Class Struggle

The 2007/2008 crash drove capitalist states and capitalist companies towards some desperate measures to try and stabilise the system and restore and where possible increase real profit levels. But this is not to assume that particular capitalist governments or companies are stuck with only one set of inflexible policies.

The problem is that isolated struggles by workers in the context of intense capitalist competition will give the capitalists more ability to offload any gains made by one sector onto other workers The generalisation of struggle will make that harder for them to achieve this and can potentially push back the austerity measures across a wider front at least on a temporary basis.

Alexander Berkman, the author of the anarchist ABC, put it, "capitalism will continue as long as such an economic system is considered adequate and just". Until people see through it capitalism will continue to stagger on from economic crisis to war to ecological crisis. To simply denounce finance capitalism as the main enemy is to side with industrial capital in the struggle between the two over how much each is to receive of the wealth produced by the worker class. When we challenge capitalism, we challenge it all or we do not challenge it at all.

 For decades self-proclaimed "Marxists" (especially Trotskyists) fetishise the word "crisis", and describe every economic downturn and political turn of events as the "crisis of capitalism" or even prophesising the "inevitable" (Manifesto) end of capitalism. Its proposed that in a crisis, the closer we are to revolution. The worse conditions become - the more politicised and inclined to take direct action the populace become. Some communists welcome the economic crisis of capitalism and claim there is no perspective of revolution without it. Some of those "Marxists" say "bring on the crisis" because for the working class things will not be able to continue as before. It is argued that without some form of crisis there's no reason at all for the proletariat to revolt. As long as capitalism can offer us palliatives (or at least the illusions of them) to soothe our exploitation, the system will survive It is argued that crises open up the possibility of revolution, even if it doesn't guarantee it. But without a crisis there is no possibility whatsoever. There, unfortunately, won't be a perspective of revolution with it, either. Genuine socialists prefer that working class living standards aren't severely cut. How do we agitate workers around this issue? "Cheers for the crisis"!! Most of the vanguard Left seems to be basing all of its activity around either recruiting workers into their particular party or upon the vague hope that the working class will engage in some kind of spontaneous communist revolution. Wishing the massive impacts of a massive economic crisis/recession upon people's lives just in the hope that their fringe ideas will get picked up and perhaps adhered to by a handful of additional people, the contempt that it shows for humanity is disdainful. It also lays bare the complete and utter impotence of said movements in the first place. This overly optimistic wish fulfilment mixed with its crude utopian determinism does no justice to Marx.

Economic crisis and increasing misery for the working class doesn't necessarily and inevitably lead to revolution. Relying on the effects of the crisis seems to be the lazy way to try and approach social change, scrap all the groundwork and hope the crisis does it for you. While it is argued that downturns make people angry and more susceptible to revolutionary ideas, the opposite may be true. It may be downturns just lead to despair, fatalism, acceptance of misery and cynicism to things getting better. Upturns in the economy make revolution more likely because it is the human condition never to be satisfied and when you've got the job, house, wages, car and all the mod cons then you want more - security, control over your own life which can only be got by workers ownership and control of our own work, residents ownership of their own homes and individuals control over our lives, all of which can only be got by socialism, by way of social revolution. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That is our basic function: to develop alternatives, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable. The best we can hope for is to use this as an opportunity to re-group, in order to get the working class in a stronger position to start from when the boom returns. All we can do is to try to negotiate the best terms possible and try to resist as effectively as we can the increased downward pressures on wages and working conditions (for which we need collective organisation and action, even within the existing trade unions).

As to what the Socialist Party can do, at the moment being so small a minority, we can't do much more than keep on arguing that the only way-out is to replace capitalism by a system based on common ownership (instead of class ownership) and production solely for use (instead of production for profit) and to keep on urging workers to self-organise themselves democratically to bring this social revolution about.

The liberation of our class will only come about when we, the class ourselves, for ourselves, do the hard work of organising, which needs that we class conscious workers doing the equally hard work of convincing our fellow workers. At the end of the day , as pro-revolutionaries, it is not in our interest to try and save capitalism but rather to destroy it and to encourage current struggles to develop on an independent, self-organised, class basis and extend across national boundaries which may well give rise to an escalation of the social crisis and starts to challenge capitalism as a whole from a position of some class strength. Only the self-organisation of the proletariat contains the potential to defend its own interests both in the short-term economic and the longer term political. A working class that can't defend itself is also a working class that is incapable of making a revolution.

Marx wrote "Philosophers have only tried to understand the world. The point is to change it." 
The Industrial Workers of the World sang "Don't moan, Organise!"

We in the Socialist Party say “Join us.”

Drug Dealing Not Being Delt With

In 27th June issue of 24 Hours, the Toronto news sheet, the investigative reporter, Phil Gillies, commented on the drug scene in buildings "controlled" by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.

According to Gillies, dealers could walk the hallways as freely as walking down the street. Security cameras had their wires cut and their lenses spray painted. Drug dealers came and went every five minutes.

Under Ontario Law, if a person is admitted by a tenant, they are not trespassing; they are guests. Eviction procedures are lengthy and often ineffective. It can take years to remove a drug dealer from social housing. the Toronto Community Housing Corporation lacks the resources to present a solid case to the Landlord and Tenant Board.

There is, though, one sure way to deal with the problem, which is to establish a society where no one will wish to use narcotics.

 John and Steve.

Moralising And Capitalism's Reality.

In its June 27 issue of 24 Hours, the Toronto newssheet, columnist Sabrina Maddeaux, bitched up a storm about manufacturers going gangbusters to cash in on Canada's 150th birthday. To quote, "Some of the more, shall we say 'unique,' items honouring the big anniversary include potato chips, caskets, condoms, $500 hair dryers, bars of soap, artisanal gummy candies and bottles of vodka. The opportunities to slap a maple leaf and a little bit of red and white on products seem endless."

Our girl ain't finished yet; she also complained that many of these products weren't made in Canada and that some were made in Bangladesh, "where workers are severely underpaid and mistreated."

It's time for Ms. Maddeaux to get real. The profit motive is the driving force of capitalism, therefore instances like the above will always happen.

If one doesn't like it; and what is there to like? one "can" do something about it. 

 John and Steve.

A plea for humanity

Poverty is a conditions from which all workers suffer to some extent or another. It is a basic factor of working class existence, whether you are comparatively high or low-paid.  Sometimes it comes as bad housing, malnutrition, inferior schools, inadequate clothing or as fear of what the future holds. These problems, which are unknown to members of the capitalist class, spring from the class division of society.

Take the word at its full meaning “want of means” and you will see that our claim is justified, for any person who has to depend on a wage or salary for a living must have a restricted access to the means of life, and can never broaden the access sufficiently to enable him to live without the need to work.

Poverty goes hand in hand with wage slavery at whatever income level. True, not every worker suffers as much as those we have mentioned, but capitalism exerts a downward pressure on all of us and no government can do very much about it. A contention we have always held is that capital exists to exploit the working class, not uplift them. 

Why do different workers suffer different degrees of poverty? All of them have the same problem—of getting the best possible price for their mental and physical energies. If they can’t sell those energies they are unemployed. If they can sell, in the long run their wage is fixed by the value of their labour power. Highly skilled surgeons and erudite professors of sociology are paid more than farm workers and builders' labourers because more effort is needed to produce their particular types of skill.

Workers who suffer extreme poverty —destitution—are those who are unable to work, or whose energies are not in any great demand. Many left-wingers claim a solution would be to pay lower wages to highly skilled managers and “professional” workers who they assert gain at the expense of the low-wage earners, the children in large families and the sick and disabled. The short term effect of this can only be, as we said in our pamphlet Beveridge Reorganises Poverty, “a redistribution of misery”. The total poverty of the working class would remain the same. 

The Socialist Party does not seek any reforms to this situation but stands for the abolition of wage slavery, of the wages system, of the capitalist system in favour of a system organised to prioritize satisfying the needs and requirements of the vast majority. A world in common with a place for all. Who needs wages when they have free access to all they require?  

Lest We Forget

Obituary: Alex Shaw (1967)

Obituary from the June 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death occurred late last year of Alex Shaw, veteran member of Glasgow Branch. Alex joined the party over 40 years ago and was an active member for most of that time.

Alex was particularly active during the “Red” Clydeside era. and so much was he associated with the Party here in those days, that wags dubbed us the “Shawcialist Party. Indeed Alex Shaw was still speaking publicly up to the last, and Glasgow members heard him in excellent form only two days before his death.

The stories concerning Alex are legion and although well worth the telling there is not the space here. Suffice to say he was the most humorous speaker this writer ever heard.

We, in Glasgow, will always remember his contribution to Socialism and extend to his widow and family our deep sympathy.

Struggle to survive

Marx observed in 1865 that wage levels can only be "settled by the continuous struggle between capital and labour, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum, and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction."

Hal Draper later remarked, "To engage in class struggle it is not necessary to 'believe in' the class struggle any more than it is necessary to believe in Newton to fall from an airplane. There is no evidence that workers like to struggle any more than anyone else; the evidence is that capitalism compels and accustoms them to do so."

Unlike peasants in a capitalist society the proletariat as the most exploited class divorced from the means of production and therefore condemned to live by selling the only commodity they are left with, their bare hands, or their labour power to the owners of capital. Therefore they are the most revolutionary class. They are located in the most progressive sectors of the economy i.e. large-scale machine production in urban areas and working together in large bodies under one roof. For that reason,  they are the most organised, the most disciplined and therefore the most revolutionary class in capitalist society. And as Karl Marx observed, having lost their property to the capitalists they have nothing to lose in the struggle but their chains. They see for themselves that they toil and live in deplorable conditions and yet they are the creators of the country's wealth which accumulate in the hands of a few rich people.  More than any other class, they are interested in the abolition of private property and exploitation of one person by another and the eventual collective ownership and management of the economy by workers' councils or soviets. This makes them the most revolutionary class once their class consciousness is awakened. Their class interests are irreconcilable with those of capitalism.

In a society of class antagonism, there are basically two socially opposing types of people - the capitalist exploiter and the exploited working-person. This polarisation is sharper in advanced capitalist economies where the bourgeoisie regards the working class as an object for the extraction of surplus value - the source of their profits. The workers are reduced to cogs in the machinery of capitalist production and denied all rights. However, it is important to note that in a capitalist society the workers have actually accomplished a great deal. Due primarily to their efforts, massive productive forces have been built up, which make it possible to create unprecedented  material and spiritual wealth for the benefit of all. The first condition, especially in advanced capitalist countries,  for building a society of equals in which the workers themselves become the aim and purpose of production have already been created.

Unions are important because of the centrality of the working class to the larger struggle for socialism. Karl Marx was the first socialist among his contemporaries to recognise this important role of the working-class and therefore trade unions, as the only leading force in the struggle for a socialist revolution. Utopian socialists before Marx had dismissed unions as irrelevant and some of them even opposed strike action. Marx understood the absolute importance at all times of organising this class to unite as a class against their capitalist enemy.

The trade unions are workers' front line of defense against their employers under capitalism. But as vehicles for struggle, they are also crucial to the future self-emancipation of the working class. But there is also a contradiction: unions both negotiate the terms of exploitation of workers under capitalism and also provide the vehicle for struggle that can prepare the working class for revolution. Capitalism forces workers into competition with each other-native vs. foreign born, skilled vs. unskilled, and so on-exploiting every opportunity to keep workers divided. Organising into unions, which presents the opportunity for collective struggle against the employers, thereby reduces competition between workers. Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier."

In the the US, the number of strikes fell to their lowest point on record in 2009 and to the second lowest in 2010. These figures demonstrate the extent to which labour leaders have been unwilling to use labour's most effective weapon, the strike. Decades of concessionary bargaining-at first, claimed to be a temporary phenomenon-have made wage and benefit cuts routine aspects of union negotiations, thereby enabling the deterioration of working-class living standards. Conservative trade-union leaders are de facto agents of the employing class trying to hide behind the mask of trade-union neutrality in order to divert the workers from the path of class war onto a path of collaboration with the capitalist. Economics and politics are inseparably linked. In practice, trade union neutrality amounts to supporting the bosses.

History has shown that the rate of union membership corresponds to the rise and decline in the level of class struggle. If the current balance of class forces can only be reversed through a revival of class struggle, then the key challenge facing union activists is how to transform their unions into fighting organisations. For Marxists, this necessarily entails, step by step, strengthening the fighting capacity of workers in general, and union workers in particular.

The working class must now conquer capitalism. And history has bestowed the role of conquering capitalist society squarely on the shoulders of the working class - they are the undisputed 'grave-diggers' of capitalism. It is therefore totally inconceivable that this class can be denied the right to intervene in politics to liberate themselves and society at large. Every social and political movement tending in that direction should be aided by the trade unions. Unions must be champions of the entire class and should not form themselves into corporate bodies only of their members, shutting out non members. It is their duty to help organise those who cannot organise themselves easily and protect the interests of the worst paid trades like agricultural workers. Experience  bears testimony to the fact that trade union involvement in broader struggles has a salutary or beneficial effect on the working class than being stuck in the narrow and parochial rut. The trade union movement must fight to bring the marginalised into the mainstream, and the weakest into more advantageous positions in society. By their action they must demonstrate that they are not using their organised strength only to guard their interests, but for all the downtrodden.

Today working class consciousness has to develop to a point where they are in the process of becoming "a class for-itself" i.e. a class consciousness working class which enables them to see their real class enemy as capitalism.
Adapted from here and here 

Freedom And Liberty?

A survey commissioned by Historica Canada asked respondents a variety of questions, most of which were too inane to be mentioned here.

One that is worthy of dis-honourable mention is, "What is the best word to define Canada?" The answers were, "Freedom and Liberty."

They certainly had that right, we are all free to be unemployed and at liberty to be homeless. A country in the political context is a means whereby a small minority live well at the expense of the majority, therefore let's work to abolish countries. 

John and Steve.

Support the socialists

Having recovered from the 2007/2008 recession the capitalists have returned to "business as usual" leaving the rest of us to continue with stagnant wages, worsening working conditions and insecure employment. Capitalism's constant drive for accumulation has especially run amok.  The rich continue to get still richer. Capitalism brings exploitation and inequality.  A growing number of people are turning against the capitalist system. The growing misery has made people receptive to socialist criticisms of capitalism. However, unfortunately, right-wing populists have used this anger with great success by blaming scape-goats while liberals have been building a reformist movement offering a “coalition” of employers and employees.

The unions and the socialist movement are weak with negative results for workers from the dominating power of the capitalists, which has enabled them to seize the benefits of increased labour productivity. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of labour. Irreversible global climate change can only be averted by a post-capitalist system. Socialism possesses advantages over capitalism. Only a socialist planned economy can pursue sustainable benign production methods as the priority, while capitalism offers ineffective reforms to legislate and regulate businesses from doing what is most profitable for them. The building of socialism is essential. It is the only way to build a rational economy. It is possible to build a movement to replace capitalism.  People need to wake up and learn the meaning of the co-operative commonwealth.  Capitalism is a dead-end with too many in denial to the fact there is no equilibrium to be had in a profit-driven market-society. Socialism is the only alternative to capitalism and its crises. No policy that leaves capitalism standing can be, to any great degree, in working class interests. Whether or not capitalism is in a state of crisis, there is always a crisis for the workers, the members of the working class spend their lives depending upon their masters for the necessities of life. Capitalism as a whole grinds the workers down to wage-slavery and poverty. War is inevitable under capitalism.

The Socialist Party know all the obstacles that stand in our way to achieving our purpose, but we are not dismayed. Those who argue that socialism is a long way off make it farther off by muddling the workers’ heads with complicated reform programmes; those, on the contrary, who argue that socialism can be here tomorrow keep their theoretical ideas and practical policy clear and fresh by concentrating solely on achieving socialism, leaving no doubt in the minds of the workers about what socialism is and the practicability of its immediate application, providing the workers understand it and want it. Revolution alone, and not reform, is the only policy to which a socialist party can adhere. The World Socialist Movement denounces exploitation, cruelty, and ignorance wherever they are found, for socialists do not condone in one country what they condemn elsewhere.  The Socialist Party, while exposing and condemning global capitalism, extends the hand of fellowship to the working class of all lands, for only through international action by a socialist working class will socialism be achieved. The function of the capitalist regardless of nationality is to use the worker for his own ends. The task of the worker is to understand this and achieve his or her freedom, which necessarily carries with it the freedom of all humanity. The only way to eliminate the evils of the present social order is to end that order in its entirety and establish a social system wherein the means of production and distribution are commonly owned. That is socialism.

Read the literature of the Socialist Party. Study our declaration of principles. Listen to our speakers; question and oppose them, and weigh up the soundness of our arguments. Capitalism is not the government but the social system. It means the class ownership of the means of production and distribution, in the modern world. Whether industries are in private hands or under state control makes no difference.There is no hope for reform to undermine or confrontation to overthrow the established order of who governs Britain and every other country. The Socialist Party has been putting forward the means to get rid of the problems over which some workers fume and others think they must be resigned. The capitalist system continues because the majority support it. The day that support ceases, the situation will alter completely. What the majority have to understand is the nature of capitalism, including that a change of government is no change at all, and that only socialism will be different. The course of action then is easy. Delegates will be elected to Parliament with a mandate not to administer capitalism but to abolish it. This is the State put to its final, and for the first time fruitful, use; instead of confronting the coercive machinery, the socialists’ representatives take possession of it. Class ownership then falls to the ground, and the new world of common ownership can begin.

Defunding Quackery

Last month NHS England announced plans to cut down on “ineffective” treatments and instead channel the money into new drugs which are proven to help patients with illnesses. Under the plans, homeopathic remedies and selected other items including herbal medicines will no longer be prescribed to patients in England. The Humanist Society Scotland has now written an open letter to Health Secretary Shona Robison, demanding a similar review of the funding of homeopathic remedies north of the border.

Scotland could soon be the only part of the UK which still allows the NHS to spend money on homeopathy. Ministers at Holyrood are now facing pressure to follow suit, with the latest figures showing that Scotland’s health boards spend around £1.7m on the controversial remedies each year.

Homeopathy is based on the concept that diluting a version of a substance that causes illness has healing properties. NHS official guidance states there is “no good quality evidence” that it is effective for any health condition. NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens described homeopathy as “at best a placebo and a misuse of scarce funds”.

Six of Scotland’s 14 NHS health boards still funded homeopathic remedies in 2015/16, when the total stood at £1.7m. Almost £1.3m of the total was spent by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, with Ayrshire and Arran spending £214,000 and Grampian spending £177,000.

Gordon MacRae, the charity’s chief executive of the Good Thinking Society, explained “It is absolutely vital that NHS spending is directed towards meaningful and effective treatments that have a real prospect of treating illnesses and other medical complaints. Homeopathy has continually been shown, time after time, to be no more effective than a simple placebo effect. The fact that the NHS in Scotland is spending over £1.5m a year on unproven remedies will stick in the throats of patients.”

Doom and Gloom

For the poor, a warming planet is beginning to look apocalyptic with the droughts, floods, fires, and pestilence that accompany climate change. 

Achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement that is intended to limit the scope of global warming is hard to imagine. All indications are that we are seeing increases in average temperatures, more frequent and more intense severe weather events, changing weather patterns and a sea-level rise around the globe. This threatens each and every single one of us but many are particularly vulnerable. The situation is even worse than you think.  Much of the planet will likely become inhospitable and close to uninhabitable. There are media stories each day that show the extent and effect of global warming. The harm and destruction are horrifying. Experts give us only slim odds of achieving the Paris two degree goal, the threshold of ecological catastrophe. 

 The conclusion to make is that no plausible capitalist programme of emissions reductions can prevent environmental disaster.  For every degree of warming, yields decline by 10 percent. Which means that if the planet is five degrees warmer at the end of the century, we may have as many as 50 percent more people to feed and 50 percent less grain to give them.  By 2080, without dramatic reductions in emissions, southern Europe will be in a permanent extreme drought, much worse than the American dust bowl ever was. As for the American prairies, it would be even worse than in the 1930s. In fact, worse than any droughts over the last thousand years  The same will be true in much of the Middle East, Australia, Africa, and South America; as well as the breadbasket regions of China. None of these places, which today supply much of the world’s food, will be reliable sources of any. 

Theoretically, of course, a warmer climate will make it easier to grow crops in what is now presently tundra but you can’t easily move arable farming north and fertility is limited by the quality of the soil. It takes many centuries for the planet to produce fruitful fields.

Taken from here

Compassion? As A Motivation?

On June 26, the new Progressive Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer, told the press what he would do if elected. When asked about winning over voters who distrust conservative policies, he said, "The conservative government had an excellent record on infrastructure that did improve the quality of life for people in Toronto and I want to continue that."

Exactly what they did, he neglected to say. On what he learned during the last federal election campaign, he had this to say, "The No.1 lesson I learned is that conservatives have to find a way to articulate a positive message and explain how it's conservative policies that improve the quality of life for all Canadians;" which is very specific.

With amazing gall, Scheer added, "It's explaining the why and showing Canadians that conservatives are motivated by compassion, they're motivated by a desire for a better quality of life."

It's doubtful any elector anywhere would believe any politician is motivated by compassion, especially if it got in the way of that other motive, which I think is called the profit motive.

There it is folks; a typical political speech couched in generalities but saying nothing specifically. Anyone who wants Scheer and his kind elected shouldn't expect much so they won't be disappointed. 

John and Steve.

This is what capitalism really is

 “The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from his, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers.”  Frederick Douglas, former slave, 1855

Capitalism’s problems are often isolated as single issues to obscure the flaws of the entire system. Capitalism is an economic system where, under pressure from the market, profits are accumulated as further capital, i.e. as money invested in production with a view to making further profits. This is not a matter of the individual choice of those in control of capitalist production – it’s not due to their personal greed or inhumanity – it’s something forced on them by the operation of the system. And which operates irrespective of whether a particular economic unit is the property of an individual, a limited company, the state or even of a workers’ cooperative. Capitalism breeds inequality. Capitalism is wage slavery. Capitalist exploitation occurs as a result of the normal operation of market forces. 

Let’s clarify what is meant by markets. It was with the emergence of the capitalist system that society lost its direct control of its productive resources. In previous societies, it was often the case that production was at near maximum capacity given the technology and resources available and this determined what could be distributed. In times of good harvests, the whole community could benefit in some shape or form. But with the development of the capitalist system, this was eroded as what is produced depends crucially on what can be sold. This means that distribution through sale in the markets determines production and this is always less than what could be produced.

Capitalism is a market economy, but not a simple market economy. A key difference, of course, is that under capitalism production is not carried out by self-employed producers but wage and salary workers employed by business enterprises. In other words, by profits, we mean income that flows to the owner of a workplace or land who hires others to do the work. In other words, under capitalism, the producers have become separated from the means of production. This makes all the difference.

There is no hope under Capitalism

Under capitalism, production is geared to profits and therefore does not, in general, take place unless the goods can be marketed profitably. Thus capitalism is not geared to produce to satisfy the reasonable needs of the majority of the population. Nevertheless, it has developed the means of production, including those in the fields of food and energy, to the extent that the creation of an abundance of wealth is now technically possible. In a socialist society, the world will function as one productive unit. With the probability of people living in smaller communities with modern energy-efficient communications reducing transport requirements, we may well see these communities self-sufficient in energy, although some provision for emergencies will be required. The environmentally benign, renewable methods are in many ways better suited to smaller scale operations, as shown to a certain extent by the instances where they are making headway at present. 

 Socialism has but small use for just simple hatred for capitalism. Whilst we depict the cruelties of capitalism in order to rouse the indignation and fix the attention of our fellows, we should be worse than fools to build a movement on mere indignation. In our perusal of history, in our observation of the world around us, there is always enough to keep our indignation alive, but we do not peruse history or look at our world for that. We study these things that we may understand how our society has come to be as it is, and how it may be made to serve human happiness more perfectly. We may perceive that malice, ignorance or sheer perversity may have added to human misery or may have diverted the results of communal effort into private channels, but indignation will not remedy it. Neither will action based upon mere hatred of the human agents involved. Socialism has little use for hatred. We prefer to concentrate on knowledge, for with knowledge comes understanding, and from understanding proceeds intelligent, definite action. This is one great difference between the Socialist Party and the Labour Party. The latter—and this is not a mere jibe—specialises in sob-stuff. It's Press and its political representatives are absorbed in the appeal to sentiment. They appeal constantly for your tears for the orphan, the underfed, the widow, the aged, the out-of-work, the casual labourer, the poorly housed, the "ex-Service man," and dozens of other categories of poverty. And being a mere sentimental appeal, and further, being without the correct knowledge and understanding, they invite you to get the Government to give a pension to this one, increase the pension to that one, feed the children of the other one, and so on. They assure you that this kind of thing is "practical Socialism," and implore you to give them the keys of power so that they may dispense the appropriate plaster for each social sore. The appeal is purely sentimental; a fatal basis upon which to build an effective party. People may respond more quickly to an appeal to their feelings, rather than their reason, but, action based upon reason will go further, make fewer mistakes and get there, long before sentimentalism has exhausted all the possibilities of error. In all of our years of existence we have consistently demonstrated the utter futility of the "something now" policy and the dangerous absurdity of the mere appeal to righteous indignation. Socialism is a practical, scientific proposition, to be applied to existing society. It will not be brought” into operation by angry men, for anger is a bad counselor.

The task of making the great mass of Labour Party voter into socialists remains. Nationalisation, municipalisation, and public ownership still appear too much in the mind’s eye of the average worker as methods whereby he will immediately advance wages and working conditions. We must dispel such delusions. Just as we now must disillusion fellow workers of their misplaced faith in cooperatives and universal basic incomes schemes as solutions to their poverty.

IT'S ALL ABOARD THE HS2! (weekly poem)

IT'S ALL ABOARD THE HS2!

The Government hopes that spending £42.6bn* on a High Speed

train service will rejuvenate the economy—despite others doubts.

* Does not include £7bn for the rolling stock. See note (3) below.

It's all aboard the HS2,

To join the Fast Buck scrum;

And cut some twenty minutes off,

The journey north to Brum.

Then on to Manchester and Leeds,

And Sheffield via Crewe;

Let's hope that wheelchair users find,

A clean and working loo!

The NAO says it's a sham, (1)

The PAC a farce; (2)

To simply help fat businessman,

Relax in the First Class.

The Government's railroading spin,

Is trying hard to kid;

The lot of us that it should spend,

Some Forty Billion quid.

Even the private IEA, (3)

Aren't on the project's side;

And recognise that vanity,

Drives this High Speed Train ride.

The IOD's boss says it's just, (4)

A “Folly,” nothing less;

Most of his members think the scheme's,

An economic mess.

Not so the Transport Industry,

Who stand to make a buck;

From lobbying a government,

That trusts in 'Business luck'.

The Shires of Middle England feel,

They soon will be assailed;

Unless the cord is firmly pulled,

And the whole plan derailed!

(1) National Audit Office.

(2) Public Accounts Committee.

(3) Institute of Economic Affairs estimate final costs of £80bn.

(4) Institute of Directors.

© Richard Layton