Food Facts

800 million people go to bed hungry each night.

That’s 1 in 9 people on a world population estimate of 7.6 billion today.

98% of the world’s hungry live in developing regions, mostly in Asia.

Some 550 million are in Asia and the Pacific, in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. Another 220 million are in Africa, in arid sub-Saharan countries like Ethiopia, Niger and Mali. The remaining is in Latin America and the Caribbean, in places like Guatemala and Haiti.

75% of the world’s poorest don’t buy their food – they grow it.

Many poverty-stricken families depend on their land and livestock for both food and income, leaving them vulnerable to natural disasters. Drought – as a result of climate change and unpredictable rainfall – is one of the most common causes of food shortages in the world. It causes crop failures, kills entire herds of livestock, and dries up farmland in poor communities that have no other means to survive.

Many hungry people live in countries with food surpluses, not food shortages.

The issue, largely, is that the people who need food the most simply don’t have steady access to it. In the hungriest countries, families struggle to get the food they need because of issues such as lack of infrastructure like roads and storage facilities, frequent war and displacement, natural disaster, climate change, and chronic poverty.

1/3 of the food produced around the world is never consumed.

Much food is wasted in developing countries due to inadequate food production systems. Some of the factors responsible for food losses include inefficient farming techniques, lack of post-harvest storage and management resources, and weak market connections.

60% of the world’s hungry are women and girls.

In many places, male-dominated social structures limit the resources women have to job opportunities, financial services and education, making them more vulnerable to poverty and hunger. This, in turn, impacts their children. A malnourished mother has an increased risk of delivering an underweight baby, which can mean physical and mental stunting right from childbirth.

Empowering female farmers can pull 150 million people out of hunger.

Empowering women is essential to global food security. Almost half of the world’s farmers are women, but they lack the same tools – land rights, financing, training – that their male counterparts have, and their farms are less productive as a result. If women and men had equal agricultural resour­ces, female farmers could increase their productivity enough to help lift millions of people out of hunger.

Every 10 seconds, a child dies from hunger.

Poor nutrition is responsible for nearly half (45%) of all deaths in children under the age of 5 – about 3 million children die each year because their bodies don’t have enough of the basic nutrients they need to function and grow.

Hunger kills more people each year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Around 9 million people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year, more than double the lives taken by AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in 2012.

The world produces enough food for everyone to live a healthy, productive life.

There is now 17% more food available per person than there was 30 years ago. If all the world’s food were evenly distributed, there would be enough for everyone to get 2,700 calories per day – which is more than the minimum 2,100 requirement for proper health. So the challenge is not a lack of food, it’s making food consistently available to everyone who needs it.

800 million people go to bed hungry each night.

That’s 1 in 9 people on a world population estimate of 7.6 billion today.

98% of the world’s hungry live in developing regions, mostly in Asia.

Some 550 million are in Asia and the Pacific, in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. Another 220 million are in Africa, in arid sub-Saharan countries like Ethiopia, Niger and Mali. The remaining is in Latin America and the Caribbean, in places like Guatemala and Haiti.

75% of the world’s poorest don’t buy their food – they grow it.

Many poverty-stricken families depend on their land and livestock for both food and income, leaving them vulnerable to natural disasters. Drought – as a result of climate change and unpredictable rainfall – is one of the most common causes of food shortages in the world. It causes crop failures, kills entire herds of livestock, and dries up farmland in poor communities that have no other means to survive.

Surprisingly, many hungry people live in countries with food surpluses, not food shortages.

The issue, largely, is that the people who need food the most simply don’t have steady access to it. In the hungriest countries, families struggle to get the food they need because of issues such as lack of infrastructure like roads and storage facilities, frequent war and displacement, natural disaster, climate change, and chronic poverty.

1/3 of the food produced around the world is never consumed.

Much food is wasted in developing countries due to inadequate food production systems. Some of the factors responsible for food losses include inefficient farming techniques, lack of post-harvest storage and management resources, and weak market connections.

60% of the world’s hungry are women and girls.

In many places, male-dominated social structures limit the resources women have to job opportunities, financial services and education, making them more vulnerable to poverty and hunger. This, in turn, impacts their children. A malnourished mother has an increased risk of delivering an underweight baby, which can mean physical and mental stunting right from childbirth.

Empowering female farmers can pull 150 million people out of hunger.

Empowering women is essential to global food security. Almost half of the world’s farmers are women, but they lack the same tools – land rights, financing, training – that their male counterparts have, and their farms are less productive as a result. If women and men had equal agricultural resour­ces, female farmers could increase their productivity enough to help lift millions of people out of hunger.

Every 10 seconds, a child dies from hunger.

Poor nutrition is responsible for nearly half (45%) of all deaths in children under the age of 5 – about 3 million children die each year because their bodies don’t have enough of the basic nutrients they need to function and grow.

Hunger kills more people each year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Around 9 million people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year, more than double the lives taken by AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in 2012.

The world produces enough food for everyone to live a healthy, productive life.

There is now 17% more food available per person than there was 30 years ago. If all the world’s food were evenly distributed, there would be enough for everyone to get 2,700 calories per day – which is more than the minimum 2,100 requirement for proper health. So the challenge is not a lack of food, it’s making food consistently available to everyone who needs it.

Industrial food and farming systems are “making people sick” according to research published by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

Say No To Nationalism

Nationalism is a malignant disease that appeals to our most primitive and basic instincts. It divides people and therefore has no place in modern and developed society. We have to point out to nationalists that "freedom" and "sovereignty" i.e independence, is not the solution to their problem. We want all countries to be free from capitalism and are not in favour of encouraging the illusions fostered by parts of the propertied class. The Socialist Party and the World Socialist Movement are not enthusiastic about smaller nations forming their own states. All over the globe, nationalism is on the march and the battle cry is either “Independence” or "Defend the motherland", separatists or unionists, demanding that political power be turned over to them and this, they say, would allow them to set about the problems of poverty, unemployment and housing shortages which they say have ignored . Offering this as the main reason for their nationalism, they attract a lot of support and sympathy. What many people forget is that this newly won political power will be used to administer capitalism—with all the problems which already faced them.  Saner people should be more worried about the necessities of life: putting food on the table, a roof over their head, and other such mundane—and ultimately far more important—considerations, than the constitutional status of the place they happen to live in.

“Independence" is a word used to stir up emotions but the current economic system doesn’t play favourites based on national, ethnic, or cultural sovereignty. Capital investment and migration is based upon the likelihood of making better profits, not upon which of the largely irrelevant politicians form the government. Nationalist- ' quasi-racist' - issues are not the issues that will solve the problems that working class people face every day. The working class will never be served by nationalism. Sovereignty is a capitalist business, the factional feuding of the self-same class to win and control regions for profit, for the benefit of their local capitalists,  politicians, media chiefs and other self-serving functionaries.

The search for markets, sources of raw materials, cheap labour power and most profitable locations for business gave rise to "globalisation", no matter what nationality, religion or language for capital is not a personal but a social force. Independence solves none of the problems resulting from exploitation.  Nation-states governments remain wedded to the same set of priorities and subject to the same constraints as any other capitalist government. Poverty in the midst of a potential for plenty remains a running sore, massive disparities of wealth continue to exist and environmental degradation continues virtually unabated.

Socialists do not ask people to demand their "right of self-determination". Instead we urge them to forget the crumbs from the dishes of their masters’, but instead, organise under the slogan "One World—One People". The obstacle only lies in our minds. The only way out is to establish Socialism, which will organise the world so that everyone, whatever their sex or colour of skin, has free access to the world's wealth and stands equal to the rest of humanity. Independence cannot solve working-class problems, only the establishment of socialism will do that. 

The world's working class doesn’t need a change in politicians. Independence simply means the exchange of one set of exploiters for another. We need an end to class division. The joys of becoming an independent country are, by and large, illusory for the mass of the people and not worth the effort and sacrifice so often involved in achieving it. The message of socialism is a universal one. It reaches across the artificial borders built by men and it is for the ears of all workers. The real issue is capitalism or socialism. That is the lesson for workers to learn all over the world.

The Futility of I.S. (1974)

Pamphlet Review from the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The policies of the “International Socialists” have been set forth in a pamphlet, The Struggle for Workers' Power by Roger Rosewell. The pamphlet appears to be intended for the information of members of I.S., as well as for the general public.

The Labour Party, I.S. recognise Labour to be a non-Socialist party, and indeed provide ample evidence to show it. But they nevertheless support the election of a Labour government — in order to point to the anti-working-class nature of its policies. Those dim workers, you see, have to be led through this experience. This is itself a non-Socialist standpoint: since all previous Labour governments have shown that their function is to administer capitalism in the interests of the capitalist class, it is a waste of time encouraging workers to vote Labour only to shout “betrayal” when the results of doing so become apparent.

The “Workers’ State”. This chapter makes a Socialist squirm. In little over two pages, Rosewell manages to pack in all the Leftist garbage on this topic. The “Workers’ State” is to be completely democratic. However, capitalist parties and newspapers are to be banned, and former capitalists and their supporters are to be disenfranchised.

Now, at present, the majority of workers support capitalism in one form or another, and presumably, after the I.S. “revolution” many will continue to do so. What will the “Workers’ State” do with them? Perhaps, following their masters Lenin and Trotsky, such workers as opposing the new régime will be thrown into forced-labour camps.

A “Workers’ Militia” is to be formed for the protection of the new State and all workers are to be given part-time military training (in other words, conscription). Will workers carry rifles on their backs as they travel to and from work? The Workers’ Militia will defend the “right” to work (why not the right to leisure?) and the “right” to strike. Rosewell has already told us that under the new régime the means of production will be owned by the working class, so against whom would strikes be directed? We can only wonder, as no answer is forthcoming in the pamphlet.

All remaining British Colonies are to be declared free. “Free” is used without any explanation as to what is meant by it. Free from British imperialism, but in the clutches of, e.g., Russian or Chinese imperialism? Most likely, because Rosewell naively states that British capitalism’s overseas property will be handed over to the native workers.

The Communist Party. We are told that the CP was at one time a revolutionary organization, but sadly this is no longer the case. What is meant by this is that the CP advocated the violent overthrow of the Establishment (to be replaced by State capitalism on the Russian model, though Rosewell does not say this). Nowadays the CP advocates a peaceful road to "Socialism” (again State capitalism): I.S. claims that this is a departure from Marxism and that Socialism can be established only after a violent revolution. For I.S. to claim that Marx never thought Socialism could be established by peaceful means is either very ignorant or very dishonest. Speaking to the Congress of the First International at The Hague in 1872, Marx expressed the view that in countries such as Britain and the USA where democracy had been established, the Socialist revolution could do without violence.

Reformism. This statement of policy boldly claims that I.S. is for “Revolution, Not Reformism” — then proceeds to advocate reforms: the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act, the repeal of the Housing Finance Act, reform of the education system with more money to be spent on education and the abolition of private schools, exams and corporal punishment. It even demands an end to the teaching of ruling-class ideas. How naive can you get? Do I.S. seriously expect the ruling class to subsidize subversion of themselves?

I.S. participates in “the Fight against the Fascist Menace”. Readers of the pamphlet should have been in Edinburgh on 15th October last when I.S. (with others) broke up a debate at the University Union because they objected to the presence of the National Front. They are opposed to free speech for their opponents; apparently, it is permissible for the Left to use “fascist” methods (breaking-up meetings) against fascism.

Socialism. The pamphlet’s summing-up says: “Mankind is faced with the alternatives of Socialism or barbarism. Only the Socialist revolution can change this.” We would certainly agree with that, but The Struggle for Workers’ Power does not point the way towards the new society. Claiming to be a Socialist pamphlet, it does not even hint at the nature of Socialism — a world-wide classless society, with an end to all markets and with production to satisfy human needs.

R. Battersby

Glasgow Branch Meeting

Give us a visit to discuss how to promote and organise a system of production for use and not for profit, a society of common ownership and democratic control without the state, leaders, nations, war or money. Capitalism turns our planet and its peoples into a resource to be exploited. The Socialist Party argues that the world can only be managed responsibly if society as a whole is managed co-operatively and in everyone’s interests. If our industries and services were owned and run in common, then we would be able to produce what we need and want in the most rational and sustainable way.

• 
  

  Wednesday, October 18,

  
  

  
  

  7:00 to 9:00 PM

• Maryhill Community Central Halls

  304 Maryhill Road

  Glasgow G20 7YE 

  

  

  
  

  
  

Servitude or Socialism?

The working class to-day is a slave class. They can only live by selling their labour power—working abilities—to a master class, who, by their ownership of the means of life, keep the workers in their enslaved condition. The Socialist Party proposal is to change the social basis of society from private ownership to a system to satisfy the economic needs of the community which are owned and controlled by the whole of the people. Socialism will provide all people with the full amenities of modern life. Present-day society does not provide for all now simply because the way it produces things is geared not to make available what people need but to create profitably. In a future socialist society, ownership and control of the means of production will be in the hands of the community as a whole. This will enable production to be directed in the interest of all on the basis of what we need. With modern methods of consumer research and information gathering, logistics and stock-control, already in use by many of the global corporations, the means by which the needs of society can be determined are already available.

There can be no common interests between those who own the offices, the factories, mines, shops, and land, with the workers who do all of the producing. One class does all the work, produces all, suffers all the hardships necessary to accomplish the task. The other class owns, but does not know, nor cares to know, how to produce wealth, yet persists by rights that it labels “legal” to live off what it does not produce. While our class performs no function in production but lives in plenty Our class works long hours under bad conditions established by and suited to the needs of masters of industry. We receive low wages, so that there may be high dividends and profits for the investors. For it must be borne in mind longer hours and low wages mean greater profits for the capitalists. The world needs socialism.  Even the most liberal vision is too conservative to resolve these contradictions. Capitalist technology has produced unprecedented wealth, yet threatens the very air and water, and embitters people. Helping people to adjust to capitalism, rather than engaging against it, has been the historic accomplishment of the Left, and it remains its primary goal 

It's up to workers alone to make a better world for ourselves. We can't wait for it to change of its own accord because it will never do that. Capitalism may well be sick but it will not, however, disappear on a given day, or in a given month or year. Its demise can only take place as a his­toric process by a class-conscious majority.

Religious and nationalist dogma is only blinding people to the realities of the intolerable present-day world system of society. But once you've begun to look at them in a historical context then you'll be able to begin looking at everything else in the same way. And you'll begin to question why the world is in such a state. You'll begin to question why there is so much misery and suffering and starvation when there is plenty of everything for everybody; why the majority of the world's population have to slave away all their lives at jobs they detest while a small minority live in splendour and luxury without having to work at all.  it's no use going to churches, chapels or mosques or even to Conservative or Labour politicians. There's only one real solution: a system of society based on common ownership of the means of living and democratically controlled by and in the interests of the whole world-wide community. A class-free, money-free world-wide system of society where poverty will give way to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom. Ours is a “participatory” socialism.

The struggle to change society from capitalism to socialism has nothing to do with barricades in the streets or organizing general strikes. It has to be a political one. The powers of government include and in the last analysis rest on armed force to maintain capitalism in each country. The only logical strategy to abolish capitalism is, therefore, for the working class — not leaders or an élite - but the socialist working class itself through its mandated delegates — to take control of those powers; so that the protection of capitalism has gone, and no-one can prevent the establishment of socialism.

In those circumstances, hypotheses about opposition by army officers etc. are not only improbable but define themselves out of existence. If a military-minded group seeks power, it must do so as a political party. For that, it requires the assent of the ruled-to-be, which is obtainable only in the absence of Socialist understanding. Even under capitalism, forcible rule without that assent does not work as the ruling class needs. An example is Northern Ireland, where the fact that military occupation achieved nothing is testified to by the search on all sides for “a political solution”, i.e. a régime acceptable to the population: which is what we were saying. What is much more likely than military resistance to the rapid growth of socialist consciousness is that the ruling class will offer sops and reforms galore to try to buy it off.

Socialism is the hope for industrial freedom. The Socialist Party is attempting to build a world socialist movement and endeavours to ensure some level of inspiration. But that doesn’t mean providing all the answers, it doesn’t mean detailing the blueprints of a utopia. It does mean that we’re laying out an idea about how change can happen and the difference that it actually can make. It is about offering our fellow-workers aspiration and a new ambition to think a lot bigger than they’ve been thinking for decades now.

Transport Poverty

More than one million people in Scotland live in areas at risk of "transport poverty", it has been claimed. The figure was calculated by Sustrans Scotland, which promotes walking and cycling. It claimed the lack of affordable transport pushes some households into car ownership which they cannot afford.

An analysis of official figures by Sustrans Scotland found problem areas with relatively low incomes, high car availability and low access to essential services by public transport. The organisation said car ownership can put pressure on households with lower incomes.

Its director John Lauder said: "We need a planning system that puts necessary services where people live. People should be able to access shops, schools, healthcare and some places of work within a short distance without the need for a car."

The Poverty Alliance has backed the call for more affordable transport to be made widely available. "Too many people living on low incomes have inadequate access to public transport, and other forms of transport sometimes seem out of reach," said its director Peter Kelly.

Who will pick the berries?

Scotland’s fruit industry has been one of the great farming success stories. Polytunnel technology has turned a six week season into a six or nine month picking season. But if Brexit results in restrictions on the movement of labour, many farm owners and workers are asking: “Who will pick the berries?”

The 100 acre Wester Hardmuir farm near Nairn grows strawberries, raspberries and a range of other fruit and vegetables in forty-four polytunnels. It has a half a dozen full-time employees – some Scottish, some from Eastern Europe. Each picking season, from May to September, they bring in around twenty students from Poland, Lithuania and Slovakia to pick the crop of ten million berries, which is sold through a farm shop and through a wholesaler.

Castleton Farm near Laurencekirk grows fruit on an industrial scale. Castleton has built a small village to house the six hundred workers who come from across Eastern Europe to pick berries for up to nine months of the year.

With Scotland’s soft fruit industry seeing a 10-20 per cent shortage of seasonal workers coming from the EU this year, NFU Scotland’s horticulture committee chairman and soft fruit farmer James Porter said that fewer workers were being attracted from EU member states due to the UK’s poorer exchange rates and growing affluence in other parts of the Continent. Stating that the situation was likely to get worse ”year on year”. “For a major soft fruit area like Angus, the importance of seasonal workers cannot be underestimated,” he said. “There are only 1,400 long-term unemployed in Angus, yet Angus Soft Fruits – the group that I supply with soft fruit – needs a seasonal workforce of 4,000 to pick crops.” Adding that there would hardly be a punnet of Scottish strawberries or a head of broccoli on supermarket shelves which hadn’t been picked by non-UK workers, he said there had to be a mechanism to allow access to workers in place by next year – and to ensure workers would still be able to come to Scotland post-Brexit, in spring 2019. Seasonal workers – who were generally fit, young and healthy and made little calls on the health services – contributed about £160 million in national insurance payments.

Losing access to European workers would have a “disastrous and cataclysmic” impact on the industry. A report produced for the industry showed that with up to 95 per cent of pickers coming from European countries – mainly Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania – any move to deprive the industry of its workforce would force berry prices to rise by more than 50 per cent and threaten many fruit farms with closure.

One of Scotland’s leading growers, Lochy Porter, stated that there was no doubt that if the UK government put barriers in the way of the 12,000 migrant labour force working in the industry it would do considerable harm to farms across the region and explained “Scotland has a thriving berry industry, growing some of the best berries in the world. Without migrant support, the Scottish berry industry would collapse and consumers would no longer find Scottish berries on their supermarket shelves.”.

From Private Property to Common Ownership

The purpose of capitalism is the realisation of profit (surplus value) and the first step towards this end is the purchase of the necessary means of production. Thus beginning with money (capital), the employers buy factories, machinery and raw materials plus the energy (labour-power) of working men and women and the net return on this outlay is an increased sum of money, sufficient not only to repeat the process but enough for further expansion of production. From the unpaid labour of the workers, there is money to be reinvested in the productive process, either as an addition to the existing capital or as capital seeking fresh fields of exploitation, leading to an inevitable accumulation of capital seeking surplus-value.

All money set aside as industrial capital can be divided into two parts, that spent on the inert means of production we can call “constant” capital, while that for buying labour-power, which preserves and furnishes additional value is “variable” capital. Now if the function of labour-power is to labour, then the call for labour by the employing-class will depend on the market demand for commodities, while the market will, in turn, be gained by those owners that have succeeded in reducing the labour in their commodities to the lower level.

Labour-time is, therefore, the capitalist’s devil which claims as its victims those that are hindmost, driving them to centralise or amalgamate their capital and concentrate it in labour-saving machinery and mass production—to invest in constant capital rather than variable capital.

This results in large capital devouring its smaller rivals, while the social outcome is such that the means of production call for a progressively smaller number of workers to operate it, making it impossible for capitalism to find work for the total employable population, hence an industrial reserve army is in constant being, ever threatening the wage level of those in jobs.

Spurred on by the needs of the market and the greed for surplus-value, capital accumulation in the past was built up by driving labour-power below its value by excessive hours, piecework and low wages, but wiser methods hold sway to-day in production-drives advocated by the workers’ own “union leaders” coupled with the plea that the workers have a "share” in their job.

Yet not all capital invested in the capitalist economy is productive of value or surplus-value. To begin with, the industrialists—whose workers directly produce value and thereby surplus-value—must part with some of the surplus to others whose capital forms an integral part in the capitalist production. The middlemen, bankers and others, though not in productive industry, nevertheless share in the surplus according to the size of their capital and receive, over a period, an average rate of increment, enforced by competition: for capital flows out of those spheres where the rate is low to where it is higher. At this point, it might be asked: “How do those capitals whose workers produce no surplus-value, exploit their workers?”

The finance-capitalists whose service to capital is to centralise all the available loanable money for the use of the whole capitalist class, reap the difference between the depositors’ rate and the interest charge for borrowers. The work entailed being done by their employees, who merely receive the cost of subsistence or salary consistent with this type of work. The outlay in wages and equipment compared with the charge for the bank services give these capitalists their share in surplus-value. Again, the merchants and advertisers who market the products, effect this much more economically than could the many independent industrialists, thus saving them labour-time and capital. The wage costs' for their workers’ abilities and commercial knowledge, set against that part of surplus-value which the industrialists leave them to realise in the selling price, give the merchants their profits.

The landowners, hereditary possessors of the earth’s surface, lend no like "service” to capitalist production, hence the historic enmity of the capitalist class against this landed class, often of aristocrats from a bygone age. An eventual compromise is always concluded with this "charge on industry,” even though land as land has no value and will only yield rent out of the surplus values of farmers and industrialists. Landowners in this way take their share of the spoils through the undertakings on their land whether these activities be mining, building or agriculture. They accumulate wealth, brought about, by others activities. Their land offered as a commodity is bought and sold for a sum that is equal to an investment whose interest would equal the rent.

To sum up, surplus value is the totality of unpaid labour wrung from the workers' in the productive process. while its distribution to the capitalists as rent, interest, and profit takes place in the circulatory process.

Nationalisation does not touch the foundations of capitalism, and the capitalists themselves accept the need in their own interests to control big monopolies. Certain monopolised industries subject to the greed of private companies become instruments for the exploitation of other sections of the capitalist class, and so powerful that the abandonment of certain industries to private exploitation destabilises the whole system

In our Declaration of Principles there are three clauses of special relevance and these are the object, the clause affirming that there is an antagonism of interests between the working class and the Capitalist class, and the clause that lays down the need for the working class to organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government.

Nor do we want “workers’ ownership," which means syndicalism or cooperatives which remains sectional ownership but ownership by the whole community.

Our object is socialism, defined as 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 interests of the whole community. Our definition is not a mere insistence on a formula. We work for socialism and oppose capitalism—including nationalisation or state capitalism—because only socialism will solve the problem facing the working class. Many miscall state-ownership "socialism” or describe it as a useful stepping stone on the way to socialism. We do not want state capitalism and therefore have no interest in associating with those who do. The fact that they call it “socialism” only makes their activities more dangerous to the workers. It is an essential part of Socialist Party propaganda to convince the workers that the advocates of “something less than socialism” misuse the term and advocates of capitalism. It is the task of the Socialist Party to demonstrate that their activities are against the interests of the workers; that they are enemies of socialism and of the working class.

Tally Ho! Exposed

Members of hunts have been accused of defying Scotland’s fox-hunting ban by setting packs of blood-thirsty hounds on the fleeing animals which are torn apart when caught.

Legislation only allows foxes to be flushed from cover and shot dead for pest control, but undercover investigators say they have found packs of trained dogs chasing down foxes across open fields while huntsmen made no attempt to shoot them. 

Director of The League Against Cruel Sports Scotland Robbie Marsland said: “Despite Scotland being the first place in the UK to ban foxhunting in 2002, the 10 Scottish hunts still go out two or three times a week each year between November and the end of March. They say they are using their hounds to flush foxes to waiting guns. Except our investigators could see no guns where you would expect to find them. We were pretty much convinced that it was business as usual for the fox hunters in the Scottish countryside.”

It was also alleged that in some areas members of the hunt rode around on quad bikes firing shots in the air to give the impression the hunt was shooting at foxes while hounds pursued them.

A dossier of evidence collated by the animal welfare charity League Against Cruel Sports Scotland (LACS) argues that Scotland’s mounted hunts regularly break the law. Investigators from LACS filmed six of 10 Scottish hunts during last season and found “no discernible presence of guns waiting to shoot flushed foxes”.

 The report said: “There was no sight of guns being positioned at points where you might expect foxes to emerge. Neither was there any sight of guns being moved from one cover to another as the hounds moved on. In all the incidents recorded by our investigators it appears that there was no intention to shoot any foxes which might have been flushed from cover.” The report went on to say that “token guns” were deployed. “These guns were usually to be seen on quad bikes well away from the flushing to guns.”

During the 2016/17 season investigators uncovered what they described as a “new development” where hunts claimed foxes were wounded by gunshot before dogs tore them apart. There is a provision in the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002 which allows packs of hounds to kill a wounded animal.

The League Against Cruel Sports’ report said: “In one case where a fox was killed by a hunt, hunting within the confines of the law, the animal’s body was recovered and sent for autopsy.

“The autopsy showed the animal had suffered extensively before it died and concluded that the fox had suffered severe trauma consistent with that caused by a dog or dogs.”

A review of the existing legislation by Lord Bonomy recommended strengthening legislation that has led to only two convictions since fox hunting was banned. 

Dirty Scotland

One million Scots are living in "dirty communities" blighted by an increase in litter, graffiti and flytipping, according to a report by Keep Scotland Beautiful.

The environmental charity found the most deprived neighbourhoods had been worst hit by a decline in local environmental quality. It said standards had reached their lowest point in more than a decade. It suggested that the gap in standards between Scotland's most deprived and most affluent areas was widening. The charity said "...the most deprived communities have experienced the greatest decline."

Keep Scotland Beautiful chief executive Derek Robertson said: "The national picture is one of declining standards and neglect.

"This national decline has been caused by the perfect storm of austerity, unsustainable consumption, lack of civic pride and concern, and perhaps an increase in irresponsible behaviour...Improving local environmental quality is not just about reducing litter levels and removing graffiti. There are wider consequences of living in a poor local environment. It impacts on health and wellbeing outcomes, contributes towards people's fear of crime and negatively impacts economic development."

The report was based on data from more than 14,000 surveys of council areas across Scotland.

Lenin and the Myth of 1917

A myth pervades that 1917 was a 'socialist' revolution rather it was the continuation of the capitalist one. What justification is there, then, for terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists. M. Litvinoff practically admits this when he says:

“In seizing the reigns of power the Bolsheviks were obviously playing a game with high stake. Petrograd had shown itself entirely on their side. To what extent would the masses of the proletariat and the peasant army in the rest of the country support them?”

This is a clear confession that the Bolsheviks themselves did not know the views of the mass when they took control. At a subsequent congress of the soviets the Bolsheviks had 390 out of a total of 676. It is worthy of note that none of the capitalist papers gave any description of the method of electing either the Soviets or the delegates to the Congress. And still more curious is it that though M. Litvinoff says these delegates “were elected on a most democratic basis”, he does not give the slightest information about this election. This is more significant as he claims the Constituent Assembly “had not faithfully represented the real mind of the people”.

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1918/no-168-august-1918/revolution-russia-where-it-fails

 Karl Radek, the Bolshevik leader (“Class Struggle,” Aug. 1919) justifies the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks in Russia on the ground that Russia “possesses a proletarian minority.” He says that in countries with a capitalist minority a dictatorship would be unnecessary owing to weak resistance.

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1919/no-184-december-1919/democracy-and-dictatorship-russia

Originally the Bolsheviks demanded complete power for the Soviet executive “until the meeting of the Constituent Assembly." After the Bolsheviks had assumed power for three months, they announced the elections for the Assembly (Nov. 25, 1917), and dispersed it when it showed the Bolsheviks in a minority. The so-called reasons for abolishing the Assembly still lack evidence in their support for the Bolsheviks permitted the elections to be held.

 The Bolsheviki have often defended their dictatorship by quoting Marx’s criticism of the. Gotha Program (1875) where he refers to the transition from Capitalism to Socialism as the Dictatorship of the Proletariat pending the abolition of classes altogether. Marx, however, refers to a dictatorship asserted by a working-class majority over the capitalist few, and not to the dictatorship of a minority attacked by Engels in his Criticism of the Blanquist Program.

 Lenin has admitted the Blanquist character of the November 1917 seizure of power—
"Just as 150,000 lordly landowners under Czarism dominated the 130,000,000 Russian peasants, so 200,000 members of the Bolshevik party are imposing their proletarian will on the mass, but this time in the interest of the latter.” — “The New International,” New York, April, 1918, a Bolshevik paper.

Lenin’s defence of this as due to the lack of knowledge among the masses is in these words:
“If Socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least 500 years. The Socialist political party, this is the vanguard of the working class, must not allow itself to be baited by the lack of education of the mass average, but must lead the masses, using the Soviets as organs of revolutionary initiative.’’—Lenin at Peasants’ Congress quoted in "Ten days that Shook the World.” 

In Russia the Soviets arose spontaneously in opposition to the Tsarist (and later the Bourgeois) dictatorship. Parliament has never been the supreme power in the State because the bulk of the population had never been industrially concentrated and politically organised. Local councils acting independently to a large extent, and at most never realising the need for more than federal unity, were, therefore, the natural expression of popular opinion.
In adopting the Soviet constitution, therefore, the Bolsheviks did not invent a system: they accepted a fact! Their attempt to convoke a central assembly representative of the mass of the people had failed, as it was bound to fail, in a welter of illiteracy and disorganisation. The point is often missed that is it was not only the Bolshevik Party which was in a minority. The whole of the political parties in the Assembly put together were!
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1920/no-191-july-1920/russian-dictatorship
Marx, of course, is freely quoted by both writers. On p. 140 Kautsky, while stating that the Bolsheviks are Marxists, asks how they find a Marxist foundation for their proceedings.
"They remembered opportunely the expression ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’, which Marx used in a letter written in 1875."
Kautsky states that this is the only place in the whole of Marx’s writings where this phrase occurs, though Engels used it in his preface to the 3rd edition of Marx’s Civil War in France.
Lenin’s reply to this is to call the passage a "celebrated" one, and to call Kautsky several names. He then makes the following statement:
"Kautsky cannot but know that both Marx and Engels, both in their letters and public writings, spoke repeatedly about the dictatorship of the proletariat, both before and after the Commune" (p. 12.).

Here was a grand opportunity for Lenin to get in a powerful blow by giving some of these "letters and public writings", but, to the chagrin, no doubt, of his followers, he does not give a single case outside those mentioned above. There are endeavours to twist some of Marx’s statements on the Commune of Paris (1871) into a support of this claim, but they are all dismal failures. Only in the Communist Manifesto is found a phrase - "the proletariat organised as a ruling class" - that bears any resemblance.

But a more important point remains. Every student of Marx knows how he laid bare the laws of social evolution and claimed that, in broad outline, all nations must follow these laws in their development.

Kautsky uses this fact with great effect, and it forms the strongest argument in the whole of his pamphlet. On page 98 he gives the well-known phrase from the preface to the 1st Volume of Capital:
"One nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement - it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth pangs."

How does Lenin deal with this famous phrase of Marx’s? By entirely ignoring it. There is not a single reference to it in the whole of his reply. More than this, the quotation given above from page 140 of Kautsky’s pamphlet is printed by Lenin on page 11-12 of his reply. Immediately preceding the sentence quoted Kautsky says:
"The Bolshevists are Marxists, and have inspired the proletarian sections coming under their influence with great enthusiasm for Marxism. Their dictatorship, however, is in contradiction to the Marxist teaching that no people can overcome the obstacles offered by the successive phases of their development by a jump or by legal enactment."

Thus ignoring of one part of a paragraph while quoting the other part is full proof Lenin deliberately avoided this important question.

Lenin was no Hitler but what Lenin wrote or said, he trimmed and tailed to suit  circumstances, or whoever his audience was. He was a perfidious liar. One of the most amazing legacies of the Russian revolution and its aftermath is Lenin's image as a humane, even saintly figure, despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary. To this day thousands of people all over the world will revile Stalin but revere Lenin, yet the truth is that it was the latter who commenced the reign of terror after November l9l7 and who deserves his own place in history as a brutal, lying, ruthless dictator. Right up till the Bolshevik seizure of power Lenin had been agitating for the abolition of the state apparatus including the army, police and bureaucracy. Every official, he said, should be elected and subject to recall at any time. He was all for freedom of the press and the right to demonstrate for "any party, any group"' 

Immediately on gaining power he even promised to uphold the verdict of the coming elections for the Constituent Assembly
As a democratic government 'we cannot ignore the decision of the rank and file of the people, even though we may disagree with it ...and even if the peasants continue to follow the Social-Revolutionaries, even if they give this party a majority in the Constituent Assembly, we shall still say, be it so'
(Report on the Land Question,8 November 1917')

All of this was, of course, mere window dressing, for Lenin knew that the Russian people would never have supported what he really had in mind for them.  Far from abolishing the state apparatus he set about strengthening it, especially the secret police (Cheka), in order to impose the Bolshevik dictatorship. And instead of officials being elected and recallable the Bolsheviks simply appointed their own men who were answerable to them alone'

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

In the run-up to the November coup Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won widespread support with their slogan "peace, bread and land". Of course, the
promises of politicians are always easier to make than to fulfill, as the Russian workers and peasants very soon discovered. The peasants, having got rid of the landlord, now had their grain and cattle forcibly taken from them in return for worthless paper money. Those who resisted were shot and many villages were burnt. Lenin claimed that his policy of robbing the peasants was necessary to avoid famine but inevitably, the peasants retaliated by burning their crops and killing their cattle and so Lenin's policy produced famine anyway. In the cities and towns unemployment was rife and the workers, in or out of a job, were starving.
Lenin's response to the plight of the Petrograd workers was to tell them to ...set out in their tens of thousands for the Urals, the Volga and the south,
where there is an abundance of grain, where they can feed themselves and their families . . ( To The Workers of Petrograd, 12 July 1918.)

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

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


Another myth surrounding the period of Lenin's dictatorship is that at least there was democracy within the Communist Party. This is the so-called "democratic centralism", but Lenin no more welcomed opposition from his own comrades than he did from anyone else' Communists who criticised him or his policies were denounced as "unsound elements", "deviationists" or worse' and their arguments “mere chatter", "phrase mongering" and “dangerous rubbish".

Lenin's anger boiled over at those communists who wanted free trade unions independent of party control' He raged at the “loudmouths" and demanded complete loyalty or else they would throw away the revolution because “Undoubtedly, the capitalists of the Entente will take advantage of our party’s
sickness to organise a new invasion, and the Social Revolutionaries will take advantage of it for the purpose of organising conspiracies and rebellions.” (The Party Crisis, 19 January 1921 )

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

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

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

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

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

Matt Culbert