigenous societies, those societies which existed for tens of thousands of years before the origin of class society, there was no such thing as private property. There was shared, communal property. Socialism is the first step in returning human beings to the society in which our species developed based on solidarity, cooperation and interaction with each other based on equality. We don’t have a blueprint for what life will look like in post-capitalist society, but we do venture to say that our lives will not be driven by social and economic forces that they do not control. Socialism is where human beings can really begin to shape their own destiny as individuals, as families, and as communities.

Organized as a one human family, our global society and its economy, would be controlled by everyone, together, not just a small group, whether that group was the tiny corporate "ruling class" or the tiny “bureaucrats”. Economic activity as one human family would occur cooperatively, to satisfy human need and want, not to allow a tiny group of owners or politicians to accumulate vast riches. It would be a dramatically new and different society, offering a way of life we can only dream of under our present system. Marx summed it all upby saying that the goal is “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Our goal, in short, cannot be a society in which some people are able to develop their capabilities and others are not; we are interdependent, we are all members of a human family. The full development of all human potential is our goal. “What do we all want?” and the answer is “To be all that we can be.” Socialism does not try to make everyone of the same. Quite the opposite. Socialism advocates more freedom and individual expression for people, not less. Whether it's freedom of expression or sexual freedom, socialism advocates increasing freedom. Socialists do not advocate that everyone should have the same income,

We can and must address environmental problems, including climate change. This means fighting the vast global inequalities in wealth, health and prosperity. Those who claim slowing population growth will stop or slow environmental destruction are ignoring the real and immediate threats to life on our planet. Capitalism is a many-headed Hydra monster and its depredations are everywhere. Capitalism has poisoned all areas of life. Socialists recognize that the kind of sustainability necessary given our current circumstances can only be accomplished with careful planning at the local, regional and worldwide levels and cannot be entrusted to the whims of the market.

The socialist vision of a worldwide human family is not only a more positive, compassionate, and appealing one than the dominant “us versus them” vision, but it is also empowering. We conceive socialism, not as a scheme of society to be constructed from a preconceived plan, but as a stage in social evolution. Those who will inaugurate the socialist society of the future will be the coming socialist generations themselves.  This is why we refrain from offering these future generations any models or blueprints. Today's socialists can only point towards a general direction of development and little more. One must not project our own reflection into a different world, where the content and motivations of present-day society will no longer be operative. Socialism will undoubtedly bring about a revolutionary transformation of human activity and association in all aspects of our lives.

People, today, are haunted by insecurity. Our mental health and well-being is undermined by fear for our future and the future of our children. We are never free from fear that if something happens, if they have a sickness or an accident, the consequences will fall upon us and our children will be deprived of an education and proper food and clothing. Under such conditions, people don't really get much chance to show their true nature. In the socialist society of shared abundance, this all-pervading fear will be lifted from the minds of the people who will enjoy a new attitude toward life and their pleasure in it. Human nature will get a chance to show what it is really made of. People will no longer suspect their neighbour lest they are taken advantage of. There will be no chance to “buy” friendship or love because nothing will be for sale. Women, liberated from the prison of the kitchen, will become the free companions of free men. There is no such thing as a child without talent. Children will engage in productive labour, but not as in today's child exploitation, not at the expense of their “education” but as an essential part of it. From an early age, children will learn to use tools and assist other people. The child will have the satisfaction of learning by doing, and the satisfaction of being useful and productive even when he’s a child. Older people will begin to treat children more respectfully, regard them from an early age, as equal citizens to be reasoned with and talked tto.Marx said: “Children must educate their parents.” And they will do that, too.

We perhaps will not have the opportunity to become citizens of the socialist future yet our vision of the future, fits us for our role as advocates for revolution, promoters for the liberation of humanity. No matter whether we personally see the dawn of socialism or not, no matter what our personal fate may be, the cause for which we fight has social evolution on its side to usher mankind into a new day. It is enough for us if we do our small part to hasten on the day. That’s what we’re here for. That’s all the incentive we need. And the confidence that we are right and that our cause will prevail, is all the reward we need.

"Intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel. If our ideas of a new Society are anything more than a dream, these three qualities must animate the due effective majority of the working people; and then, I say, the thing will be done"  - William Morris

Against Parochialism

Scottish nationalism is born out of a frustration. The problems of the Scottish workers flow not from being part of the UK, as the nationalists argue, but because of the crisis of capitalism which weighs just as heavily on the workers and their families south of the border. The oppression and exploitation of working people is a product of capitalist society and can only be removed by the socialist transformation of society. This, in turn, requires the unity of all workers, irrespective of nation, colour, creed, sex or language. That is why workers' unity must be foremost in the minds of our fellow-workers. Nowhere is the result of this more glaring than in the trade union field that there should be no encouragement of the splitting of the trade unions, the basic organisations of the working class.  Fellow-workers are on a slippery slope if we abandon the principle of unity. Our blog has highlighted the division among the Scottish coalminers in the past.

Capitalism pits the interests of the employers and workers against each other, sooner or later all nationalist parties are forced to take sides and we know what the choice always has been from history. They declare that the “national interest” is supreme which is the interest of business. Socialism is about solidarity, coming together and uniting through class struggle. Nationalism should be anathema for a socialist for it creates arbitrary divisions based on nothing more than where a person happened to be born. Claiming that the true road to world socialism lies in erecting more borders is absurd. Socialism should be about uniting people through common interests, not pulling people apart through arbitrary ideas of nationhood. Breaking things up into smaller and smaller units is surely not the method of a socialist.

 Socialism is the self-liberation of working class people, by their own efforts, creating and using their own organisations. Social struggle occurs in a given place on the surface of the planet. As we live in Scotland we will begin here.  Our attitude to constitutional reform is that no fundamental problem facing working people can be solved, or even seriously alleviated, by tinkering with the state structure. We cannot tag along with or follow these nationalist movements or parties - we must resolutely propagate socialism. We must constantly hammer home that SNP and their ilk are nothing but tools of the ruling class. The nationalists will not just go away if we ignore them.

All too often, British union leaders have resorted to nationalist flag-waving to defend "British" enterprise against "foreign" competition - conflating the interest of the bosses with those of workers.  By choosing to operate on the basis that British workers have distinct interests from workers elsewhere, union officials (whether consciously or not) play right into the hands of the capitalist profiteers. Of course, nationalism was deep-seated in all Communist Parties

In the world in which we live each and, every society is pinioned within the iron grip of global capitalism. Against the vast multinational power of capital only one force can be counter-posed and that is the worldwide unity of the working class. Socialism, therefore is international or it is nothing. Socialism sets out to abolish the antagonisms and divisions between the peoples of the world. Socialism means large units, closer and closer fraternal relationships between all countries and peoples. Ultimately it means, in the shape of fully flowered socialism itself, a united Federated Communes of the World, ours will be free unions of free people. There will be not a trace of national chauvinism about them.  Working-class people are casting off old ideas and looking around for new ones.

  

Our planetary movement

The world has a proven abundance of resources and more than enough to feed and give us all more than we need to thrive. Yet because of the capitalist system, these resources are severely restricted, keeping half the world’s population in poverty and allowing millions to starve to death every year. The capitalist exchange-economy is detrimental to humanity as it creates social divisions, and conflicts of interest between nations, groups and individuals. It also creates conflicts of interest between the moral aspirations of the individual and the individual’s desire for materialistic rewards and security. 

Modern society has access to highly advanced technology and can make available food, clothing, housing and medical care; update our educational system; and develop a limitless supply of renewable, non-contaminating energy. By supplying an efficiently designed economy, everyone can enjoy a very high standard of living with all of the amenities of a high technological society. The technical advancement over the last decades has been incredible, and the progress should be helping us to end global poverty. Ironically, the opposite has happened and world inequality continues to rise more and more. When new technology is implemented in work-places, workers are made unemployed. When the capitalist economy takes a down turn, the media blames the world’s woes on the least powerful of society, the poor, the sick, the migrants, all victims and not the instigators. Pollution kills many millions people on the planet every year and the numbers are risinis also a problem, yet attempts to reduce emissions are bad for business. A resource-based economy would make it possible to use technology to overcome scarce resources by applying renewable sources of energy, computerizing and automating manufacturing and inventory, designing safe energy-efficient cities and advanced transportation systems, providing universal health care and more relevant education, and most of all by generating a new incentive system based on human and environmental concern.

Many people believe that there is too much technology in the world today, and that technology is the major cause of our environmental pollution. This is not the case. It is the abuse and misuse of technology that should be our major concern. In a more humane civilization, instead of machines displacing people they would shorten the workday, increase the availability of goods and services, and lengthen vacation time. If we utilise new technology to raise the standard of living for all people, then the infusion of machine technology would no longer be a threat.

A resource-based world economy would also involve all-out efforts to develop new, clean, and renewable sources of energy: geothermal; controlled fusion; solar; photovoltaic; wind, wave, and tidal power; and even fuel from the oceans. We would eventually be able to have energy in unlimited quantity that could propel civilisation for thousands of years. A resource-based economy must also be committed to the redesign of our cities, transportation systems, and industrial plants, allowing them to be energy efficient, clean, and conveniently serve the needs of all people.

We want you to realise is how easily socialism can be achieved, once we have the political will to achieve it.  We also want you to understand just how empowering, creative and socially cohesive socialism would be. The world has so many problems and the solution is a economic system of production for use and free access. We think it is possible. Today we live in abundance. There is enough for all. Totally sustainably. We now have the knowledge and technology to provide easily for all human need. Without war, poverty or exploitation. There is no shortage of land, food, building materials or the capacity to produce the things we need.  A growing number of people and organisations around the world are realizing that a class-free money-free society based on common ownership is the answer to all our problems. It solves everything. Once a majority of the population understand socialism the change can take place. We see it as being almost immediate, voluntary and unopposed. It can happen just as soon as enough people wish it and will it. That's all it takes. The only change required is in your mind.

We already have everything we need to establish socialism. People will continue to do the essential tasks. Not because their arm is being twisted by debt, poverty and starvation. But because society needs them. Most people are perfectly content once they have enough. Enough is easy to sustainably produce today but the 'infinite growth' that the profit system needs ensures we are being continuously bombarded with advertising and marketing trying to convince us we need more to make us happy by conspicupus consumption and ever-changing fads and fashions. Humans are born preloaded with altruistic motivation. The vast majority want to help each other and take care of our surroundings. At the moment, they simply can't afford to. Once all our needs are provided freely and easily, as they can be now, we will be free to do what our conscience tells us. If a job is worth doing for society then society will see that it gets done. Like volunteer firefighters or ambulance staff today. Humans have already invented systems and machines to do the crappy shit jobs much more easily, if not eliminate them altogether. When almost everyone has the time, resources, energy and the means to help others, they will freely join the rota for the necessary but unpleasant jobs. Why ? Because there will be social admiration and esteem for those who contribute. Those who will do the work will mostly be the same people as now. When people aren't treated as wage-slaves and are secure and contented, they will offer their time to do what's important. We now know what we need to do. We've got everything we need to do it. It's just right now, in this outdated system, we can't 'afford' to do it. Imagine how you'd be without the worry of bills, rent, mortgage, losing your job. When everything is voluntary, just like in most voluntary organizations today, the members vote democratically for whoever they think would be best for the job. In many companies the current boss may well remain. But now the staff are voluntary, the balance of 'power' changes. For the good of all. Not just the boss. What communities agree is worthwhile will be accomplished. People will voluntarily contribute in health, sports, community, recreation, family, emergency services, conservation, etc.

Enough decent sustainable food, housing, education, healthcare, security etc. can be easily provided today. We are surrounded by abundance today. When humans have a decent standard of living, they behave very differently. Currently we are perpetually starved of our humanity by falsely induced poverty and subtly marketed brainwashing. Because we now have modern technology to help us with everything voluntary, society becomes the provider of everything. If society needs, then society will provide. Every supply chain, whether it produces electricity, food, car parts, vet services or TVs, relies upon people. A lot of people. They all have families, neighbours, friends etc. They are society. Without prices and money in the way, society gets what society wants and the supply chain is self-regulating. We will all have free access to as much as we can environmentally and sustainably produce. Renewable energy can easily replace all exploitive energy once it becomes 'affordable'. Once antiquated fossil fuel industries no longer have to protect their interests. Imagine free electric cars for all to use. When ownership is replaced by access, we will need far fewer cars, boats etc. Why own one anyway? In an economy based on production for use rather than production for profit, we could easily produce all of the necessities of life and provide a high standard of living for all. In a resource-based economy such socialism all of the world’s resources are held as the common heritage of all of Earth’s people, thus eventually outgrowing the need for the artificial boundaries that separate people. This is the unifying imperative. This idea of world socialism has nothing whatever in common with the present aims of an elite to form a world government with themselves and large corporations at the helm, and the vast majority of the world’s population subservient to them. Our vision of globalization empowers each and every person on the planet to be the best they can be, not to live in abject subjugation to a corporate central command body. Our proposals would would provide the necessary information that would enable them to participate in any area of their competence. The measure of success would be based on the fulfilment of one’s individual pursuits rather than the acquisition of wealth, property and power.

 In socialism, the products of labour will be freely available or it won't be socialism. Instead of exchange, we'll have democratically controlled distribution networks. They'll exist on local, regional, and world scales. All products will these distribution networks who will then see that they're distributed according to need. With most products, the goal will be to peg production to expected need. With some products and services, this could mean basically unlimited access. With others, there may be rationing, based on a democratically decided and controlled system. That's not exchange, though. That's the abolition of markets and the implementation of a planned and rational distribution system. There is no need for money or trade within such a system. We are talking about replacing an integrated global capitalism based on value production with an equally integrated global society of free access. 'Alternative ' currencies are still money, reflecting equivalent exchange between private owners which if developed at a social level would begin to undermine the common 'ownership' of both the system of production and distribution of goods and services that we would all be benefiting from. Once we've abolished commodity production and exchange, money would cease to function as money. There'd be very little point to it.

Freedom Not Nationhood

From one point of view the prospects for the future don’t look good.  Across the globe, populist nationalists have taken power or threaten to assume power. In addition to our usual activity of putting across the case for socialism, the Socialist Party will have to step up the socialist case against nationalism.  We will be insisting that wage workers in one state have the same basic interest as their counterparts in other states. We are all members of the world working class and have a common interest in working together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the globe will have become the common-owned property of all the people of the world and used for the benefit of all.

Patriotism is an objectionable sentiment since it means the placing of one’s own country, its interests and well-being, above those of the rest of humanity.  A nationalist who wants his or her country great and strong invariably wants to see it so, if need be, at the expense of the welfare and interests of other nations. Patriotism Is the enemy of social justice and socialism.  A community of interests and neighbourly feeling does not exclusively apply to nationality. In ancient times it was the city-state rather than the nation-state which was its boundary. The notion that there is something wrong or disgraceful in going against one’s own country is imbued within us all but, of course, it does not involve any capitalist when it comes to determining where his or her investments should go. 

We live in a world which has the potential to adequately feed, house and provide clean water and decent medical care for every single man, woman and child on Earth. The resources exist to banish material want as a problem for members of the human race. Yet millions throughout the world are malnourished, live in squalor or are actually dying of starvation or starvation-related diseases. What can be done about it? The solution is one world without frontiers and without states, but not a world government presiding over a world capitalist economy. It is world socialism, where the resources of the planet have become the common heritage of all, to be used for the benefit of all Earth’s people. 

Firstly, borders and nations are not the real problem, but are consequences of the real problem, which is private class ownership and control of the means of life under capitalism. National borders will survive so long as national capital finds them indispensable to the needs of capital. Independence won't lead to a single affordable house, a single hospital or a single school being built if it does not make a profit for the capitalist and investor. 

The planet we live on has been arbitrarily divided into some two hundred nation states. This is our planet and we want it back. We can replace oppression with equality, waste of resources with production directly for use, and systemic competition with cooperation for the common good. We can create the world that we want, fashioned by the majority, in the interests of the majority. Socialists have no interest in rearranging national boundaries or in changing the nationality of the capitalist class in certain areas. Workers should just take the pattern of states as they find them and abolish the lot.

We need to abolish the out-moded and old-fashioned division of the world into nation states. Instead we need to cooperate on a world basis to meet our material needs and energy requirements. Only in a socialist society will the community be able to make decisions about energy production which are based on what is safe and in the human interest including our shared environment instead of decisions based on, and limited by, economic considerations. Only in a socialist society, when human beings can relate to each other as fellows and not as units of labour to be exploited or national enemies to be destroyed, will the threats to humanity's continued existence really be removed. The task confronting us is to free ourselves from the depredations of capitalism and create the World Commonwealth of Humanity.

Capitalist competition leads to squabbles over artificially created national boundaries. Nation states waste resources on maintaining armed forces and developing weapons of mass destruction which threaten the existence of the world. Competition between workers, especially in a dwindling job market during capitalism's periodic slumps, leads to poverty, insecurity and xenophobia. A socialist society will release the potential to satisfy human needs which the computer-age has made possible. And because it will not be limited by market forces or the need for secrecy it will be possible to co-operate on a worldwide scale for the first time. 

Capitalism is not forever.

Sham solutions, Shameless capitalism

Left and Right are a part of the same capitalist shithole. Instead the Socialist Party stands dedicated to achieving the following objective:
"The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community." 

This post-capitalist society of social equals, will not require rationing of access to social wealth, via waged slavery, based upon ability to pay for them, but will proceed from a production for use, free access principle of:
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."

We are addressing the need of a post-capitalist society utilising the existing available and future technology, which capitalism cannot do, as it would implode and lead to war (over-dumping, trade routes and raw materials).

 One run by us all in common, (no governments over people) with free access (no rationing by wage or prices) to the collectively produced super-abundance, that this would produce from a production for use society, and not some state capitalist monstrosity such as existed in post-feudal experiments such as Russia was.

 Because the rate of exploitation is greater, with the intensification and new technology as capitalism’s productive forces have outgrown the production relation, this means capitalism has achieved its limited potential, of creating the possibility for its own obsolescent redundancy and the new post-capitalist society of super-abundance and free access is now more than possible, as it has been since the start of last century.

 We do not need decadent 'Capital' any more as we presently, the world’s working class 95%, run society from top to bottom and are quite capable of running the new post-capitalist era without elites.

 The employer has the upper hand always. Do you not understand what wage slavery means. The choice is work or dole. It is time we stopped expecting politicians to deliver salvation for us and took ownership and control into our collective hands to end the capitalist system, the immense majority being self-led and using democratic means, the end of governments over people and utilisation of this political awareness to have the people themselves administer over things, utilising recallable delegates when necessary.

You have to make a mental leap from considering how things are done today, with standing armies and competing local, regional and global interests allied with anarchic production for sale market allocation for the benefit of 1-5% minority privileged owning groups, with the majority in waged enslaved conditions of rationed access to the wealth they collectively produce, into commonly owned production for use cooperative, global, regional and local, endeavours with free access and the situation is resolved into cooperative allocations and sharing of raw materials as opposed to warring competition.

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.

But nothing will stop an idea which time has come.

All wealth comes from the world's working class.

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

That class 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:
"All for All".

Wee Matt

FOR A MONEY-FREE WORLD

We are all foreigners

People living in other countries which are not the land of their birth are grimly accustomed to invectives like "fucking foreigner"; "parasite"; "refugee", etc. and it appears matters have been getting out of hand in recent years. Xenophobia is on the rise. "Patriotic" citizens are quick to assert, nationalistically, that the "aliens" have come to take over their country, their resources, their jobs, their culture, and what have you. It is important to understand that society today is divided into the rich and the poor. Every main political party is owned and controlled by the rich who contribute money to it which is used to canvass the support of the poor masses. Thus a party in power is, in reality, the executive committee of the rich people behind it. Such a party, therefore, rules in the interests of the owners. All its policies are consequently aimed at the welfare of the rich. Now, since there will arise a conflict of interest between the rich owners and their poor followers, the ruling party or government will have to spend huge chunks of the country's money on arms, maintenance of the army, the police, prisons, etc to hold down the masses so that the rich can make their profits without hindrance. In the process basic necessities such as food, shelter, healthcare, education are underfunded. The little that is provided can only be afforded by the rich. The result, undoubtedly, is discontent, alienation, and disobedience among the masses. Clearly, there is a surge in support for populist parties and politicians across Europe and in the USA who peddle nationalism, xenophobia, and racism and pose as champions of the people against the establishment. Widespread disaffection with and mistrust of the mainstream political parties have emerged. It is not too difficult to see why this discontent has come about.

In order to ward off unrest, various tactics are employed by governments. One of them is creating divisions among the suffering masses by, for instance, blaming foreigners and whipping up nationalistic feelings. This diverts attention from misrule and mismanagement. Secondly, and in response to the official lies, the masses who are hungry, sick and illiterate are taken in by the government's ploy. Now, since a hungry man is an angry man and since anger is emotional and overpowers reason, the least provocation can result in misdirected violence vented against vulnerable fellow citizens or be turned loose on the "aliens". This is the real cause of xenophobia - the rich pitting the poor against the poor. Our ruling class has opened a Pandora's Box of nationalist rhetoric around migrants and allowed a space to open up in groups and individuals influenced by fascist and racist ideology. Far-right political violence is becoming increasingly commonplace.

Socialists do not speak of ‘we’ and ‘us’ in relation to so-called nationality in where we happened to have been born. We know that, in every country, there are two classes with opposed interests: the class of those who own and control the means of production and the rest, the vast majority, who do not and, to live, have to sell their mental and physical energies to those who do for a wage. Nationalism is used by our rulers to win support.  The Socialist Party condemns nationalist ideas. They are stumbling-blocks to working-class understanding of socialism.  This above all is why we find such attitudes pernicious and repugnant.  The nationalist seeks only the most crude and superficial explanation of social problems. They need a scapegoat to explain the loss of what they called “national identity”. For the working class national identity has always meant congested decaying slums, insecurity poverty and, very often, the dole-queue. National identity is a cunning political device by means of which the working class, who own no country, are duped to identify with their exploiters, the capitalists, who own virtually everything. However, it is a typical contradiction of capitalism that its private-property relationships produce nationalism, and yet commodity production and the profit motive find nationalism an encumbrance. Like all the other political issues, this one is being debated within the ruling class. For no ruling class is ever completely unanimous.  Capitalism creates conflicts within each ruling class; no two capitalists have interests which are exactly the same. Some members of the capitalist class take advantage of any "foreign" immigration to whip up nationalist feeling The capitalist class is interested in maximising profits. Whether the wealth they accumulate is derived at home or abroad is a matter of indifference to them. What capitalism encourages in one situation, it actively seeks to prevent in another. 

Capitalism in creating a world in its own image also creates a world-wide working class with common interests. This common interest cuts right across questions of colour, language, and place-of-birth. It prompts all workers to understand the world they live in and to take enlightened action to banish the major social problems, by changing society. The whole of humanity and the entire earth are the only limits to society. Capitalism divides because the means of production are owned by a few. Socialism will embrace all mankind because the earth will be owned in common.  We stand together as friends, work colleagues and members of our communities. We stand side-by-side and will not allow a wave of xenophobic nationalism and racism to threaten our lives and well-being.

 What an extraordinary notion it is that so many members of the human race should be forced to remain on that small section of the earth's surface in which they happened to be born. Who gave the world's rulers the right to tell us which bit of land we should live on? Nationalist feelings arise because of the incessant propaganda of the ruling class in each country to persuade the working majority that they are in some way essentially different from and superior to everyone from other countries. The apologists for capitalism who try to foment ill-feeling towards "foreigners" landing here, whether they come to escape persecution, or to obtain slightly higher wages, never attack those many members of the upper class, including many newspaper proprietors and football club owners, who swan about the world as if there were no such thing as borders and visas. But then, in a capitalist society, you can't really expect the rulers and the ruled to be judged by the same standard, can you?

Words are our weapon

THE WORLD SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

Words don’t have the same meaning everywhere, especially when new labels are applied to old theories. Intellectuals liberally sprinkled their writings with Marxist phrases and references to Marx's views, calculated to give the impression to those who do not know the facts that they have something worthwhile to contribute. Many people particularly the young, are not attracted by the establishment political parties nor can they fail to notice the economists' and politicians' inability to grasp the problems of poverty and to deal with them. The economists are in a complete muddle. They produce their theories and explanations for the bewilderment of students, and the ordinary man in the street, who knows nothing of the finer points of theory, sees only that the economists are hopelessly disagreed among themselves even about the elements of their subject; that their explanations and forecasts time and time again have been shown to be false; and that their attempts to advise and guide the politicians have had no obvious effect on the solution of the world's great problems. Academics sneer at Marx and fail to appreciate the charge he and other socialists made against capitalism that because it produces only for sale at a profit and not for human need it prevents the production of sufficient food, clothing and shelter for the needs of humanity. If all the able-bodied population were working, and if all the wasteful forms of activity that are indispensable to capitalism were cut out (e.g., financial operations, armed forces, munitions, bureaucratic activities, etc.), then the production of useful articles could be increased ten-fold. What Marx’s critics do not realise is that these forms of waste really are indispensable to capitalism and cannot be eliminated under capitalism.

The task of the workers remains that of gaining political control for socialism. Socialist society is not being gradually introduced by Labour government; it will start when, and only when, a socialist working class comes to power. That will be the end of an epoch and the beginning of a new one and people will not be in any doubt of what had happened. Socialism cannot be achieved until there is a majority of socialists and they gain control of the machinery of government for the purpose of abolishing capitalism. Until then, notwithstanding all the efforts of reformers to improve the existing system and administer it differently, the evils of class society, based on the exploitation of the workers, will remain to strangle the progress of the human race.

To Marxists recognition of the class struggle means recognising that the interest of the working class is incompatible with the interest of the class that owns the means of production and distribution and that, the class struggle can be abolished only by dispossessing the capitalist class and introducing a social system based on common ownership and democratic control, involving, of course, the abolition of the system of wage-labour and of the production of goods for sale. Under capitalism there are no "good times" for the working class.

Reformists hoped to serve two masters, what they call the policy of serving the interests of all sections of the community. As time goes on and the working class become restive about the non-appearing fruits of reformist promises, people become more and more divorced from the political process. Far from moving towards the goal of socialism which will emancipate workers from capitalist wage-slavery, the struggle has yet to be waged. The only remedy for the evils of capitalism is socialism, and the time for it is now. Capitalism is the removable evil from which the working class have to rid themselves, Therefore all who defend capitalism are the enemies of the working class.

It is the workers who keep capitalism going, for the benefit of the capitalists. It is time the workers determined, by international socialist action, to refashion human society on a socialist foundation. Neither avowedly capitalist governments nor Labour governments can save the world. It is a supreme task for the world working class and unless it is achieved the whole world faces chaos, misery and destruction. The productive power and the administrative ability are present for the making of a new world. Do not delay the decision to use them. The Socialist Party show the way to working class emancipation and the happiness and well-being of humanity.

Groups such as The Zeitgeist Movement are gaining adherents because it deliberately avoids challenging the political parties. Instead of forming a political party with the definite aim of conquering power for the application of its ideas, TZM relies on some sort of persuasion and peaceful penetration into the existing parties. If the Zeitgeist Movement came out in the open as a political party, it would quickly learn that gaining vague sympathy is a very different thing from winning more votes than the opposing parties. The other parties would very quickly turn their attention to smashing or swallowing the movement, according to whether they judged it to be a good vote-catcher or not. But as soon as one party took it up the other parties would turn on it. Leaving aside the soundness of their vision they seem to believe that a proposal has only to be shown to be practicable for it to be adopted. They ignore all questions of the nature and control of political power. Actually we see political power (which is the dominating factor) in the hands of a section of the propertied class. It is useless for TZM or anyone else to come forward with a scheme unless (a) the scheme is attractive to those who wield power, or (b) that the steps are going to be taken by those to whom the scheme is attractive to obtain the power to put it into operation. It is a movement without an organised political basis. One incidental downside arising out of TZM is that, to the extent that it gains, it makes socialist propaganda more difficult. People who fall a victim to TZM quite naturally disregards Socialist propaganda. TZM promises a new millennium of unlimited wealth by the simple device of letting technology have free rein. In comparison socialism looks dull and slow-moving.

A basic difficulty about establishing socialism is that such a social system, involving as it does the disappearance of buying and selling, wages and prices, and the coercive state, could only be operated if the mass of the population understood and wanted it and were ready to accept all the new responsibilities of voluntary co-operation that would rest on them. If the working class as they are at present, most of them attached to capitalism, preoccupied with wages and prices, wage differentials and trade-union demarcation lines, and dependent on management direction and trade-union leadership, were suddenly faced with socialism there would be chaos and no alternative but to return to capitalism.

Patriotism - A Message of Misery

Patriotism as a devotion to the interests of the class which rules over us has long been of value to the capitalist class throughout the world.  In the early 1700s Jonathan Swift recommended it in “The Examiner” thus – “the first principle of patriotism is to resent foreigners.” This method, of setting one section of population against another, has been used ultra-successfully all around the world – so successfully that great swathes of people can now rouse themselves, with no apparent external cue, against the newest threat, the most recent immigrant group, asylum seekers, anyone who looks or sounds like they may be from a group that’s not their own. That its workers should be patriotic is vital to each national ruling class and this, fertilised by official lies, is exploited by all governments.  Enemies are required by the state elites. Enemies within and without, social, cultural, economic enemies to keep the population vigilant against all possible threats, to keep them fully occupied, suspicious of each other, divided, protecting the national interest against any wayward individual or group – including themselves. Workers have no country, however, the system arbitrarily divides them according to ruling class rivalries, the workers are united in their poverty.

Workers, here and elsewhere, are soaked with the philosophy of nationalism from childhood, and when their masters summon them to defend their (the masters') ownership in the means of life, and their right to exploit and govern, appealing to them in the name of a common patriotism, their lack of political knowledge renders them—like clay in the potter's hands— pliable and easily moulded, into the designs of their social enemies, the master class. They become the mere pawns in the political game played only between capitalist groups. The poverty they have endured, their years of excessive toil, and all their bitter struggles on the industrial field against the masters are forgotten, when national traditions—the historic camouflage that veils capitalist interests—are spread to snare them. Workers of all lands need to know how to throw off the yoke of capitalism to establish a system in which they will no longer be exploited by the capitalists of any nationality. The World Socialist Movement is their only hope. It is not a change of masters, or a change in the location of rulers, that the workers of Scotland need but the establishment of a system of society where they will democratically control the means of life owned in common. It is in the interest of your masters that you should be divided by national and religious barriers

 All capitalist societies are divided along class lines—capitalist and worker—therefore any talk of "nation" or patriotism is palpable nonsense. Capitalists and workers do not share a common identity nor do they share any interests in common. We are constantly hoodwinked by a repetition from the mouths of politicians, of the old fiction of the alleged community of interest between ourselves and our employers, and that we should be privileged to defend a country we do not own. While the capitalist class dominates and controls all the means of wealth production the creation of nations is not the business of the working class. It matters not whether the Union Jack or the Saltire flies over Edinburgh. The patriotism of the capitalist class is sheer hypocrisy. In the quest for profits all barriers are broken down, and the capitalist’s love of his country withers before a fraction percent on the yield of his capital. It is the business of the capitalists to set one section of the working class against another in order to prevent them perceiving who are their real enemies.

What the Socialist Party realises clearly is that the interests of fellow workers in other lands are nearer to our own than are those of our employers master in our own country. The bonds which bind worker with worker, irrespective of nationality, are those of class solidarity.  From the capitalist-class of every country the worker is divided by a gulf of class antagonism which can be bridged only by the over-throw of the capitalist-class by the working class as the result of the coming social revolution.

The capitalists are clearly parasites. Are the people to be for ever sacrificed to capital? Surely it is time the workers used their brains in their own interests. The callous brutality, the greed and hypocrisy of the ruling class of all nations could hardly ever be clearer than it is to-day. The workers have only to discard the blinkers of patriotism to see this plainly. The Socialist Party is well attuned to the machinations of the elites of powerful countries as they seek to promote their interests . Though it is no easy task for the uninitiated, we urge our fellow workers to be as vigilant as ever when the fanfare of jingoism and patriotism are sounding.

We can see why the ruling class in the various different capitalist states into which the world is divided find it necessary to rely on workers' identification with 'their' land – it helps them build up popular support for their rule and their foreign policy aimed at protecting their interests abroad. But we can't see why Socialists need to. On the contrary, nationalism is something we need to combat as it is an obstacle to the understanding that the problems faced by workers all over the world cannot be solved within a national framework but only on a world scale, on the basis of a world without frontiers where the resources of the whole planet have become the common heritage of all humanity. 

Comprehending Capitalism

The first point socialist bring to the notice of our fellow-workers is that beneath all the processes of buying and selling, banking and commercial operations, lies the private ownership and control of the physical means of life. Human beings need food, clothing and shelter, recreation and amusements. These things are provided by the application of human labour to the land, raw materials, and the instruments of production and distribution, but the individuals whose labour-power produces the wealth do not own it. All the land and raw materials and all the products are privately owned by individual capitalists or companies or the State. The typical features of capitalist production are the existence on the one hand of a large number of workers who get their living by selling their mental and physical energies for a wage or a salary, and, on the other hand, a relatively small number of capitalist investors who get their living by owning property and employing workers to use that property for the production of wealth. With their wages and salaries the workers can buy part of the wealth produced, and the balance remains in the possession of the capitalists. The workers consume the greater part of their share immediately, by eating food, by wearing out their clothes, and so on, while the capitalists, through the abundance of their wealth, are able to "save" a considerable part of it; that is to say, they take it not in the form of articles for personal consumption, but in the form of factories, machinery, etc., and all the various forms of additions to the existing stock of "means of production and distribution."

What we see is millions of workers, producing and distributing the articles needed to sustain life, and working under the control of the capitalists who own the land, factories, railways, etc. The articles produced can be divided into three classes: (1) Articles needed for the subsistence of the workers (mainly necessities); (2) Articles for the subsistence of the propertied class, both necessities and luxuries; and (3) Articles needed for the repair and extension of existing means of production and distribution (factories, railways, etc.) and the erection of new kinds of means of production and distribution as new needs arise and are satisfied. But the above picture is over-simplified because capitalists and workers are not two closely organised world classes acting as two single units, but are composed of millions of separate individuals and groups acting on their own. If they were two single units, each represented by a responsible authority, we could imagine them planning production and distribution so that only so much of each kind of wealth is produced as is needed, and so that the responsible authority for each class divides the articles among its members as required. Actually the process is carried out with the assistance of the money system. Each capitalist firm produces goods of one or a few kinds (say, boots) and sells them for money. The money is used to pay for the costs of manufacture, raw materials, wages, profits, etc., and the individuals who receive the money spend it to buy goods of various kinds. The final effect arrived at by this money process is at bottom the exchange of commodities. Each individual who owns commodities goes into the market and effects an exchange, giving one kind of goods and receiving another kind or kinds. The worker goes into the market with labour power to sell. He receives wages and uses them to buy bread, clothes, etc. The advantage of the money system over the direct exchange of goods — barter — is that simple barter is faced with the difficulty that the individual who brings boots to the market may not want to receive the articles brought into the market by the man who wants the boots. Money, on the other hand, is the "universal equivalent." He who has money can, if he has sufficient of it, buy any of the thousands of kinds of articles offered for sale. Consequently, the use of money as a medium of exchange is a great advance on systems of barter. But it must not be forgotten that the various substances which have been used as money (in modern times silver or gold) have been able to occupy that position only because they were like every other article in the all-important characteristic that they possessed value, while in addition gold and silver have qualities of durability and scarcity which make them most suitable for use as money.  The values of articles are not accidental or fixed by the free choice of the owners of them. Value is a relationship between the various articles depending upon the amount of labour required in their production. Leaving aside various complicating features we can say that a certain weight of gold has the same value as a certain weight of wheat, or a certain number of razor blades, because the labour required to produce each of these three quantities is the same. We see, then, that the payment of a sum of money by one person to another is, in effect, a way of transferring command over goods from one person to another.

That is a brief outline of the underlying framework of capitalist production.

Patriotism is a sham

"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense and conscience by the governed and a slavish submission to those who hold-power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery." - Tolstoy

Workers have no country and patriotism is a delusion and nationalism is a snare.  Nationalism denies humanity, and instead interposes nation, and denies humanity to other nations.  It also emphasises the idea that the world cannot change, since the nation is an organic whole as it is and is unchangeable. Let's not forget, that nationalism doesn't "just happen" it is the product of a vast process of material production, from mass media, to civic performance.  The material culture of sports helps produce, reproduce and reify nationalist ideas.  International sporting events are perhaps the finest example of nationalism being expressed after war.  With the ruling class, patriotism is the mask of self-interest: with the working class it is the brand of utter ignorance. Let us be internationalists.

Working people have no country of their own. Their land is the property of a master class and the worker rarely owns enough to bury his or her coffin. Patriotism runs counter to the interests of working-people. It is therefore opposed by the Socialist Party who do not offer "policies for Britain" etc, but demand a world community without frontiers.  The aims and ambitions of nationalists and patriots are not identical with the principles and ideals of international socialism, and that there is, in fact, no necessary connection between the two things. Too often in history workers have been urged to concern themselves with the interests of nations - to fight to defend one against the other, or to establish new ones.

Let every Scot face the fact that Scottish nationalism is not socialism and that the achievement of the SNP even up to the highest professed ideals of traditional patriotism, namely, the complete separation of Scotland from Britain, would not “free” Scotland one iota in any sense satisfactory to the world socialist and absolutely demanded by socialist principles. This struggle of Scottish “patriots” to “free” Scotland is therefore from the our point of view an utter chimera. In the name of humanity and of sanity let every international socialist in the United Kingdom have done with the traditional follies and foolishness of nationalism or of unionism. Let us direct all our energies to the emancipating the workers from the chains of wage-slavery. Every professed socialist who lends countenance and encouragement to the deluded Scottish separatists in their vain efforts to gain a sovereign Scotland is guilty either of betraying socialist principles or be ignorant of what socialist principles really are, a knave or a fool.  Associating the concepts of nationalism and socialism has done nothing but to add to the confusion in working-class minds about what socialists really stand for. Scottish nationalism has more than its fair share of leftist confusionists. 

The working class of the world have a common bond that transcends every tie of race or nationality. What matters the name of the country of your birth, if you are a slave in that country? What binds you to the capitalist? You are chained to his machines, in his factories and workshops, and driven by the lash of hunger to produce wealth for him while you sink deeper into poverty. You are the robbed, he is the robber; you are the slave, he is the master. A bond of shame, a tie that is a degradation to every wage-slave and patriotism is the acceptance and approval of this bond.

When hands clasp across national boundaries in solidarity the workers will know that borders and nations have no meaning or significance for them. These two, nationalism and international socialism (and there can be no socialism that is not international) are opposite as the poles, as antagonistic as fire and water. When patriotism and socialism enter the worker's mind, patriotism will be quenched or socialism will evaporate. The socialist patriot is an impossibility. If any is loyal to those in the class that exploits, he or she is a traitor to our own class. The capitalist class will practice nationalism and preach patriotism just so long as it serves to obscure the class struggle and keep the workers divided. When they face an enlightened and united working class, they themselves ignore every boundary in their need to combat the workers. The Socialist Party does not care whether the capitalist class divide the UK among themselves. What concerns us, is the class ownership, which we work and organise to abolish. Nationalism is at the top of the list of political illusions used to blind capitalism's victims. Workers own no country, so why should we care which section of the class of thieves owns which national portion? Workers have a world to win, not nations to fight for.

The Anti-capitalist Campaigners

Capitalism continues to generate recessions, waste and wars. Amid the many crises today people are once again debating the meaning of socialism. The nearest thing to a common understanding of the various “socialisms” is the negative “anti-capitalism” yet more and more parties on the Left spectrum, have virtually dropped the building of socialism from their manifestoes, promising to maintain some sort of version of regulatory capitalism until it makes us wonder in what sense are these parties still “socialist”? One reason why the Socialist Party view reformists with such antipathy is that they made the abolition of that system and the creation of a socialist society more distant and difficult.

The simplest description of a socialist system of production is that, unlike all class societies, there is no ruling class that extracts surplus labour from the producers. The capitalist class profits because they control. As Rosa Luxemburg contended, until a socialist revolution is successful, the most important result of any struggle is the building of working-class self-confidence and self-organisation. If the class must rely on itself, it must be united.

The Socialist Party’s central message was stated in the Rules of the First International, "that the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves." We strive to get fellow-workers to trust in their own power to achieve their own emancipation and that our belief is that there is no task that a worker cannot accomplish. We educate fellow-workers to look inward upon their own class for everything required, to have confidence in the ability of their own class to fill every position in the revolutionary movement. In short, we ask fellow members of the working class to take to heart the full meaning of socialism, a free association of social individuals. The revolutionary movement is the gravedigger of capitalism. It is part of the world movement of the global working class for peace, social democracy and socialism. The emancipation of the working class is the revolutionary act of self-emancipation. The Socialist Party declares that its aim is to develop the class consciousness of the workers through our agitation in the class struggle. The job we envisage for is to bring together social and political analysis that has special relevance to the waging of the class struggle and the deepening of working class consciousness. Our ambition is to achieve socialism alongside the working class as a whole, for the whole of mankind. The central core of the Socialist Party’s politics is the belief in socialism as the self-emancipation of the working class. This involves a rejection of the Leninist vanguards and national liberation anti-imperialists.

The Socialist Party swam against the current by rebutting reformism and left reformist illusions that capitalism could be transformed by the action of various social groups such as technocrats without the conquest of power by the working class. It involved, repudiating the widespread belief that capitalism can permanently solved its inherent tendency to crisis and the associated idea that capitalism will collapse without the agency of socialist revolution. Capitalism continues with its ups and downs. These ideas were unpopular amongst broad circles of the left. They were widely regarded as ‘dogmatic’ and ‘sectarian’.  Countless reformists have come and gone, believing that within the framework of the capitalist system, of commodity production and of exploitation they could achieve a better society. It is a hard and difficult job struggling for real socialism and not piecemeal palliatives. It may the efforts of several generations. But for anybody to whom the word “solidarity” remains meaningful, it is worth all the effort. The endeavour of total human emancipation, the endeavor to build a socialist society on a worldwide basis, is in our hearts. The Socialist Party represents the continuation of the essence of Marx's thought: the self-emancipation of the working class as its fundamental guiding principle to establish a new society built on the "association of free and equal producers."

Lothian Socialist Discussion (24 May)

Wednesday, May 24, 

• 7:30 PM

• ACE,

• 17 West Montgomery Place,

   Edinburgh EH7 5HA

• Most people would probably agree that the future of mankind should be hammered out on the anvil of free discussion and debate 

• 

  
  

Refugees need more help

FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

MSPs looking at the problems facing asylum seekers in Scotland have said "destitution" is built into the process. The equalities and human rights committee said that, too often, vulnerable people fell victim to homelessness, ill health and misery.

The committee investigated asylum and destitution, where people are left without adequate accommodation or the ability to meet essential living needs. Committee convener, the SNP's Christina McKelvie, said the evidence they heard pointed to "huge gaps" in the asylum system which suffered from a "serious lack of compassion and humanity".

The British Red Cross in Scotland told the committee the number of destitute refugees and asylum seekers it had helped in Glasgow had more than doubled from 326 in 2014 to 820 in 2016.