Re-Learning Socialism

Throughout the world a widespread popular perception that socialism is a coercive system persists. Generally speaking, people fear socialism and this issue is at the heart of socialism's crisis. We identify socialism first and foremost not with state ownership of the means of production, but with common ownership and the democratic control over economic, political, and social institutions and structures. The former Soviet Union was not a socialist country and was totally alien to the Marxist vision. The insistence to identify it with socialism, in contrast of all the studies to the contrary was a propaganda tool to attack Marxism and genuine socialism. The former Soviet Union and its satellite states did not by any criterion, economic or political, represent socialism.   Instead of common ownership of means of production, nationalisation of means of production was adopted. Wages and waged employment, money, exchange value, and the separation of the producing class from means of production, all remained. In fact, after the 1917 revolution, the only historically viable possibility was to maintain the capitalist relations in Russia. The socialist revolution is the abolition of the system of wage labour and the turning of means of production and distribution into common ownership. This was never done in the former Soviet Union.

We are living in extremely frightening times. Global catastrophe is a real and growing possibility.  Life is becoming more difficult for most and many of the reforms that were fought for have been rescinded.  Without a vision of a better world and the organisation that goes with it, even mass protests of working people in response to injustice will likely go nowhere.  The need for a socialist transformation of society has never been greater. We are running out of time. The first and perhaps the easiest step in creating the socialist vision is taking the blinkers off and reveal the truth of the state of our current capitalist society and promote socialism, a society that serves the well-being of humanity and nature alike, where workers participate in decision-making at work along with participation in the community.  Fundamentally, capitalism, based on the private form of ownership of the means of production, on which surplus value is extorted from the working class, imparts to the product a more and more social character. This renders the private form of ownership obsolete. The development of capital itself unwittingly created the conditions for the social ownership of these means, which in turn can put an end to class exploitation. The anarchy of the market is replaced with rational planning and democratic administration for human needs.

We must break the chains of wage slavery but our class emancipation needs no condescending saviours. The socialist revolution is no ordinary revolution. The victory of the working class in its fight to bury the capitalist class will be the last class conflict. It is the war to free the whole of mankind. Socialism is the system of society in which the land, the means of production, and distribution are held in common. Production is for use, as and when required, not for profit, exchange or sale. Each workshop is an autonomous unit working the general welfare and mutual harmony with the other workshops producing the like utility, also with those from whom the raw material is received and to whom the finished articles are transmitted. In this world of double-talk and double-think. It would be in the interests of such workers to scrutinise carefully all the terms spewed out by their bosses. 

Socialism is a class-free society in which all shall have leisure and culture, and all shall be secured from want. There is only one pathway to avert the crisis humanity is heading toward and that is by building a socialist society, a cooperative commonwealth. Identity politics will not get us there. Identity politics is all about atomisation of individuals, not their unity. Patriotism around the nationalist flag will not get us there nor will be worshipping a god. The market system will not get us there, either. Our greatest power for system change is ourselves. We no longer have the luxury to procrastinate or hope for a miracle or leader to save us. People have much more in common than most assume who are unable to see beyond the divisiveness in the world. Our common humanity provides the foundation for a global socialist movement. We need a language and campaign that reaches the heart as much as the head.  We need the vision and have to in ways that resonate with their anxieties of our fellow-workers and offer them hope for a better world.

Making our future for ourselves

The purpose of the Socialist Party is to explain to the workers why it is that, although they produce the wealth, they remain poor. The capitalist buys labour-power and pockets the difference between the value of the workers’ product and the wage he pays them. It is obvious, therefore, that while the wages system remains, exploitation must continue.  The Socialist Party holds a clear and consistent course. The Socialist Party since its inception pointed out the essential facts of the working-class position and laid out its policy. The Socialist Party holds resolutely to the need for the workers to advance to their emancipation through the conquest of the political machinery. One path they have never trodden, one weapon they have never found fail them — the policy and path of the Socialist Party — the weapon of political action on class-conscious, uncompromising, revolutionary lines. So we go on as we have gone on, declaring that the only way is by the capture of the political machinery by means of the ballot, by the organised, politically educated workers. This implies that the first need is to politically educate and organise the workers. Empty platitudes and meaningless rhetoric is not enough to change society. There is a false hope that somehow the ruling class may inexplicably become humane. Or technology and robotics will save us.  It should be noted that political and business leaders do not listen to the scientists and there is no reason why they will forgo their power by reason. False hopes lead to inaction and blind us to real possibilities. Blinkered views produce flawed pseudo-solutions, which if attempted often exacerbate other problems, or at the very least are a complete waste of time and energy. We must act together in a fight that people have never engaged in ever before. A peaceful revolution must be stoked among the working class. The lies of capitalism incite the "us against them” paranoia and fear. Our civilization is headed for a downfall, to be sure, if social change does not come. If global warming were the only problem,(and don’t forget it’s associated problem of acidification of the oceans) humans might in by remote chance still survive. But combine that with pollution (extinction of insect pollinators; poisoning of fresh water resources), the depletion of soil fecundity then the prospects for the survival of homo sapiens becomes even slimmer.

The Socialist Party tries to reveal the truth about society and talk about a whole set of better ways to be humane and human, of how socialism holds the key to sanity and salvation. Today, we are suffering from so many social problems that urgently need to be addressed by the whole humanity – environmental crisis, large-scale poverty and huge inequality, wars an civil wars. So we should not opt for adding more problems by creating nationalism and separatism. Independence movements are only distractions from the main task. It is essential that we build an economy based on mutual aid and solidarity that seeks sufficiency and abundance for all, in balance and harmony with our planet. Only a rationally planned and ecologically-aware system, locally organised and at the same time globally integrated, can solve our crises. Cooperation and reciprocation were the rule for 99.9% of human existence. There is archaeological evidence of large-scale warfare before 4000 BCE. Human society was almost totally peaceful and egalitarian throughout history.

 Imagine a world organising as a world of democratically self-governing yet interdependent communities in which each community bears responsibility for living within the means of its own natural resources,  that recognises our common humanity and fulfils our need to share and care for our brothers and sisters and the planet itself. This will require fostering an internationalist outlook for we are interconnected with human societies worldwide. Socialism calls for sustainable, steady-state economy where distribution is based on need and not on the ability to pay. The capitalist system is suicidal for the planet and our species in the long term. Although it may seem like a pipe-dream today, a  fully-automated “Star Trek” socialism, and it appears that we are a long way from this vision, the longer we wait, the worse things are going to get. In the end, it is up to each and every one of us to decide the type of world we want to help foster. What version of the future do we want?  One where the ruling class expands their exploitation of nearly everything around us for their wanton self-gain? Or we accept the responsibility of good stewardship toward one another and the planet and recognise the underlying interdependence, which all life requires for its continuance?  

Lanarkshire Child Poverty

Damning statistics have revealed that four in 10 children in North Lanarkshire are living in deprivation.

Figures released by the Scottish Government show that 40.7 per cent of youngsters in the region are experiencing material deprivation, with many families unable to afford basic necessities.

A child is classed as living in material deprivation if the family cannot afford three or more items on a list of 22 necessities, such as access to a computer and internet, owning a warm winter coat and having a garden or outdoor space nearby to play safely.

The figure for South Lanarkshire is almost identical, with 40.5 per cent of children suffering from deprivation in the area.

Irn-Bru less strong

Irn Bru are changing the formula of the product to cut the sugar content by almost half.

It is part of a sugar-reduction programme by AG Barr before the government levy on sugary drinks comes into effect in 2018.

The Cumbernauld-based firm announced last year that it would cut Irn Bru's sugar content from about 10g per 100ml to just below 5g.

This will reduce the calorie count per can from just under 140 to about 66.

Changing power?

The carbon footprint of Scottish households has fallen by an average of 25% since 2009, according to WWF Scotland.

The Scottish Climate Change Act was passed in 2009,  encouraging less harmful ways of powering and heating homes. Since then carbon emissions per person have fallen from 2.46 to 1.84 tonnes, UK government figures revealed. The rate of decrease differed between local authority areas, with Highland recording the largest drop at 30.3% and West Lothian the smallest at 21.6%.

Of course, it should not be forgotten that it is the scale of industry that inflicts the most damage, not the contribution of individuals but every little helps, as they say

A Better Solution.

Reports from groups such as United Way, the Childrens Aid Society of Canada and the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants contain data on the shocking disparities between the richest and the poorest of Canadians and the challenges facing newcomers and the lack of affordable child care in Ontario, to name a few problems.

Particularly appalling is the fact that 475,000 children, or 17.2 per cent are living in poverty, while Ontario's poverty rate is the lowest its been since 2008. The Children's Aid report warns that unless political parties pledge to end child poverty during the next provincial election any ''gains'' over the last eight years could be lost!

Pardon my confusion, but I seem to recall a provincial election in the 1990's where the new government said they would abolish child poverty by 2000; but then why abolish child poverty? Wouldn't it be better to abolish poverty for everyone?

For socialism,

Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC.

We need the socialist vision

Wage-slaves must first understand that they are slaves and why they are slaves before they can free themselves of their chains. Liberty can only be won through knowledge. To bring fellow-workers to a understand things from the standpoint of the socialist idea is the aim of the Socialist Party. It is, of course, to the advantage of the capitalists to keep obscure the fact that the working class live in a condition comparable only to that of the plantation slaves with the difference being that, instead of the lash, it is now the threat of starvation, that hold wage-slaves in submission. While the employing class have in their grasp the means of wealth production, while they control the means whereby the necessaries of existence are produced, then it follows inevitably that they possess the power to give or withhold, the necessities of life. We live under the sufferance of the employing class. “This person is useful to us,” say the employers. “We will therefore give him or her sufficient to exist on, to continue to be useful to us.” Or they will say: "This individual is no good for our purpose, too weak, too stupid, or too independent, not docile enough. Be gone. Away with you” And so the men and women of the working class live or die just as it suits the capitalists. The majority of the working class think in same terms as the capitalist, instead of from the point of view of the workers' own interests. The Socialist Party is endeavouring to bring about a revolution, trying to revolutionise the ideas of their fellow workers, to make them realise their present position. That is the first object of the Socialist Party. The whole vast edifice of modern civilisation is built upon the basis of exploitation.

When workers firmly grasp this elementary fact the reformist cries for "improving” the workers' lot, without attacking the exploiting system itself, will fall upon deaf ears, and the good work we are doing will have received its recompense. The Left are forever looking for new and better roads to socialism yet never asking themselves what happened to their old roads?  Socialism is not a better way of running capitalism but a world wide system of society in which the private ownership of the means of production and distribution would be replaced by social ownership. Not some promised encroachment on private ownership but its abolition. The more capitalism is changed in detail the more it remains at base the same—a system resting on the exploitation of the working class. The only road is to get rid of capitalism and introduce socialism and that is a task for which the Left have no mandate. It is a task for the workers of the world and it cannot be begun until they understand and want socialism and organise politically to bring it about. Workers and capitalists do not have the same interests.They are legalised robbers—We are the robbed.  The truth is that the Left never did put forward a case for socialism and proves just how right the Socialist Party has been from day one to treat these left-wing fakers with complete and utter hostility. It shows how right we were stand our ground and say to our fellow-workers: We, the Socialist Party, have never betrayed our principled stand for the working-class interest and nothing less.

There is more to win than a few welfare reforms; we have a world to win. It is time to show that you are serious about socialism by joining the ranks of a party which is not out to run the profit system, but to end it. It will be the most momentous and militant political move of your life. Our Declaration of Principles was laid down when the Party was founded. Acceptance of these principles is demanded of every applicant for membership, in the interest of the Party and the applicant. We do not want, within our ranks, those who do not subscribe to the principles. Neither would it be honest for workers to be drawn into our organisation without fully realising the implications of the principles and the nature of the party they were joining.

 “One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman. Two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad. Ten men sharing an idea begin to act. A hundred draw attention as fanatics. A thousand and society begins to tremble. A hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories, tangible and real. And why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace on earth? You and I who agree together, if is we who have to answer this question.” - William Morris

Prices High Rises

Household bills soared to a new high in Scotland last year, adding to a “cost of living crisis”. Bills rose a hefty 15 per cent in 2017. The increase comes despite a freeze in wages, with pay packets failing to even keep pace with inflation.

On average, Scots were paying £2317 last year – up by about £300.

The hike in household bills was blamed on dramatic energy price increases, on top of rising motor insurance premiums.

Comparethemarket.com. director Simon McCulloch said: “It’s been a torrid three years for household finances. A combination of soaring bills and squeezed wages is causing a lot of pain for millions.”

John Dickie, of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, said energy bills are major problem. He added: “Familes are under extraordinary pressure because of the squeeze on income and rising bills." In rural areas, fuel poverty is at 37 per cent of homes.

Pets in Poverty

Andrew's  dog Ebi tucks into a meal, but it is not from a pet shop or supermarket - it's from the Dundee food bank. Andrew, says the rescue dog, who he has had for more than two years, "means the world" to him, but that he would struggle to feed her without the charity's help. Andrew said: "The main worry is how to feed the dog, she'll come first before me."

He was referred to the food bank after his benefits were sanctioned and was surprised to discover that they could offer food for Ebi as well as himself. "When I heard the food bank would help out with food as well, it was a weight off, another relief. I don't know where I would be if I didn't have her kicking about. She'll eat you out of house and home, but she's a good wee pal."

A dedicated pet food bank currently operates from Cumbernauld, covering central Scotland including Glasgow and Stirling. But the majority of food banks also provide supplies for pet owners.

Dundee food bank manager Ken Linton said that about 25% of clients collecting supplies for themselves also pick up food for their pets. He said some of their clients' pets are their only companions.

He said: "Particularly for those who maybe don't have any other family, they're alone or within the city. That pet is their company and a very, very important part of their life. On a number of occasions they'll feed their pet before they feed themselves. What we want to is to give them the dignity and respect they deserve to get food for themselves and pet food for their animal."

Dundee Cats Protection co-ordinator Irene Brown said: "It is quite an issue and a lot of people are very proud and don't like to admit that they're having problems feeding their animals. We've actually come across this regularly. Sometimes people have more than one cat, it can go up as far as five or six. It's OK in the time you are in employment, feeding is very easy.But then that might come to an end and the feeding and finding food for the cat is more difficult."

Revolution! Not Reforms!

Capitalism is a disgusting social system. Tens of millions of people have been killed in capitalism’s wars and countless hundreds of millions more have died from preventable disease, starvation, and poverty. This toll of human life and misery has had the sole purpose of keeping a tiny minority of the population in wealth and privilege.  Experience has shown that for all the fine talk of reformists wanting to make the system fairer, the system has ended up changing them. Revolution means getting rid of the bosses, getting rid of working for a wage or salary, getting rid of the whole rotten buying and selling system. It means that people will freely come together to produce what is needed and will freely take from the abundant products of their labour. It will involve the abolition not only of the ruling class but also doing away with their protector, the State.

In order to accomplish the socialist revolution, the working class must have a political party. There are several parties around that call themselves “communist” or “socialist”. The Socialist Party has important disagreements with them. These parties all have one thing in common – they employ fine-sounding revolutionary Marxist phrases but underneath they are defenders of capitalism, either as a mixed-economy or a centralised command economy. Socialism is our programme for the working class. First of all, there is no “common interest” between the workers and the capitalists. What we mean by class is how the person makes a living. The two classes in our society are the employing class, which owns the factories, banks, stores, etc., and the working class which, of course, works for them. 

The idea of socialism is powerless without a social force powerful enough to see to its implementation. There is but one such force in modern society – the working class (the proletariat.) the working class cannot escape its exploitation by capitalism without socialism. Without socialism, the working class is reduced to a constant struggle against the effects of capitalism because without socialism the system of capitalism remains intact. Socialism is powerless without the working class and the working class cannot advance without socialism.

The working class’ struggle for survival and an improved standard of living is a constant threat to the employer’s search for profits. The interests of the owning class is acquiring profit from our labour. We create a surplus which goes to the owning class and gets recorded in the annual reports as profits and dividends. The struggle between the working class and the owning class, are opposite interests, is a fact of life regardless of how the media try to mask it. As workers, our task is to make sure that our class isn’t forever on the losing end of this class struggle. The bosses, landlords, and politicians are organised to take from us and keep us in place.  Likewise, we must be united to defend ourselves, supporting each other’s battles in the class war and creating mutual solidarity against all the racial and sexual prejudices that divide us. The capitalist class fears unity within our class more than anything else. A united class, clear on its goals, is unstoppable, and the capitalists realise this. This is why they constantly seek to promote divisions in our class. The old are pitted against the young, men against women, the native-born against the foreign-born.

We cannot learn all we need to know from our direct experience.  Sound socialist knowledge and understanding is needed. The Socialist Party calls for study and discussion but let’s not confuse education with book worship. Workers learn from their own experience but this education does not happen spontaneously. Agitation must not be mere phrase-mongering “calls to action” based on little or no political analysis. We exist not as something separate from the working class, not as some leadership for others to follow, but as part of the class working for our own liberation. If you agree with what we have to say, why not join with us to hasten the day of capitalism’s destruction? The goal of the Socialist Party in the electoral field or any other one, is to raise consciousness for revolution and socialism. A revolution that overthrows capitalism and establishes socialism is the only way to solve problems facing workers. A revolution of this kind requires a mass socialist party that only the working class can form. It is not a business-as-usual political party under a new label. We are told that a vote for the Labour Party or Democratic Party is a vote for working people. Experience of history tells us otherwise. We need a real socialist party to fight for our political and economic freedom. Then, we’ll be on our way to a better future.

In our numbers and in our hands lies the power to make our future.

The New Normal

Poverty in parts of Scotland is so severe that food banks are regarded as “the norm” in some communities, Nicola Sturgeon’s top adviser on poverty Douglas Hamilton, chairman of the Poverty and Inequality Commission, previously the head of Save the Children in Scotland warned.

He said it was “absolutely shocking” that emergency food handouts were becoming accepted as an everyday fact of life. He said politicians in Scotland were in danger of becoming complacent about tackling poverty, warning that warm words and tough targets were not enough. While setting such a tough target was commendable, he pointed out, it would be meaningless unless it was followed up with similarly bold actions.

“There is a real danger of complacency setting in, with politicians and political parties generally, about tackling poverty,” he said. “You get in a situation where almost everyone agrees. People come up from Westminster and say, ‘It’s amazing, the rhetoric’s completely different up here, it’s much more progressive’, but we don’t have actions that match up to that.” He added: “The very existence of a food bank should be a real flashing neon sign saying, ‘We’ve got a problem’. “There’s a real danger you start to accept these things as the norm rather than saying, ‘This isn’t right, it shouldn’t be happening’. We need to warn against complacency.”

Hamilton added: “We’ll no longer be able to say, ‘The reason why there’s so many people in poverty in Scotland is because of Westminster benefit policies’.”

Our Revolution

The Socialist Party is out to teach the working class to understand his or her class position in society as the workers are unconscious of their slavery and prefer to look after their masters’ interests rather than their own.

The Socialist Party promotes a revolution in thinking. The Socialist Party frequently explain workers today produce all wealth in society, but, for their noble efforts, receive back from the capitalist class —the shirking class—just sufficient to enable them to exist, with a view to turning out more profit. No worker can claim that he or she has the right to work—which is the only way to survive—for that right is in the hands of the master class. No work is given to the worker unless the master can make a profit. What good has the capitalist done to the workers? No good at all, in fact, the very system produces misery, degradation, and disease. With the destruction of the capitalist system and the establishment of socialism, every worker will be producing wealth in the interest of the whole community.

Today's capitalist class does not require jackbooted brown-shirts in the streets saluting demagogue dictators at mass rallies. It prefers people apolitical, and apathetic, distracted and divided, atomised and individualized, concerned primarily with identity politics and consumerism. The oligarchy love it when we keep quiet  and when they see millions of mindless consumers storming stores to buy and consume more.  Many of the objectives of capitalists appear on the surface to been accomplished—the defeat of the working class and their trade unions, the marginalisation of resistance and opposition, racial and nationalist divide and rule, without the need for overt fascism or militarisation of society.  There exists a rightward drift fed by a widespread sense of popular abandonment and betrayal.

That “Left” focuses on oppressions and identities of race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, and the like.  In the place of the underlying all-encompassing class conflict between the capitalist class an the rest of us, it points the finger at an individualist explanation of our oppression. Ruling classes have been playing the game of divide-and-rule since the dawn of class rule.  Labour, social, and political history is rife with capitalists and their agents destroying unity struggle by cultivating and exploiting internecine divisions of ethnicity, gender, nationality, and religion, fostering working-class fragmentation and it has been part of the capitalist’s long-standing strategy in the class war on workers' solidarity.  For sure racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and the like have terrible consequences for the immediate victims and must be challenged on their own terms but more vitally in connection with the essential task of building a broader revolutionary movement and party for people power. 

Some on the left, particularly the greens point the finger at all those who participate in industrialized society, who are accused of destroying eco-systems by consuming the Earth’s resources rather than indict the real enemy of humanity – the capitalist exchange economy and its need to expand to accumulate greater profits. As the eco-Marxist Jason W. Moore’s reflections reminds us, “It was not humanity as whole that created …large-scale industry and the massive textile factories of Manchester in the 19th century or Detroit in the last century or Shenzhen today. It was capital.” If indeed we must blame homo sapiens then let us acknowledge that it was under the command of the capitalist class, a small portion of the species that has ruled for just a tiny portion of human history.

The Socialist Party does not hold false hopes that our masters will ever behave in decent ways. It does not share any faith in the benevolence of the bourgeois elites who plan to make things right for the exploited. The Marxist view is sceptical of “moralising” about the rich. It sees people’s consciousnesses as shaped by the world around them, which makes it futile to exhort people to be “better.” The real task is not to make billionaires feel guilty, but to change the economic system that produces billionaires with all their corresponding unpleasant personal characteristics.  The Socialist Party does not expect a change in the morality or a spiritual uplifting of our oppressors but rather we demand a change in the structure of society. Workers need to get rebellious, more rebellious than we ever have been to overthrow a social and political system that allows dictators and demagogues to arise and exist in the first place. Change the personnel at the top won't suffice. As Postal Workers President Mark Dimondstein said: “The Democratic Party was not delivering anything even when it had control of the White House, the Congress and the Senate.”  The time has passed when we can passively settle for the lesser of two evils.

The new year won’t be a happy one so long as we passively accept the starvation and suffering of millions of innocent human beings. The coming new year won’t be a happy one so long as we choose to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed against millions of people around the globe. 2018 won’t be a good year so long as we don’t hold accountable the social and economic system that exploits and oppresses. In 2018, let’s end capitalism. Let’s end wage slavery. Let’s end waging war. Let’s end artificial borders and nation-states.  Let’s resolve to unite humanity with world socialism

Rather than wishing one another a “happy new year”,  let’s declare it loud and clear: “We are not happy! We have had enough! We want change! And we want it now!”

OUR NEW YEAR MESSAGE

Another new year has arrived and with the commencement of another year we should send out to our fellow workers our customary New Year message. If we wish our readers a “happy new year” and if the sentiments of a new year’s wish could become a reality by wishing hard enough, life would be a lot easier, but whatever we may wish, in the end, capitalism will determine what we get, and for most of us it will be disappointment. The year which has just drawn to a close has not been a particularly happy one either for people. On the surface, it is true, there may seem little reason for optimism.

 From 1904 until to-day we have delivered the same message day after day, week after week, month after month and still, our fellow-workers let themselves be led up the garden path to despair, following leaders with pathetic trust on to a promised land that always remains beyond the horizon. The aim of the capitalists is to force or cajole the workers into the submissive attitude of willing slaves, while all the time heaping up wealth for themselves to enjoy. The workers of the world can control their destinies once they shed their delusions and cast off the useless burden of capitalist privilege that they have carried upon their backs for so long. But the task they have to do must be done by themselves to become freely associated workers. Whatever hope this new year may bring, it will not lie in working people placing trust an faith in the promises of a political saviour.

If we have a New Year’s message for the workers, it is that the progress of humanity does not require the loss of millions of lives. We think humanity is fully capable of constructing a socialist society once it has the understanding necessary. We must establish the new society soon if we are to survive. Helping people grasp this is the purpose of the Socialist Party. 

Our New Year message is one of struggle and hope. Work and live for world socialism!

A Guid New Year to Yin an' A'

New Year is a time for looking back over the year—and forward to the year to come to wonder what will it have in store for the socialist movement.  For our part, we can say we would like to see socialism. On the surface, it is true, there may seem little reason for optimism. The introduction of socialism cannot be the work of a few hundred or a few thousand or even tens of thousands. It must be the work of overwhelming numbers. All ideas that oppose socialism must be persistently and strongly challenged and followed up where possible with a positive socialist point of view.

 The Socialist Party stands for a world in which people have risen to a mastery over property, not one in which people are mastered by it. Your experience, as a worker under various ‘Labour’ governments ought to show you that the Labour Party does not represent the interests of the working class. When in office, it behaves like any other Capitalist party—it runs Capitalism; when you go on strike, you are branded as 'troublemakers,' you are told that you are 'harming the nation.’

The solution of the poverty problem lies in the hands of those who suffer most from it—the working class, and can only be achieved when that class realises its historic mission, when, freed from tho illusions bred by capitalism and fostered by religion, it goes forward to solve for ever the problem of poverty by establishing socialism

The Socialist Party campaigns in elections not to win votes but to use them as a platform to put the truth about the capitalist system before the workers at a time when they had increased interest in politics. There is plenty to speak out about in elections, that is because of capitalism, for all its talk of democracy, is, in reality, the dictatorship of Big Business. The Socialist Party is a genuine workers’ voice, speaking out against the anti-worker policies of every government and the very system they represent. Rather than make pledges to run capitalism better, the Socialist Party takes the opportunity to speak up and expose some home truths about the system and why it is time to start thinking about a revolutionary alternative. Socialist Party speakers pointed out the treacherous role of the Labour Party over its long history, showing how the Labour Party leader have always served the capitalist class and that it has been a long time since Labour Party even pretended to be a workers’ party. The Socialist Party campaign is very different from that of the capitalist parties. We are not vote-catching, but taking a message out that what the present system offers is simply not good enough, and it´s time to stand up and fight for change. We seek to reach people who want to understand the world in order to change it. For sure, the Socialist Party is still very small, and we have no illusions that we will get big votes. We know that there is much work to be done to transform the present situation where the majority of workers feel powerless to change things. Nevertheless, there are growing numbers of people who are not prepared to quietly accept the present order. Since the system we live under, capitalism, is based on our exploitation, workers desperately need a political movement of our own. A movement which puts our interests first because it is a movement by, for and of us. Such a movement needs to be explicitly anti-capitalist. It needs to aim for the overthrow of the capitalist system and its replacement by a new truly socialist society, based on organising production to meet the human needs of all rather than private profit for a super-rich few. That’s the kind of movement the Socialist Party is trying to build and part of this movement-building is running in elections, to challenge the pro-capitalist parties which defend and manage exploitation and to get our ideas out to the widest possible audience.

This mad world of ever more rapid changes has had its effect, among other things on the fortunes of political parties. Many that flourished are gone and almost forgotten. Others, while retaining their original names, have completely transformed their character, while a few surviving parties are but shadows of their former selves. For political parties dependent on leaders, promises to remove some present evils at a not too distant date keep its members and voters united and enthused. The led are willing to accept with a great deal of trust the belief that the reforms they are working for will produce the desired beneficial results. It is with the achievement of office that the testing time comes and the party’s cohesion or even its existence is imperilled. When the hopes and the fire have departed they try to find how to regain what has been lost. They seek new leaders and new policies that will carry them back into power. We can be sure that capitalism itself will go on producing evils at home and abroad around which the capitalist-reformist parties can build up fresh manifesto pledges to form the basis of election battles.

The Socialist Party with its consistent adherence to the principles of socialism stands out as an exception. Our clear understanding and unity of purpose highlights the difference between the Socialist Party and all other political parties and gives it its scientific basis based on Marxism. The fact that membership of the party has been conditional upon understanding and agreeing with its Declaration of Principles, explains to an extent its survival through conditions which have and destroyed so many others.  Our D. of P. still stands as a clear, concise and consistent case for socialism.  While capitalism lasts, that exploitation will continue, and until it is ended the Object and Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party will remain valid. No matter the form of government the prevailing condition is the exploitation of the wealth producers under wage slavery. The problem is the same today as when the Socialist Party was founded and will remain the same until socialism comes into existence. The struggle between the two classes, struggle over wages and conditions, is the natural consequence of capitalism and socialism will be established with the growth of understanding and by the struggle to end exploitation. Exploitation prompts and generates the effort to secure emancipation, and emancipation to the working class can be nothing but socialism. Socialism is, therefore, the outcome of the class struggle.

Capitalism, the private ownership of the means of life, enables one class to live by the exploitation of the other. The character of the means of production makes common ownership the only practical method of ending class ownership. As control is an essential part of ownership, and the only way society as a whole can control is by democratic means.  Not only will socialism free society from the toils of class and national conflict, but will give the humanity a larger measure of choice in the conduct of social affairs than it has ever experienced before.

We must not, however, allow the wonderful prospect of a class-free society to blind us to the hard realities of the struggle we must face and conquer before the promised land is ours. None of the disappointments that our fellow-workers have endured were unforeseen. The Socialist Party has foretold that no matter how much capitalism is reformed and bureaucratised the world will still find no solution for social problems except through socialism. 

Mondragon Coop

 Started in the 1950s as a Catholic Action project, a for-profit business that embodies Catholic social thought. Today, the Mondragon group includes 257 financial, industrial, retail, and research and development concerns, employing approximately 74,000 people. The coops manufacture everything from commercial kitchen equipment (under the flagship Fagor brand) to industrial robots; the retail giant Eroski boasts 2,000 outlets throughout Europe, and the bank Caja Laboral and social security coop provide financial services to members and affiliated businesses. 

 The coops are not unionized, and they have no outside stockholders. Instead, each worker or manager invests as a member in the firm and has one vote in its general assembly. Each coop is represented at the Cooperative Congress, where system-wide plans and business decisions are made. The coops have retained members’ jobs in Spain’s Basque country even during economic crises. Manifesting an ethos of solidarity, members accept salary cuts, invest additional funds, and transfer between coops when necessary. Mondragon limits its highest managerial salary to about nine times the pay of its lowest-paid members, a remarkably flat scale compared to Spain’s overall ratio of about 127:1. Mondragon’s core principle, the sovereignty of labor over capital, is visible in the distribution of surplus to members’ capital accounts in the Caja Laboral, where they are held as private savings but made available for investment in the coop group

Despite these virtues, Mondragon is not utopia.

 As with many successful firms, regardless of structure or industry, much of the growth in recent years has come from international markets, which now account for 70 percent of Mondragon sales. Mondragon went global in 1990, and now controls some 100 foreign subsidiaries and joint ventures – mainly in developing and Eastern European countries, with low wages or expanding markets. This has necessitated hiring new workers in those new markets. Few, if any, of these new workers, have been offered membership in the cooperatives. As a consequence, they do not participate in the benefits of worker-ownership.  They do not participate in the governance of Mondragon and are not eligible for many of the other unique benefits of the cooperatives. Only one-third of its employees are members. Instead, they are wage laborers. Even in the Basque country and Spain, industrial and retail coops employ significant numbers of temporary workers on short-term contracts.

 Today, only about one-half of Mondragon’s businesses areIt would be against the economic interest of existing coop members to include more worker-owners in the confederation. In Wroclaw, Poland, a 2008 strike over low pay and anti-union repression raised questions about Fagor’s three-tier labor force, with coop members in the Basque country, temporary workers throughout Spain, and wage laborers in subsidiaries. Do job security, decent pay, and workplace participation in the Basque country rest upon exploitation elsewhere?

  A study of Mondragon subsidiaries in China comparing coop-owned factories with foreign-owned capitalist firms found that pay was low, hours long, and conditions harsh. Just like their capitalist competitors, Mondragon coops invested in China to manufacture labor-intensive goods cheaply and to be near emerging markets – a strategy coop members accepted when they voted to pursue an international strategy. Mondragon’s subsidiaries still operate like standard firms, even though their aim is not to maximize profit for stockholders but to preserve coops and jobs in the Basque country.

 In 2013, Fagor Electrodomésticos (the home appliance division) declared bankruptcy. The affiliated Mondragon coops were no longer willing to save Fagor and bankruptcy threatened 5,600 jobs (down from 11,000 before the bubble.) With a population of 25,000, this hit the city of Mondragón hard. Fagor members in Mondragón and nearby towns took early retirement or transferred to other coops, but local contract workers and 3,500 employees of Fagor subsidiaries were not similarly protected. 

 Shop-floor conditions, rank-and-file participation in decision making, and workers’ identification in a Fagor coop are little better than at a neighbouring capitalist factory with a unionised workforce. Furthermore, coop members showed little solidarity with the broader Basque labour movement. As an institution, Mondragon steers clear of politics.

 So where does control, and thereby ownership, lie in the Mondragón co-operatives? The key question is whether the workers can actually directly gain access to their capital and decide what to do with it. They cannot; in fact, the whole system seems to operate like a pension scheme, as the members have to wait until retirement to realise their earnings and even then they do not get it paid out in one lump sum. Most effective control and decision making are carried out by management, who in this case would be the de facto owners of the co-operatives.

 It must also be remembered that cooperatives are integrated into the market system and subjected to the same economic laws as other firms. The argument is often put that it is possible to establish "little islands of socialism—workers co-operatives — within the framework of capitalism, thus making a revolutionary, world-wide change from capitalism to socialism unnecessary.

 But socialism means common ownership and free access to everything that is produced. 

 Such a social system does not exist in the Mondragón co-operatives or anywhere else in the world. The rigorous economic law of profitability at all costs imposed by the market must be supported by defenders of co-operatives; if. under capitalism, you don’t observe this law you very quickly go out of business.

Nothing has changed.

A Marxist is someone who follows the basic theory of Karl Marx, that capitalism cannot be reformed to satisfy the needs of the working class and therefore must be abolished. A revolution has to take place whereby the working class gains control of the state mechanism (all governments) and puts in its place a global democratic system of society so that the needs of all the worlds inhabitants can be satisfied, the socialist revolution needn't be violent.

  One doesn’t ‘become’ a Marxist. One reads and understands Marx and Marxist literature. If you understand Marx and it informs your world meaningfully, you can call yourself a Marxist. If you understand Marx, and it doesn’t inform your world, don’t call yourself that. There is a tremendous amount of wilful ignorance on political theory because there are a tremendous number of people who would rather fight about politics than think about it. Don’t contribute to that problem.

 It’s time to build something new. Authentic hope comes when we reject capitalism, leaving behind the illusion that we can fix a broken system and it frees us to work for genuine change. We can begin building a more equitable economy rooted in a new relationship of reciprocity with each another, respecting the planet as we do one another.  In our local communities, we challenge the capitalist culture and institutions of exclusion and make sure everyone has a seat at the table. Together we can reimagine and reinvent our society. None of us alone has a blueprint. Top-down change becomes corrupt and authoritarian. But together, from the grass-roots, using people-power we can create a democratic socialist world that can sustain our communities as capitalism fails to. We need to be organised. Isolated we’re easy to defeat. In solidarity, we rediscover the strength that can energise us as we create a new social system and way of life.

This world and its laws are set up to protect property owners and commerce, not the people nor the planet. As more and more people become aware of the need for sustainability and defence of the ecosystem, they are finding that the current capitalist system works against them. Austerity and the right-ward drift of politics have brought many issues that have existed for years out into the open where they are more difficult to deny.  The power of the plutocrats may bring a boomerang effect, stirring and igniting the population to take action and demand the changes we desire and need but the boomerang will only occur if we educate and organise for it.  The boomerang will be built on the conflict between the necessities of the people and the planet versus. the greed of the wealthy.

We need to tackle the economic system itself, which is at the root of all our problems, not just the thousands upon thousands of injustices that are symptomatic of it. The workers' movement must step up and connect the dots to a real solution. Capitalism is one economic system, period. There is no time to waste. Everyone has to be all-in for rebuilding society. We have so much to do -- but change is possible. More people are becoming active and making connections between the various struggles to create a movement of movements. They are seeds of transformative change that socialists can nurture and grow. The Socialist Party has no illusions that this work will be easy. Those in power will do all that they can to misdirect our efforts. Our task is to resist their tactics and maintain our focus on our end goal. Our task is not to be side-tracked by false or partial solutions but to connect all the single-issue movements into one unified powerful force.  

Unless we participate and engage our class enemy, 2018 will give us more of the same that we experienced the year before and the year before that: Endless wars. Hunger. Economic crises. Poverty. Disease. Senseless tragedies. Intolerance. Hatred. Apathy. The new bosses will prove to be the same as the old bosses. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer. Workers will hate other workers, driven by fear and prejudice.

The power to change things for the better rests with us, not the politicians.  And we must make our New Year resolution to work together to make this change happen

On his Knee

The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, becomes a “sir” following his appointment to the Order of the Thistle, the greatest order of chivalry in Scotland.

The Duke is one of Britain’s largest landowners and the largest private landowner in Scotland. The family seats are Bowhill House, three miles outside Selkirk, representing the Scott line; Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfries and Galloway, representing the Douglas line; and Boughton House in Northamptonshire, England, representing the Montagu line. These three houses are still lived in by the family and are also open to the public. The family also owns Dalkeith Palace in Midlothian